The things we do for our chickens

Last night we had quite an interesting experience with one of our chickens.

Sam went out to tuck everyone in for the night and only counted 22 birds (we have 23 birds total). After looking around for a minute he found this:

One of our chickens had nuzzled its way into the middle of some welded wire we had laying around (which was on the side of the barn they supposedly do not have access to, by the way) and was stuck. Her tail was sticking out but we couldn't pull her out and were afraid we would cut her up if we tried. Sam tried to push her through to the other side but, as you can see in the picture, this side was pinched and the hole was smaller, too small for her to fit through - I had run over the welded wire a little when it was in the driveway a while ago - oops :). 

Our only solution was to unroll the ENTIRE thing in the dark... in the FREEZING COLD.

This whole scene was sort of hilarious to me so I took a couple pictures because it just HAD to be documented. Just picture a chicken's little head poking out going around and around while we unrolled and unrolled and unrolled... seriously funny! I mean, it was a little sad, but mostly hilarious since we were 98% sure she wasn't hurt at all, just stuck.

Towards the end we had to be careful unrolling the welded wire so we would not to bend her feet and break something since her feet were all tangled in the wire.

Once she was free she seemed a little in shock. We held her and pet her to let her know we were just trying to help and then we let her walk around for a minute to make sure nothing was broken or hurt before sending her off to bed with the rest of the flock. She was totally okay by the way, just a little confused.

Sometimes chickens are quite smart and sometimes they are really dumb (in this instance, for example). Nonetheless, it is ridiculous and quite funny the lengths we go to keep these chickens safe and happy. They are crazy but we love them!