Today’s adventures with the rooster involve them hanging out by the door. I don’t like this. They want to be fed earlier and I’m already feeding them an hour earlier than I was last week.

Unfortunately today I just discovered that my defense of stick and both the feeding dishes that I used to scoop the feed are sitting on the table outside, not inside where they should be.

The rooster is between it and me. I don’t want to start forcibly moving them without my defensive stick. If the rooster were too attack me as I’m sure it was preparing, I would have no defense. I’m barefoot and not ready for that kind of potential injury. One good pack to the right vein on my ankle and it could be bad.

So I do the only thing I can think of. I put down two dishes of food right in front of the door and let them eat until they’re gone. The dogs are outside as well but my experience is that the chickens take less than half an hour to eat so I should be able to sneak out and get the dishes and my defensive stick back inside where they belong before the next feeding.

Unfortunately the dish I used was one that was convenient but not a very stable dish and when all the hens rushed towards it it’s spilled and their chicken feed is all over the steps. They seem content not to eat food off the concrete porch even though it’s the same food that would have been in the dish. It looks like they may go hungry instead.

In 20 minutes or so if they’ve moved away I may give them some additional food in a proper location after I have obtained my defensive stick. We’ll see how that goes.

It’s Friday and generally he does the weekend feeds because if I do them he’ll hover over me and do it all differently anyway. So I’m off till Monday it looks like.

I’m going to review the times and quantities with him this weekend and see that I’m not giving too much or too little.

So I avoided conflict by being a wuss but the hands got fed, the rooster feels confident he’s kept me away again. I just hope I haven’t built up a new habit that this is where they hang out everyday, but at least with my defensive stick I should be able to get by. I can also use the dogs to help but I didn’t think of it until they were already outside. I think they’re arrival in the wilderness of the backyard may have triggered the chickens to come to the door knowing the food was coming next.

Have I mentioned I hate that rooster.