Having chickens, ducks, and goats are fun! Lets not forget about the cats and dogs! We can’t leave them out! However, my main focus on this post are the chickens, ducks, and goats and our routinIe in getting them up at night.
Surely, getting up the animals is easy peasy? In a way, yes it is. Jacob and I usually get the animals up together. It takes about 30 minutes to an hour to get everyone up, fed and watered.
Right now we have over 40 chickens, 8 goats, and 6 ducks. Just typing that out has me like 😱. We started off with 20 chickens, went down to 9 chickens (thanks to a predator) and now several years later we have all these animals! If we only had a handful of animal it would only take 5 maybe 10 minutes.
Jacob handles the goats while I handle a majority of the chickens and ducks. We have 4 chicken coops and 2 goats pens. We have two roosters that camp out on the deck. Are you keeping up with me? Hehe.
While I’m putting up the teenager chickens, Jacob is leading whatever goats are out at that time back to their pen.
I throw chicken food into the teenager chickens’ coop, getting them up, shutting the door. Then I have all the baby chickens (okay, they aren’t babies really!) follow me to their coop. I toss food in there, chasing a couple around the coop to get them up. I close the door.
While I’m doing this, Jacob puts up the goats and usually our pekin ducks, Speckles, and Henry.
Our tactic is to get the animals up and then give them food and water. By doing this, all the animals get into the appropriate pen. If we feed the chickens while the goats are out, the goats will march into the chicken’s coops and it can take FOREVER to get them out. We had Hazel punch a hole into the chicken run, then push her way through, making the hole even bigger!
Unfortunately, we don’t have running water where a majority of the pens are. We have to fill up jugs of water, carrying one to each pen. Sometimes it does feel like a lot of running back and forth.
The teenager chickens are no problem to get up but there are 3 ducks in that group that have been determined to play catch me if you can lately. They actually are the ones that compelled me to type this post up. No one knows what we go through (except other chicken and duck tenders. lol).
Once they have all been fed, I feed Little Roo and Marshmallow on the deck. Sometimes they come down while I’m putting up the teenagers or the babies. If they come down at the same time, I have to seperate the food for them. I wish they got a long but they don’t.
That’s our night every night almost! If we go on an errand or out of town, the animals stay in their pens. If the chickens free range 24/7, then they will put themselves up…meaning they will go to wherever they usually roost at night.
If you have animals, comment below with your nightly routine!
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