Chickens and water pools

Better late than never: Here's a note about last week's heavy rains and floods.

Our power plant was not flooded - it just turned into a pond, again. 

September 11, 2015: New coop front.

September 11, 2015: New coop back.

This was so far the largest pond-ification in the history of our power plant.

The new coop in effect became an island.

The coop floor wasn't flooded thanks to the thick layer of leaf mold carpet which raises the floor by some twenty centimeters compared to the surroundings.

The trouble for chickens was that everything around the coop was under water. Chickens don't mind rain, not even heavy rain, but they are troubled by large pools of water.

So for me this was an opportunity to study chickens' coping strategies in the face of adversity (= water pools). As expected, individual chickens reacted differently, some were bold action-takers, some were rather cautious think-first-act-later(-or-never) waverers. Most of them were somewhere in between.
Study summary:  Chickens typically choose one of two basic strategies with opposite characteristics: Strategy 1 "Just do it" or  Strategy 2 "I need more time."  Strategy 2 can be further divided into Versions A, B, C, D, E and F. Watch video for details:

I hope there will be more opportunities to delve into chickens' psychology in the coming months.