I left you hanging in the air ...

I left you hanging in the air at the end of the last post ... mainly because I had to go and get a photo of a little addition we have had to add to the new Chicken Land.

We have added some short trellis fencing to the top of the stock fencing that separates Chicken Land from the Veggie Patch and I'm sure you can guess the reason why.  The 'Welsh Girls' the four youngest, fittest of our birds have spent the last few days hopping over the fence to scratch about in the Veggie Patch, making a real mess of the bark chipping pathways and nibbling at the few veggies that are currently in there.  

Not so much of a problem at the moment but it would have been a huge problem when I start to transplant the seedlings that I am currently growing in the polytunnel ready to grow on outside.

To stop them ... or so we thought ... we clipped their wings.  It doesn't hurt chickens at all, a bit like us clipping our fingernails, but what it does is make them lopsided and they find it harder to fly. Chickens don't like to fly much anyway .... unless there is a good food source just over a fence  :-)

One of the culprits!!

We didn't realise how young, fit and agile three of our girls were, the day after we clipped their wings they just flapped and jumped and they were over the fence.  So alternative methods had to be thought of.  Luckily the way Lovely Hubby had fenced the veggie patch to separate it from the orchard included a horizontal rail at the top of the stock fencing, it was put there to help the fence posts remain rigid on a wet hillside.  So he has nailed and added supports to this and topped at all with the trellis fence topping panels that we went out and bought yesterday.

So now we will just have to see how high these three chickens can jump, up to now they have not made it over the newly raised fence .... but I have a sneaky suspicion they could be in meetings to plan the digging of a tunnel  ;-)

Sue xx

Chicken Land

Last week as soon as we came back from our weekend away we got stuck in to moving the chickens.

  Chicken World is looking decidedly worse for wear.  After the chooks being in the same spot for the two and a half years we have lived here and the bad, wet Winter that we have just had it is time to rest the land a bit.  Lovely Hubby also has plans to landscape it slightly to make it all easier to mow and safer to walk on in wet conditions and add a new permanent fence along the roadside, which will be so much easier to do without birds under his feet.

The best way to move a lot of chickens so that you don't cause a huge ruckus is to wait until they have all roosted for the night and one by one removed them from the perches and pop them into a chicken crate.

We carried them over to Chicken Land, which is in our baby orchard, (young trees that is ... we are not growing babies .... phew!!) in three lots, we have a trio of heavy birds and the crate weighs a bit to start with so we made sure only one of these was in each load.

Three trips later and they were all sat on perches in their new house and no doubt wondering what all the fuss was about.  Ginger helped us out, wandering over with us every time we took a load of birds across but the dogs were confined to the house to save a lot of barking and upsetting the birds.

 As night fell on their new home they were tucked up safe and sound.

Now I can spy on them from the bedroom window ...

... and they have the sheep as neighbours.  

The lambs were very interested the first morning when I let the chickens out.

Their favourite thing seems to be the wind and rain shelter that we made for them.  Simply a piece of the old, old henhouse resting on and nailed to a horizontal bit of wood that Lovely Hubby added to the fence.

There was one thing we didn't really think about ...... doh !!

Sue xx