Morning Glories

T'was a cold and frosty morning
The Boys were crowing
The Ladies, being much more practical, felt that food outweighed asthetics
So they all missed the sunrise over Rita's domain...

Communication Breakdown

in order to try to improve communication, I've sentthis out to see who is able to receive facebook postings on 
a) facebook
b) via a g mail "eggs r us " notification.
if , out of the 8 members of the facebook group, only Rod, Fiona and myself are able to receive g mail notifications, then I'll post a duplicate thread directly into eggs r us.
there is also a blog page set up for chicken club use...
http://thechickenclub.blogspot.co.uk/


the gmail version also contained an additional line asking you to leave a message here if you received the message via g mail not facebook, so let's see who receives what by which platform....

Scrabblefest Announced

Post Xmas, Pre New Year greetings to you all.

I am forced to confess to being a rubbish social event organiser.
We talked about having a post Xmas ,pre NY drinks mixer ...
and then the real world took over.
J was ill, we had Alice's extended birthday to contend with and before you knew it, it was Xmas Eve.
So , now in the post blow out eye of the storm, Jane reminds me that I was supposed to have organised the previous;y mentioned event.

OOPS.
i'm working late shifts every day now until New Years Day...

So am proposing a post NY event. 
The inaugural Chicken club scrabblefest.
Date : Saturday 12 January, 2013.
Location - Our place.
Time - 7pm 
Events - a demonstration game of scrabble by the team (only one as it's a pretext for an event :) )
Dress code - we don't have one.
Bring "Lawyers, Guns and Money.." or failing that, nibbles and a tipple or two.

If anyone is interested, then let me know.

G

what i did on my week off...

a work in progress... A couple of hours each morning have been invested in turning the jungle of the plt next to the ladies into a fit and presentable plot...

So far I've cleared the front, slashed away the undergrowth in proper explorer mode, discovering a water but in the process.

The piles of undergrowth are now drying out prior to removal  burning / composting.

next stage is to dig further beds, reinstate paths and construct a fence at the back and insert a gate at the front.. 

And I don't do gardening...

Newbies...

Thought I'd set pen to paper??? and talk about the newbies...
Thursday night was an adventure, shall we say.
Either they are highly strung Thoroughbred or they are zen masters of passive resistance. The concept of trooping into the hutch at sundown was obviously a new one. Thanks to whoever left the towel on top.
was a surreal bullfight type scene, "persuading " them that they could go in the hut, it was theirs and they would be fine was entertaining, esp when the brown one sneaked out and infiltrated the other group...
BUT I did establish who was in charge, and then they allowed me to put them to bed.
this was all watched and noted by the Ladies, and I hope that when we introduce them newbies to the brood that they are quick to learn GOOD habits...
they are very pretty though :)

Ratproofing and beyond

Here we see the fruits of Sunday Morning.

The ladies examine the fortifications assembled on their side of the fence.

The other side of the fence was a maze of tunnels under the black matting, so I dug them over , replaced the matting and blocked the probable entrance holes with lumps of concrete off the floor.

It looked like the rats HQ was under our neighbours shed at the back of the orchard area,  so i repeated the digging and concrete exercise.

I hope that these few fortifications will prevent further attempts at ingress from the fox / rats...

On a more pleasant tone, I also turned over part of the ground where the pile of tree bits was..

Thus exposing worms to the sky ( and the chickens !)

The new ladies seemed perplexed at these strange things and declined the morsels on offer.. no such problem for the established  members:)

despite the worm "falling" in front of them, they didn't know what to do and wandered off  to enjoy a leisurely dust bath and discuss the actions of the mad man with the spade !

perhaps we need to offer a practical course in worm hunting for beginners

Close Encounters of the Foxy kind

T'was a (very) cold and frosty morning when your intrepid reporter set out to release the Ladies into the snow..

There was a lot of noise coming from the coop as I approached - they were obviously keen to continue their synchronous skating routines ready to perform for us later...

However, As I went to open the inner barrier, I noticed evidence of an attempt to tunnel under it

The photo shows the line of the fence and the attempt to dig under neath.
A closer inspection of the perimeter identified the incursion entry point- the same site as previous attempts.

Here you can see that the wooden stakes that we drove in to block a previous attack had been pushed aside and there was a nice fox 9or chicken) sized hole in the fence.
The ground was frozen solid except here, so it seems to have been an early morning raid..
I replaced the stakes and bolstered the defenses with a paving slab too, which should hold out until the ground thaws enough to enable us to dig in a section of tin fencing to prevent further incursions.

Thanks to whoever locked up last night for ensuring that all the ladies were double protected with that inner barrier!
On  a more practical matter, all water containers were completely frozen solid!
Due to time restrictions ( ie having to go back and act as Dad's Taxi!) I was only able to use a flask of hot water I had brought with me to defrost the water in the drinking receptacles of the new waterers, but the ladies seemed happy with that!
Does anyone have unfroze water containers that could be used to ferry a supply up for the weekend?