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?

New Members - an announcement...........

Press Release - For immediate publication, all channels......
Andy and Claire Grey are happy to accept our offer of membership to the exclusive "Chicken Club"
Andy has no car at the moment so I'm picking him up tomorrow morning at 10 to go to allotment and I'm sure, visit the ladies and get a heads up from whoever is around...

New Members... Flying Greenhouse spotting ...

A quick note regarding the weekend's events.

We arrived bright and early Saturday, did the releasing the ladies into the frost, broke the ice off the water etc.etc.

We then went potential member hunting.

The elusive antipodean probationary members were elusive, they don't like the cold you know...

So we re grouped at Waitrose Costa and planned a return sortie on Sunday.

Sunday we were successful in tracking the potentials down - Andy and Claire came to visit the Ladies whilst Linda was "mucking out".

They were given some eggs, a tour and a bag of chicken poo to take away.

They are considering our offer to join, as soon as we hear anything, we will share the news with the group.

Flying Greenhouses - We assisted Richard, Jon , Linda and Jon's kids in evicting the unwelcome squatter greenhouse that was lurking in Richard's plot.

Apparently it was spotted in Linda's plot earlier, but decided to hop over the fence to Richards...

It's now been sent back to Keithland and hopefully it will stay...

We did discuss ideas for social events, Jane wondered about a "Bring and Swap" session later in the spring where we could exchange surplus plants, seedlings etc...

Or perhaps we could do a Tidy Sunday lunch event, where everyone brings some foodstuff, e construct lunch, tidy the plot and rebuild the fence, dig in anti-Rat defenses and generally tidy up?

over to you....

Integration.. night 1

Well, Tonight's the night as Neil Young sang..

The Ladies have been allowed to mingle  all day.

have they formed new alliances?

Has there been an outbreak of gang warfare ?

Were there tears before bedtime?

Read on for the real story..

I arrived as the sun was setting, the Cd playing   A Perfect Circle's version of "When the Levee Breaks" ( nothing to do with chickens , but a fabulous piece of music that everyone should listen to to get to that chilled , pre-chicken experience state of mind)

Looking through the gate, I see that ALL the ladies were in the front area, no blood, a few feathers around, but normal chicken activity was observed - eating, scratching, drinking and more scratching... and eating, that sort of thing.

One of the black feathered senior ladies was squawking at one of the young upstarts, giving her the benefit of her wisdom, but nothing too serious.

I then wandered through to the large coop to see if there were any eggs...

sadly no.

Off to Security HQ to check on the log....

Here I find that Mick had harvested 11 eggs recently, so good girls!

I wrote up my report and then returned to the ladies....

Where I find all the old group had decamped, gone to bed and were ready for the door to be closed!

No new ladies were invited, or were brave enough to venture into the coop.

The youngsters then played run around the coop until Gary gets dizzy game, decided to feel sorry for me and trooped off to bed like seasoned pros..

so, i locked everyone up and headed off into the sunset.

an old picture of the "ladies" as they were....

a new venture...

this is an idea that popped into my head after volunteering to create a facebook group for the chicken club.
That's a work in progress, but it appears that I need to " befriend " everyone facebook style before I can create the group, so I thought I'd try this..