A relaxing day

Today we walked down late and decided to just feed the chickens and go for a walk. The digging can wait for another day. The chicks are doing well although they are still quite flighty. Their chick crumb has run out today so from tomorrow they will be on growers pellets. It’s a couple of days early but it won’t do them any harm. They will then be on growers pellets until they are 6 months old. I love how they all cuddle together.

In the main coop, we discovered three eggs! This is more than we have had in months. One of the eggs was enormous. Long and thin, it dwarfed all the other eggs! Unfortunately, when my husband closed the lid of the egg box he heard a crack. The top part of the egg had cracked slightly so we opened it to find a huge yolk. But with Leia and Rey also laying one apiece, we still had four to take home. While we were in the main coop, we decided to dust the girls again. Pop, Snap, Hattie and Georgie were easy enough to catch and treat but the other three were not so well behaved. Millie and Polly out up some resistance but we got them sorted. Molly was another saga altogether. She loathes being held or caught. Being a Vorwerk, she is incredibly fast and smart. It took us about 10 minutes to catch her as she is the master of evasion. Eventually we managed to corner her in the nest box and dust her. She was not happy.

Next we moved onto dusting Leia and Rey. Leia is so tame it was easy to catch her but she definitely made her annoyance at the lack of treats obvious by her loud shouting. Rey was not keen to be caught and clearly has been taking lessons from Molly. Fortunately they are in a much smaller coop and my husband managed to catch her quite quickly. Rey was rather nonplussed by the dusting experience.

Before we left, we went to chat to Sarah, Liz and Andy who were working on their plot. They were busy putting in their plants and kindly offered to supply drinks on our afternoon walk. Promising to take them up on their generous offer, we used a piece of plastic to cover part of the top of the chicks coop before heading off for our long walk.

Tomorrow’s plan is to finish off the digging which should be easier after this afternoon’s rain. We will also directly sow our seeds rather than pot them as it’s very late in the year to start some of them. The weather forecast isn’t brilliant for the next week so we may end up putting the chicks back into the greenhouse to keep them safe and dry.