Delivery in the Dark

After pottering down to feed the chickens and collect half a dozen eggs this morning. We headed back home. A friend who runs his own gardening business had offered us some chippings. There are endless uses for chippings on an allotment from using it for paths, helping keep chickens off the mud and compost. Some chippings are not suitable for chickens so these need to be checked carefully before putting any into a run. The call came just before half four that he was on his way. Pausing only to grab the allotment keys, we headed across.

When he pulled up, we helped tip out two builder’s bags into two wheelie bins for easier transportation. One we emptied onto the central path as the chippings from last year have pretty much disappeared. The small section of the path it covered looked so much better, even if it was almost completely dark! The other bin and a large builders bag of laurel chippings we will sort out tomorrow.

Before we left, we did a final check on the chickens. Hilariously, the porcelain millefleur pulley had decided to sleep up high on the chicken swing. Gordon was happily snuggled with one of the partridge bantam pullets on the perch. The other two were snuggled up together on the smaller perch. Clearly, none of them had the sense to go inside the nest box to sleep!

In the main coop, all the girls and Tommy were perching outside. Unusually, Flora wasn’t sleeping next to Tommy but was on the perch below. I planned to give her a good check over tomorrow to make sure she hasn’t got any injuries or anything else which would cause her to be pushed out of Tommy’s favour. We discovered Lilja and Sadie sleeping in the nest box together. Here’s hoping all these idiot birds work out they should sleep inside as the weather continues to worsen.