Chicken Brained!

Can we come in please?

I despair of those chickens. Obviously they have a memory longer than a week. I knew that some of them were staying out at night but it turns out it was more than I thought.

Out of curiosity we went out tonight to see just how many were roosting in the new hen house. Not that many! I did manage to pick up one that was roosting near the oil tank and threw it in with the others. You should have heard the noise. You would have thought I had put a fox in there. We then searched for the others. Ant and a few of his old girls were in the Peedie Hoose, but I couldn’t see any in the bushes or behind the little hen house. That was until I leaned over and shone the torch directly into the entrance. There were most of the others, all huddled up leaning against the wood we had blocked the entrance with.  I felt we had no option but to go in and open it up for them. I am not happy about this as it leaks like a sieve, but it is still shelter of a sort. I am not going to replace the nest boxes though as I don’t want them going in there during the day. Back to square one I suppose. I will need to order some more supplies and perhaps, if I can get them back into the new house, keep them locked up longer.

The ducks seemed to miss the chickens, when we locked them in, and even went off their food. They just seemed depressed and sat around the garden not even grazing much. They perked up when we let the chickens back out and things seemed to be getting back to normal. Now they still don’t seem to be feeding much from the feeder but they are grazing in the fields a lot. I am worried that they are going to the splash pond in the back field which was seeded with barley by the shooters last year. They spent so much time there I was convinced they would get shot. Maybe they have just remembered. They are also flying around a lot more than usual and as they are so bad at landing gracefully we often have one or more limping about for a while. This afternoon Sid and A. N. Other decided to perch on the kitchen window and kept rapping on it for ages. It wound Sadie up no end, which agitated the cats. I was ready to have duck for dinner, I can tell you.