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Mischevious chickens

Posted by on Tuesday 10 April 2012 in chickens, growing | 7 comments

After a bit of a blogging holiday, I intended to write a puntastic post about how both this blog and the garden were “springing back to life”. My laziness at the end of last year – leaving lots of salad go to seed then not clearing away the pots – has meant that we’ve got various self-seeded leaves popping up all over the place (including some well established swiss chard plants which didn’t die off during the mild winter) in addition to all the fruit bushes/trees getting their blossom on. But then (overly-dramatic music) … HENS HAPPENED:

Oh hello there garden wrecker.

I thought I’d let the girls out to have a scratch about/weed the garden while I pottered in the greenhouse – sowing lots of seeds (although not as many as previous years) and potting on some other stuff:

Within minutes though, those surviving swiss chard plants were reduced to this:

Some of the other self-seeded edibles in the lower bit of the garden were also munched, and my daffodils were duly stomped on:

She was happy destroying them until she realised there were strawberry plants in the trough underneath that.

You can see her going “ooh! they’ll be fun to stomp!”. I don’t mind about the daffodils – which weren’t up to much anyway – or the general mess they cause flicking top soil everywhere but I shooed her off the strawberries. That hen, Ginger, then went over to investigate what Ms Mauve was up to:

Quietly eating bittercress. I looked away for a second and heard a wing-flapping kerfuffle:

Ginger had tried to jump onto a big soil filled plant tub but it had fallen over. She, of course, took the opportunity to have a scratch through it for anything tasty before going off to cause chaos elsewhere. Elsewhere eventually turned out to be next-door-but-one’s garden with her fellow Black Rock partner in crime, Blacksy — and they’re the two that don’t like being picked up so I had to do comedy cross-garden chicken chasing to get them back home.

Some of them are more darling though. I was sowing the last of my tomatoes (late, I know) in the greenhouse when I heard a quiet little “can I come in?” buck-buck.

Little Blue jumped into the greenhouse and had a good look around – under the staging, on the staging, pecking at old growbags etc – all the while seemingly asking me questions: “is this your coop? where are the roost bars? where are the nest boxes? can I eat those seeds?” Very sweet. (And no, she couldn’t.)

7 Comments

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  1. Solway Recycling

    Chickens will have a go at anything, very like kids don’t ever tidy up after themselves.

  2. datacreata

    Welcome back, have missed your blogs.

  3. Mo

    Welcome back! :)
    I love spending time with our hens. As our number have gone up we don’t let them out into the main plot as we used to when we only had 6 to keep an eye on, but I do spend more time than is strictly necessary with them :) If I stand still I have a bevy of beauties pecking at my wellies – go figure ;)

  4. sara

    Welcome back louisa..missed reading your posts hun..
    Our 4 chickens are total escape artists..i am pretty sure they hum the theme tune to Mission Impossible when we go down to sort them out in the mornings…had to literally vault up the side of the shed the other day to catch one before she launched herself in next doors garden..never knew i had it in me to move so fast lol
    sara

  5. PipneyJane

    Are things OK with you? You’ve been awfully quiet.

    – Pam

    • louisa

      Things are just fine, thanks for asking! I was super busy until last weekend with my drama production and have been recovering this week (was a crazy busy week last week!) – but also trying to catch up on my sowing etc too. Will try to post again soon! :)

  6. Hazel

    I just stopped by to ask the same thing. Hope you’re just busy, look forward to hearing from you soon.

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