Wild Hope Homestead

The chickens have been on a little adventure. Last week I started putting up a temporary fence for them around the vege garden area using the plastic netting that originally lined their run, some stakes and some ties. It was a bit much effort for me to carry on with so The Husband swiftly finished off the job yesterday afternoon while it was nice and sunny. Before I could even supervise he had managed to get the chickens into the large cage and was transporting them into the vege pen. I don’t know who was more shocked, me or the chickens. I had a few words to him about taking things slowly so the chickens don’t get stressed out. For a while they sat in the cage with the door open inside the vege pen while I tried to coax them out with my voice and offerings of lush green weeds. They hadn’t been out in a space this big before and it was all strange to them.

After a short while, curiosity, or food, got the better of Sam and out she came, followed by Strider, then the ever-cautious Frodo. Then out came all the happy chicken noises as they slowly worked their way around the entire pen, pecking weeds and old overgrown kale and scratching in the soil. Sam is the best forager and scratcher, so she should be most useful in clearing out the vege bed and surrounds. I enjoyed watching their happy little escapade for a while then left them to it with their water bell at hand. As the light started to fade we went out to try and get them back into their run and they were already conveniently inside the big cage, all ready to be carted back to their run. Such good chickens. They were quite happy to get back to the familiarity of their pen as well, so I think they’d had enough of an adventure for one afternoon.

This afternoon I wanted to let the chickens out again but couldn’t use the big cage since it’s too heavy and doesn’t (yet) have wheels. So I did the pied piper thing and coaxed the chickens out of their run into the vege pen with my voice and dangling a bunch of weeds in front of them. This was a little risky as they could have gotten minds of their own and headed off for a paddock fence. Fortunately, building a good relationship with your chickens means they actually follow you! Piece of cake. That’s what I would have tried yesterday if The Husband hadn’t been so hasty… It’s going to take a while for my feathered clean-up crew to make headway in vege garden so I’ll just keep letting them in there every day  if the weather is nice.