Chicken Run

A Beautiful Sunday

Slightly later than our normal Sunday mornings, we didnt arrive at lotty until half past eight to let the girls out. As John usually does this on his way to work it was a little treat for me to see them getting up in the morning. John has been telling me all week about how Cairo escapes the run every morning, but id never seen it myself. Well now I have. She was not too hard to round up as she didnt appear to actually want to be out of the run and all it took was to follow her around the fence and back in through the gate.

We picked a few apples so that I could make apple sauce for our roast pork dinner and some runner beans, which seem to have a new crop every day.

In The Wars Again

It was back to lotty in the afternoon with a charged drill battery to do a bit more work on our new/old shed. Not having much to do on it, I made a start on improving the Blurs swing. As the steel wire was not so flexible I removed it and replaced it with some material that we'd found in the old shed. Both John and the Blur looked dubious as they thought the material wouldnt be strong enough. But I told the Blur that I would test it first, and that if it could hold my weight it would definitely hold her. Early on in this task John came down from the shed and told us a plank of wood had just fallen on his head. I took a look and there was a big red blood spot under the skin. It looked nasty but John assured us that he was ok. He had a little rest and watched the chickens before resuming his task. After her bee sting and falling over on Saturday the Blur won the award for having the worst war wounds. Sunday was Johns turn. I hope they are both feeling better, and that today will not bring any more injuries.

Swing finished I tentatively sat down and hoped it wouldnt snap. Luckily it was safe and the Blur sat down for her turn. I did make a few adjustments, like putting a plastic strip around the branch it was hanging from to stop the majority of friction, so the rope wouldnt be slowly cut through.

Glass Roof

That done, I went up to see if I could help John in any way with the shed roof. Now we dont always have exactly what we need at lotty, but we have become adept at improvising. We didnt have enough planks of wood to make a shed roof, but what we did have was a whole pile of old doors. So after picking three very similar ones, John hoisted them up and screwed them to the top of the shed. It may sound like an unusual idea, but with a glass roof it has the potential to be a semi greenhouse, as we will soon be needing more room. It still needs a door, but we did well by getting most of it fixed in just two days. When we started it on Friday, we noticed some writing just above the door. The first bit was obvious and said 'Charlton Heston,' but after that it needed a bit of guesswork. I thought it said Charlton Heston plants ?something? the aps 1968, and as there were no other suggestions we decided it must be something cryptic. When we got home I googled Charlton Heston 1968 and came up with Planet of the Apes. Mystery kind of solved, other than why exactly did someone write it there in the first place.

Another Chicken Run

When John has told me about chickens escaping its always been Cairo, but not this time. After getting Rita and Cairo in (they're easier to catch as they both assume if the Blur and I are in the run we have something for them and come over.) So as the Blur and I converged on Alison she took a good run up and sat on the roof of the coop. After a few bouts of arm waving at her she flew off over the fence and into lotty. The Blur did try and catch her first but ended up driving her the wrong way so that going in the gate was less of an option. So telling Blur to hold the gate I went after Alison who thought her escape would come through the hedge. Fortunately in all her dithering I was able to grab her and put her to bed for the night. But thank you Alison for providing John with an amusing few minutes of watching us chase a chicken.