Sunday 31 July 2011

Upcycling for geese, and ex-battery newcomers









Lots happening here this week! Bill has made a glamorous new house for the geese from an old crate and a few pallets - it's superb and they're very comfortable in their spacious new home! As they're now towering over their poor mother, it's not before time...and he's delighted with the fact that every single part of it has been liberated from the junk pile in the top barn. So for the cost of two boxes of screws, we have a whole new and extremely sturdy goose house - the ultimate in upcycling!


This new pad has freed up the nursery ark for our new arrivals. This afternoon we had a very scenic hour's drive over to Chulmleigh to collect our ex-battery hens. We'd booked 3 but in the event they persuaded us to take an extra, very raggedy looking hen, so the four of them travelled very calmly back to their new Blackdown Hills home and immediately started exploring. Given that it was only this morning they were released from their cages and this was their very first time on grass or moving about freely, it was amazing to see how quickly instinct kicked in - they were scratching and pecking within minutes.






They've got to stay apart from our resident hens until they're a bit stronger and look less ragged or they'll be bullied, so the new girls are making the sheeps' acquaintance in a new enclosure in the top field. Daisy and Willow have taken great pains to settle them in and plan to have them eating out of their hands within days...they're also trying to think of names! We're not holding our breath on this one as the only one of our existing hens to have a name that's stuck is known as...Little Red Hen.

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