In the garden and on the allotment

Our aim for this weekend has been to get the chickens together in harmony. We knew it wasn't going to be easy so we just braced ourselves. On Saturday morning we let them all out in the garden together, to give them space. There was a fair bit of fighting and each pair stayed at a good distance from the other but gradually they came together.



The "new girls" decided to explore the main run and we gradually herded them all in together.



You can see in this picture that they still stayed quite seperate for a while. The two "old girls" perching very helpfully at the front here to demonstrate.



They all got into the house together last night without any help and with relatively little bother. Rom and Hythe were very wingey this morning, I don't think they like having interlopers in their home, but they settled down. I am in the dining room and keep hearing little squarks from outside as Rom asserts her authority over Blue - which is quite mean as Rom is the biggest and Blue the smallest of the flock.

After her initial aggression Bell seems to have settled a little and, as promised, we managed to get a photo of her. The difference between them is the way their combs flop - Matt can't remember who is who so just calls them Left Flop and Right Flop at the moment. Bell is Left Flop:



In this photo she is taking after her older sisters and has taken a liking to digging in the strawberry bed, which is not very helpful.

The other update is on the allotment. We found some time to pop down there this afternoon. In fact, Matt is still there but I pulled my back this morning so have had to come home.

As you can see, we now have 6 raised beds and the fruit bed at the back as well as our "utility" area with the compost and water butt.

6

These are the fruit bushes that we have put in. Raspberries on the left (about 8) then red goosberry, 2 blackcurrants and a red currant. Not as evenly spread as I would have liked because some of the bed is waterlogged but this might help with harvesting later on.



We also took down the first of our stuff for composting - 1 week of kitchen waste and 3 weeks of chicken waste on a twiggy base to make sure it gets plenty of air. I think this should give our first compost batch a great start!