Well for the first thought of the day anyway. It was another beautiful morning and not so cold as the last two, when I went up the garden to feed the chickens, so I took my time. There were a few clouds in the sky - classic harbingers of a change in the weather, wispy cirrus that I was told were called horse tails when I was at school. Goodness knows what they call them now, but I'm sure cirrus still stands. There is a front on its way, although it may avoid doing much to us, other than raising the temperatures - they forecast 18°C for us tomorrow!
The chickens were being rather good this morning. Normally Delenn (the grey one) gets bullied away from the place where I drop the treats, I do that so that I have a clear run at the grain hopper, but today they all played nicely. Either they have finally established a pecking order that all agree with, or they are plotting something. The two brown ones are Muck and Brass, couldn't tell you which is which, but where there's Muck, there's Brass, so who cares? When we are down to only one brown one, it will be an issue, at which point I will have to be more decisive.
We are in an at risk zone for avian 'flu, and the next commune over is on high alert. If we go on to high alert, we will need to cover the whole chicken run with fine mesh to keep the sparrows and other wild birds out of the run. There is a colony of about 30 sparrows living in our bay tree, so it is a real issue and risk. The only other solution would be to cull the chickens but we obviously don't want to do that. That's fine for the normal hens, but Bridie the Bantam is another issue altogether.
Bridie arrived in our garden late last year, worked out we were a soft touch, fell in awe of Dummer the Big White Chicken (now deceased) and stayed. She roosts in the shed mainly, has a feed station outside the main chicken run and spends her day (when they are confined) watching the big chickens and paying homage to whoever she thinks is Chief Chicken (now Delenn it would appear). When they are out and about trashing the garden, she follows them around, never too close, and avoiding Poirot the Cat. We can't really get near her, so I am not at all sure what happens if we move to High Alert. Something to worry about, if it happens, I guess.
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