Parishmouse

Sorry I didn’t get more added back to the site yesterday but we had a rather bad day.  While I was taking Mum to have her eyes photographed for her diabetes eye screening we had a fox attack the hens. When we got back there were feathers all over the drive and I found Bertha dead in the field and Daisy dead in her nestbox and the rest of the girls badly traumatised. To add to all this the dogs were going bonkers and the cats had taken refuge in various parts of the house to get out of the way of the dogs.  All in all, bedlam!

After a coffee, I decided that, as the fox now knew that we had hens, he was likely to return so the only thing was to put the girls somewhere much safer. The only place that seemed secure enough was the dogs run at the back of the house which is surrounded by 6ft wire fencing to stop the dogs getting out to the sheep.  So one massive move of the hens and their houses was undertaken. Once the two hen houses were taken to bits and cleaned so they didn’t smell of fox and re-assembled in said pens it was time to get the girls into the pens. Now I thought this may be a little tricky as they were all huddled up under the bushes frightened to death. However, as I opened the door to the conservatory, I had to stand aside as I nearly got run down by hens making a run for safety (bless them!). So close that door quick and open door other side and with a bit of corn bingo all hens installed in the pen. They seemed much happier and started to walk around so hopefully they will get over the trauma of the fox a bit quicker now.  The only slight problem of this little arrangement is that they do pop their heads through the dog flap every now and then and seem quite fascinated by the dogs and cats coming and going. They actually get on with the dogs fine and even boss Toby my big black lab around much to his embarrassment.

So, as you can see there was not a lot of time left for the website yesterday after all the moving and then of course the normal rounds of feeding, walking (dogs and pony) and then us. Anyway, will try and get more done over the next few days.