Chicken Update

Everyone is asking about the chickens it seems, so here is a post just for them. They are holding up okay in the heat. We've been putting in liters of pop with water frozen solid in the chicken tractor, hoping they will lay against them like rabbits do to keep them cool. We haven't had them out as much as I would like because of recent fox sightings. Last Saturday I went down at noon the collect the eggs to see one of the juvenile foxes now on his own, sitting bold as brass in the middle of the orchard not twenty feet away from the chicken tractor. Now that father fox isn't feeding pups in a den, a nuisance permit may be in order, but I am still hoping for co-habitation of foxes and chickens.

The grapes are still the chickens favorite place to be, with a close second being our dirt/compost pile. We haven't had the chickens in the grapes for the last few days as Andrew had to spray some fungicide, and I hope they can get their fill of grapes before the ripen, cause then they will be banned until Andrew harvests the grapes. This week there was and ENORMOUS egg in the nest box, I mean freakishly huge. We were surprised one of the chickens wasn't limping. And yes, it was a double yolk-er!

After a long night of watering trees and the garden, I often find myself having a late night dinner of an egg sandwich, some of that aged cheddar I can actually eat and now with a fresh tomato from the raised bed!