Chickens Let Loose

Sunday 5th August 2012
Thunder, lightning and torrential downpours again today??

A couple of months ago I tried feeding slugs to the chooks and they turned their noses up at them. So it was with some surprise that yesterday, when I accidently left the chicken pen door open for a couple of minutes, I found Cocky and his harem outside greedily plucking the slugs from the swathes of white clover.

Kill or Cure
This set my mind thinking. The Three (now Two) Sisters are growing well and, now that I have cleared the potatoes (not to mention the waist high jungle of sow thistles), I can just make out lines of struggling, nibbled beans and even a few pathetic little beetroot seedlings. If I leave things as they are, this is precisely how things will stay, as the poor little plants just can't make it past the munching attacks this year.
So a decision was made. Let the chickens in. The worst they could do would be to scratch and peck a few plants out, but without their help there'd be no harvest anyway. Besides, a bit of extra freedom and protein might up the egg production again.









The chickens, and the guineafowl, set to work immediately. What a shame they can be so destructive with their earth scratching and penchant for fresh green leaves.

Hopefully Lady Guinea will soon produce a troupe of insect munching (OK, slugs are not actually insects) baby fowl.










But this incident has made my mind up about something else. I definitely need some ducks to help out. Anybody know where to get some Cayugas?



On another positive note, I did find two toads while I was weeding today. Not quite enough to eat all the slugs, but a start.