Nov 20

2015

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Life on the Farm: The Chickens’ New Stomping Ground

IMG_1092After three and a half years of moving the chickens around the farmyard, we may have finally found the best place for them. We first had the romantic notion that they should roam free (still shutting them away at night of course). Part of that idea was great – it meant that we had the rooster – surrounded by various ladies – showing up at our kitchen window at 7am on the dot each morning to say hello as we were making our coffee. We knew them all and we really enjoyed them. But between the fox look for food to give her young and some not so chicken-friendly dogs passing by on the footpath, we lost hen after hen and occasionally the rooster as well. We went through about 2 dozen hens and three roosters before deciding that it was cruel to continue in this way.IMG_1121 (1)

Then we moved them to an old abandoned chicken run just behind the farmyard. They were safe there – and boy did the hens produce a LOT of eggs – but we never saw them. We had no relationship with them whatsoever. Besides the pleasure of having fresh eggs, it was if we didn’t even have chickens anymore. And that felt sad to us. ..

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May 28

2014

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Life on the Farm: Cock-a-Doodle-Boo-Hoo

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As I’ve often told you, there is no shortage of heartbreak on the farm to balance out the intense joy and deep sense of happiness we often feel from sharing our lives with so many wonderful animals. Sometimes I look out my kitchen window while I’m making tea in the morning and see a cat or two, a dog or two, a pony or two, a handful of hens and/or the occasional lamb or pig escaped from their enclosure. I can also usually hear a combination of calls from the horses, the donkeys and the rooster. Often the whole scene makes me laugh out loud, but other times it makes my throat tighten up and my chest hurt. We came back from our Easter vacation to the news that our three hens – the only remaining three that is – had been eaten by the fox while we were away. It was particularly sad because we had raised those last three from birth and they had just started laying a week before we left. After giving ourselves a week to mourn them, we decided to start again and went to see Mabel at the local bird sanctuary to collect a new rooster and ten hens. ..

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May 15

2013

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Life on the Farm: Kaiser and Bang Bang

For all the animal joy that exists on the farm in every direction that you look – chickens, kittens and dogs on the lawn, pigs and horses in the stables, donkeys and more horses across the field – there is, unfortunately, also a good dose of animal heartache.

Late in the autumn, Coco lost one of her beloved pigs suddenly and without explanation. The twin Gloucestershire Old Spots had been her 10th birthday present the summer before last, and she fed them and cared for them all that first summer...

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