They don’t like the strimmer and we have a tiny master digger

Yesterday our next door neighbours had a gardener in. They have a lot of trees and large shrubs in their garden and once a year they have a gardener with a strimmer come in and cut everything back to a manageable size.

The girls didn’t like the noise of the strimmer at all.

The main flock are almost all in here

Except Peaches who is about to lay her egg

And these three are here

They obviously think of the chicken shed as a place of safety. As soon as the strimming was finished the whole flock returned to the run.

After lunch I decided to separate the three amigos to the patio area for a bit of respite time. I directed them towards the patio and they ate from the dish of mash as if they were starving. Then we had another break through moment. They finally found the big water dish and drank and drank as if they were really thirsty.

It does worry me that without a bit of time away from the rest of the flock they aren’t getting enough food and water. I wonder if they would eventually venture to the patio.

Once they had had their fill Cinnamon starting digging a dust bath hole. She dug and dug and dug! The other two girls joined her and started to dust bath near her hole but she continued to dig and dig.

The black strip around Cinnamon’s beak is due to her long session at the water followed by straight to digging in the dust.

Got to make a deep hole

It’s getting deeper

It’s not quite ready yet

Going down

Got to get it a bit deeper

It’s not quite deep enough yet

It’s just right now

Three happy dust bathing girls

Without a bit of separation time these three wouldn’t be able to have this lovely dust bath session especially as Cinnamon needs a lot of digging time. She was first to start digging and then Apricot wandered over and started dust bathing. Then Dandelion joined them and started dust bathing. Cinnamon still had more digging to do. It was quite a while before she settled to dust bathing.

I have never seen such a tiny girl do so much digging. It’s a good job our run is really secure because with her tiny size and her digging ability she would be out otherwise. I waited until the dust bathing session was finished before mixing the girls once more.

I will continue to give these three a bit of separation time each day until their confidence grows.

We went out to check on them after dinner, at half past seven, and all the girls were in. This time Apricot was on the highest perch and Dandelion and Cinnamon were together on the middle perch.

Bedtime

What clever girls

We have definitely got the bedtime routine sorted. I am chuffed with this.