We recently put down two bags of wood chip to try to keep the mud down. We put wood chip in the raised garden box at the end of the patio but soon found this was mistake as the girls scratched and walked wood chip all over the patio area, giving me even more mess to clean up. I decided to scoop up as much of the wood chip out of the box as I could and throw it onto the garden area. I then forked in the rest.
The wood chip in the garden area is working quite well at keeping the mud down. During the recent constant rain there have been no more puddles forming and my boots don’t get so clogged up.
I had a good clean down of the patio area with water, my rubber broom and my rubber squeegee on Christmas Eve, so that it’s nice and clean for the girl’s at Christmas.
Christmas Day, I found that they had walked the mud from the box all over the patio again and had really muddy feet. I was trying to add drier soil to the box and compact it to stop it being so muddy when suddenly I had another of my light bulb moments. I realised that if the box of soil/mud was the cause of mud constantly being walked over the patio, then what I needed to do was to cover the box with something to stop the girls walking through the mud.
We had some spare patio slabs so I decided that I would set to work on it on Boxing Day.
On Boxing Day I cleaned the patio down again then put the three slabs over the box. For the remaining smaller gap I found a smaller slab and brick from another part of the garden.
The box of soil is now covered with paving slabs
The girls take a drink
I am really pleased with this simple improvement as when I went back later the patio area had stayed much cleaner and the girls feet were not so clogged with mud. When I clean down the patio area I can lift the slabs to get rid of the water. Luckily the run slopes downwards so although I have had a problem with the mud at least it doesn’t ever flood.
Today was also the second three egg day with Pepper laying at first light, Bluebell laying mid morning and Treacle laying at lunch time. Treacle’s egg was a surprise egg. It was much paler than her usual eggs with a spot of pigment on one end.
Treacle’s latest egg on the bottom right of the egg box
Treacle’s usual colour of egg is top centre of the egg box. Pepper’s pale pinkish brown is in the bottom middle with Bluebell’s bottom left. I have read that the pigment goes on last when the egg is laid and if it is held here longer it can have more pigment added and if it is rushed past it can have less pigment added. I can only assume this one rushed past. It is adorable!
Click here to see the history of my flock.
My chickens always used to surprise me with their eggs. I had big ones, small ones, skinny ones, fat ones, pale ones, dark ones, patchy ones, lumpy ones, eggs with a thin shell that broke easily, eggs with a thick shell where I thought the bowl would break when I cracked them against it, eggs with no shell at all, and every now and then I even got a normal one! It makes you wonder how many eggs get thrown away on the farms where they produce eggs for the supermarkets…
Oddly enough our eggs have been very consistent until this one, but it’s as if to pay us back for being so perfect we had the taste problem instead. They have increased in size though and the colour varies slightly. The shells are really hard, I know what you mean when you say they could break the bowl. Sometimes it’s difficult to crack them without leaving a bit of shell, which when it’s Bluebell’s blue shell, can be a bit disconcerting.
There’s something very off putting about blue coloured things in food, probably due to the fact that none of the foods we naturally eat are blue.
I remember once when I was little we made eggy bread and put blue food colouring in it, and we all said it was disgusting. I think your brain looks at the colour and says “this isn’t food” and it actually affects how you perceive the taste. I guess blue things are usually mouldy!
You are so right. I know the blue fleck is only a bit of egg shell and yet because it’s blue my brain is saying it’s mould or something not nice even though I know for certain it’s just shell.