It really is summer

Yesterday evening I spent some more time working on the run. I had forked the whole run over a few days earlier but there were lots of hard clods of earth. The big girls, especially Bluebell, have big strong feet and legs. Bluebell is our digger! She loves to dig huge holes and flings clods of earth everywhere. The bantys have tiny legs for their body size. When they try to dig, they merely scratch the surface.

With their tiny legs the bantys stumble around. The clods of earth are enough to make them stumble as if they are drunk. I went over the whole run breaking up the clods with a fork. I then went back over it again with a hand fork to try to make the soil finer. I then sprinkled in some rose petals for the girls.

Rose petals for the girls

The girls love rose petals

It’s been a really good year for the roses in our garden this summer and there are plenty of falling petals to give the girls.

This morning the weather forecast is saying that this heat wave is going to last for a month, so I decided it was time to take off the plastic sheet from the garden corner of the run. My husband removed the batons holding it in place and we took the sheet down. We plan to redo it in winter but will put it back on from the inside. This will be easier to do and will make the run look neater from the outside.

My next job was to prune the apple tree in the run. Not only do I like to keep it below the top of the run but every year the top part of the tree gets covered in black fly and the leaves curl up looking unpleasant. I don’t use any sprays near the girls so each year I prune off the top infected part of the tree. The tree looks much better for it.

The plastic roof sheet is off and the apple tree is pruned

The corner that we have uncovered is the left hand corner behind the apple tree. The run looks empty but that’s because the girls are all in the shade of the big hypercum bush.

This morning Pepper was shouting and strutting around like crazy and even when I went in to her I couldn’t calm her down. Bluebell and Dotty were in the nest box getting their eggs laid and I thought it was because they were in there that she was making such a fuss.

She kept going to the coop door then to the little coop. I wondered if it was because the little coop was too hot and got a piece of wood to put under the lift up lid to allow more air flow. That was when I realized what the problem was. I had shut the ramp to the little coop last night while I swept up around it and had forgotten to open it again.

I opened the ramp and she went straight in and laid her egg. I felt so bad that I had been telling her off for shouting. She is so stubborn and clearly wanted to get into her usual place to lay her egg. After all three big girls had laid their egg, all was quiet again.