A visit from Mr Fox

We were woken this morning at about 5.45 to the sound of squawks coming from the chickens. As the weather is nice at the moment, I've been leaving their pophole open so they can enjoy the early morning, but this morning the fox came to visit. He was sitting on top of the run part of their house, and the chickens clearly do not like this! We chased him off, but Speckeldy Selina was now into squawking mode, which was rather embarassing, as at least one of neighbours had their downstairs lights on(!). Woops. We stayed in the garden with them for a while, till they calmed down, and Graham did some very early morning weeding. It reminded me of that episode of The Good Life when Margot and Jerry shout at Tom and Barbara for the noise they are making. They were revving the rotary cultivator though, not just a few chicken squawks.

I think I am going to have to shut them in overnight - it's not really fair to wake the whole street up at 5.45. And the mornings will be getting darker soon anyway.

I've also wormed them all - I got some Flubenvet from The Domestic Fowl Trust, where Speckeldy Selina and Ginger came from. The instructions said to add 120g of powder to 100kg of food. So last night I was painstakingly weighing out 2.5g to put into 2kg of food, using a Calpol medicine spoon! I hope this might perk up Honey and Dopey. I've also ordered some delousing powder and red mite powder, to put into their dustbath. Ginger and Speckeldy are laying pretty well now, but I'd like to get back up to full capacity!