The trouble with chooks ......

.... I have decided, is that they are Creatures of Mass Destruction. For those who don't have any, oh yes, you'd better believe it, and for those who do have chooks, well, this is old news.

But to illustrate my point, here are a few photos I took this afternoon.

This was once our 'lawn' .......

Note the distinct lack of green-ness to it? Yes, we live in drought and I have never actually watered any part of my garden, but in 11 years we have been here it has always been green due to moderate rainfall in our area, and the trees we have lining both sides of our yard and 10 or so in the middle creating lovely shade in the heat of summer. (I'm not a huge lawn fan, but we're planning on selling when we finally build our dream home, and not sure anyone else wants the farmyard-look!)

OK, still not convinced it's the chookies? Well take a look at this ..... on the weekend I raked up huge amounts of leaf litter and general garden rubbish and piled it all up on one side to use later as mulch. Within 2 days, my darling chooks had redistributed it for me.

Here they are at work......

Australorps Emily and Lady with legs a-blur, and Ruby-Lou digging for bugs....

So, what's the solution?

Well keeping them in their ark (see top photo) without a decent run seems unfair, especially since I wanted free-ranging hens. As it is, they only free-range in the afternoons because we also have a dog, so he has to be tied up during their turn of the garden. Not good for anyone, and a situation I haven't been happy with for a long time.

So last weekend we decided to section off part of the yard to use for the chooks, allowing all animals more freedom, and hopefully get some green back into the garden by Spring.

It is taking longer than I expected as general life-stuff means we can only do bits here and there, but here's a sneak preview .....

Using lots of this ....

a handful of these ......

an old gate ......

and a whole lot of this!

Hopefully we will get it finished this weekend, and all will be good again.



Watch this space!