We are so proud of our lovely hens - we've had at least 1 egg every day since they arrived just under two weeks ago. This morning they eggcelled themselves, producing 4 eggs between them- that's an egg each, peak production!Here they are (see above) getting down and dirty, dust bathing at the end of the patio during their afternoon free-range. Chicken House Mark 2 is coming along slowly, mainly because there's so much else to do, and we keep redesigning it! Such is life.
If only we could let the hens free-range in the house - not an option, obviously too messy! Rather large arachnids regularly appear and we've observed that the chooks quite like to nibble on a spider - they've been known to fight furiously over them. But then the spiders catch the flies, so the spiders do a good job - if only we could stand having spiders around!Tam and I are both getting a bit braver at dealing with the medium sized spiders (like these Huntsmen). We'll catch them and redistribute them to the far reaches of the garden, because we simply can't cope with them wondering around the house and appearing here, there and everywhere.
However, it's the really big spiders that freak us out - that's when we get Tam's industrial vacuum cleaner out and hope they don't run too fast.
Ho hum, life and death
in the Aussie bush.
How could you fail to love those hens. I'm so pleased you have them with you and hooray for home laid eggs I say!
ReplyDeleteI'm better with large spiders too these days although again, ours are only large on a north European scale, not aussie massif!
Lots of love as always
Tiss here: How about harvesting your second type of first class protein (spiders), start brewing/distilling and create your own ozzie version of 3 snake wine! Having perfected this you could then move on to a rodent version. Would work wonders for your pest life!!
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