New Chickens!

I came back home with 5 new little egg laying machines in the back of the car, these were in the form of 5 point of lay pullets. We purchased 3 Speckledy and 2 Blue Rangers (all hybrids), although they all look very dark in colour, a little like 5 chicken Ninjas.

We clipped their wings straight away (Claire is getting over her fear of birds as I'm forcing her to! she had to do the cutting of the feathers without stabbing me everytime they move) and let them play in the pen for a bit before I caught them and put them to bed. This is the down side to having a raised coop, although they should get used to it fairly soon and put themselves to bed.

I think at the weekend I'm going to make a few things in the pen to keep them entertained as I don't want any problems with feather pecking or boredom (although my others were fine).

What a difference a drop of rain makes

Now we can't even walk across the allotment. It's gone from rock hard soil to the stickiest mud in the world, when Claire walked across the plot she was 6 inches taller by the time she got to the other side! The ground just holds water, I'm sure it will be better once I've added some muck and soil improver but the gooseberry bush I planted last weekend has sunk! Everything else is look quite good though and the broad beans are running away!

We managed to get all the posts in and some grass seed down on the paths but it was just too sticky to do anything else. Back at home I planted my sweetcorn in toilet tubes, I plan to grow loads with my squashes so there should be some left over for our new chicken (I didn't want to make too much noise about it but our old chickens have gone to a "better" place to make way for some that will lay eggs. we have 5 POL being picked up tomorrow).

In preparation for the summer on the allotment I've brought an old ball bearing lawn mower to mow the paths (£10) as well as starting to collect tools at car boots (also brought a drip watering system for £4 today to water the greenhouse at home, I love car boots!).