Welcome to Fort Fowl

After the tragic demise of our first batch of poultry over 16 months ago, we finally got more chooks last week (all ISA Browns).

I was adamant I didn't want any more chooks until the last chookyard was pulled down and completely rebuilt.  To get more birds and leave them in an unsecure yard where they are bait for foxes would not be fair to them.  So last August, Duncan's dad started building a fowl fortress where no fox would ever get in and no chook would ever get out.  He came up again in September and finished the job.

It really is a wonderful house for our hens.  There are six new girls (three older ones and three pullets), and we plan to get another rooster soon too.

All the same, I do worry about them constantly.  I don't want to ever go back and find the same grizzly sight I found in December 2008.  I've told Maya, "On guard!"  I still feel like I failed the last lot by putting them in that horrible old yard with the wire lifting up at the bottom.  I won't fail this batch of feathered friends.

Allow me to intoduce:

The three old girls

• Winnie (in honour of my mother-in law) :)
• Mildred
• Eglantine (after the main character in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, which is one of my favourite childhood movies...also that it's got the 'egg' bit at the front).

The three young girls

• Maple
• Reebok (as in Ree- bok bok bok...the shoes that chickens wear)
• Princess Layer

These hens are a lot more camera shy than our last lot, but here are some photos of them settling in to their new house.  The older girls are moulting at the moment so they don't look very attractive.

The nesting area.

Two of the pullets...hiding.

Eglantine