Floods

[Looking for help]

Thanks ourmam. Still raining steadily, but my people are home, and we have lit a fire, and given the hens porridge with sardines in as a special treat.

Glad you're ok, but aren't hens vegetarians

[Amber]

Thanks ourmam. Still raining steadily, but my people are home, and we have lit a fire, and given the hens porridge with sardines in as a special treat.

Glad you're ok, but aren't hens vegetarians

Goodness no! Favourite food = worms. Second favourite = any kind of meaty or fishy leftover (we never give them chicken, but everything else goes). There have been reports of them eating mice, and ours love earwigs and spiders, little buggy things etc. And grapes. Nothing is ever wasted when you keep chickens. Except chicken, which tbh I can't really eat now.

[Marylou]

Glad you're ok, but aren't hens vegetarians

Perhaps Amber's hens are the sort of vegetarians that only eat fish. Ours eat anything and everything, and if you give them bacon or pork fat you would think it was the first food they had seen in weeks...

Edited to add - agree with you Amber about chicken - it doesn't seem right somehow. Spaghetti a particular favourite, probably because it looks like worms. We still eat chicken though, but try not to make the association.

[Amber]

Yeah I love the way they eat spaghetti, sort of dash around with it hanging out of their beaks while the others chase them to get a bite, even if there is a bowlful of the stuff there.

They don't like floods much though. Think they might get trench foot soon.

[Marylou]

Yeah I love the way they eat spaghetti, sort of dash around with it hanging out of their beaks while the others chase them to get a bite, even if there is a bowlful of the stuff there.

Their behaviour reminds me of toddlers. The best game though is chicken rugby - hilarious to watch them running around with a grape desperately trying to find somewhere to put it down and eat it, but as soon as they do someone else has it away and they're all off again.

Think they might get trench foot soon.

Ours are well and truly fed up with the mud - their coop is like a quagmire. They spend quite a lot of time sitting on top of their house and on a few logs scattered around their enclosure. Really hoping for a bit of dry weather soon.

[um]

Dh was stuck in a stationary train for 2 hours due to floods near Gloucester, leaving me in a childcare pickle this evening .
I did say that had he known his nursery rhymes this wouldn't have happened (unfortunately he doesn't know them).

Dr Foster went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain
He stepped in a puddle
Right up to his middle
And never went there again.

A traditional and timely warning to all of us

[Waiting_For_Godot]

I'm going to have to face the M6 tomorrow - any issues?

[Looking for help]

You learn something every day.

WFG -I'd be surprised (having been up and down the M6 many many times )if there was an issue with flooding,

Go for it

[hermanmunster]

Seems to me that all the excess water in the north of england is clearing away pretty quickly - something to do with all the hills... am sure the M6 will be OK tomorrow.

[Amber]

Ours are well and truly fed up with the mud - their coop is like a quagmire. They spend quite a lot of time sitting on top of their house and on a few logs scattered around their enclosure. Really hoping for a bit of dry weather soon.

We are lucky enough to have enough space to move their enclosure around regularly to different bits of the garden, so it doesn't usually get muddy. But as said garden is now pretty much a paddy field, it reduces the scope a bit. We do let them dust bath in the greenhouse in this weather though, and we fill the kids' old sandpit with dry soil for them too.

For some reason I have just put my washing out, though I can clearly see that the lane of blue currently hovering above my house is closely followed by tumultuous black cloud. I think this is the definition of 'a triumph of hope over experience'. My kids are busy making ironically illustrated power points to the backing music of 'Summer holiday' which, along with the sewage-laden flood water coursing along the road, keeps them off the streets.