September in the Chicken Coop

This month in the chicken coop the hens have been....

...enjoying windfall apples by the beak-full. They love anything sweet and have been delighted this month to find such large quantities of treats just landing at their feet. I'm not sure how many apples they got through, but it certainly inspired us to go and pick all the ripe fruit every few days!

...moulting. I know I said Fizzy was last month, but she's made a pretty poor show of it compared to Pepper who has been looking decidedly scruffy for the last few weeks.

Refusing to pose for photos!

...dodging the neighbourhood pets. We were eating breakfast in the conservatory last week and there was a sudden kerfuffle outside. Often this is just a case of someone reasserting the pecking order, but to our horror we saw our hens scattering in all directions as a cat made an attempt to grab one. The hens were far too quick, and Joe soon saw off the cat, but this is the first time we've seen a cat brave enough to do this - normally they steer well clear of them as our larger hens can be quite assertive.

Until now our garden has seemed remarkably predator free, leaving us with a rather blasé approach to our hens security, but time has come to reassess. They won't like it, but I think we'll be going back to only giving them freedom of the garden while we're at home to keep an eye on things. We'll just have to put up with their indignant clucks!