My chickens think that everything we do is for their benefit. We walk out the back door, and they run over, hoping for a treat. We work in the garden, and they hover nearby, hoping for a handout.
Recently, I spread some compost in my garden, and the girls were in heaven. I was using the compost from my worm bin, and a good number of red worms were still crawling through it. The girls aren’t welcome in the garden most of the time, but that doesn’t mean they don’t hop up there anyways. This time, when they hopped over the fence, I let them do their thing. Which means they scratched, and pecked and basically did most of the work of spreading the compost for me. It was great.
Eventually, I had to pick the ladies up and move them into their coop. (They were refusing to stay away from my artichokes, and my makeshift barrier was not working.) When I picked up the first girl, I thought something was wrong. I set her back down and felt around, only to realize nothing was wrong. It was just her crop, so full of worms and other goodies that she felt like she had a little tennis ball under her skin. If she was a human, she would have had to loosen her belt.
Since then we’ve changed the fencing on the garden. The strawberries and artichokes are protected, but the hens can get everywhere else. They’re happy to scratch around, eat the bugs and help fertilize the soil for me. Also? They give me eggs nearly every day. I think they’re earning their keep.
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