It was an exciting week for the older chickens: once Jenn removed the potatoes and onions from the veggie garden, I was able to let the chickens in to help us clear out the remaining plants.

The newer chickens don’t get to participate yet, as I’m waiting for them all to start laying (so far only one is). But they have a large run for the four of them, and get daily treat deliveries, so I don’t feel too bad.

Here’s me opening the hole in fence:

Here’s the hole, and chickens heading into the veggie garden:

Molting Merida — she is looking rather scruffy at present, as are several others. But don’t worry, it’s a normal part of their yearly cycle, discarding old feathers and growing new ones. The worst part is they stop laying while going through that; we’re only getting zero or one egg per day from all of the old chickens at present:

Looking from the veggie garden back to the chicken run, and chickens heading into the garden:

The chickens headed straight for the salad bar:

A wide angle view of the veggie garden:

An empty chicken run; everyone’s in the veggie garden:

Every day when I do my morning rounds, the chickens come to the corner of the veggie garden to greet me:

Let’s take a look at the ducks:

Gert shaking her head:

The ducks again:

On the bank by the duck house:

I mentioned in my previous post that I waded in the pond to clean and start the fountain pump. Here are a few more pictures of the ducks from inside the pond:

Duck butts!

This picture was in that previous post, but I thought I’d include it here too:

This morning, a heron landed on the duck house:

(I happened to be looking at that camera at the time, and headed out to the pond to get a better picture, but it saw me coming and flew off.)