Honest to god, I've been dead excited about this garden project. For some reason, the thought of chickens having a tunnel to cross one part of the yard to another was super exciting for me.

Poor Jamie though - the amount of times that he's had to build me a coop for the chooks. He tends to (jokingly) call them 'your fkn chooks' although he appreciates scrambled eggs and my love for me. Me, I can't imagine a yard without them. They keep bugs in check, eat kitchen waste, and provide fertiliser, plus, it stops me buying eggs from miserable chickens at the super market.

This image might explain the where a little better - the white arrow is the tunnel, and the yellow arrow is the main coop. The tunnel transports them to the area behind the shed, when we open it. There's sun there in the afternoon they love to bath in, and it gives them something to do without destroying the main garden.

The tunnel also uses up some dead space behind some trees, without taking up too much room. Whilst we've seen some made of looped over chicken wire, we decided to make it out of stronger reinforcing mesh used for concreting. It rusts, so it looks nice rather than shiny galvanised mesh, and you can't even really notice it in the garden.

Of course the little pullets walked straight through it, so we put a row of mesh we had for the guttering which didn't work. We'll take that off once they fatten up. We think one is a rooster actually so we may need to swap him - he's been croaking in the morning, dammit. The two - which we call the twins - are still small and look identical, so I'm struggling to figure out which one will go in the pie.

They do seem rather happy, by their a'clucking. Once you've had chooks, you start to learn their sounds - the 'get off my nest, it's my spot' sound, the 'there's a magpie bothering me' sound, the 'I'm very happy here' sound.

It's not me imagining things. Check out this via Chatty:

Cluck – General communication; contentment.
Purr/Trill – Happy, relaxed, often from mother hens.
Alarm call (aerial) – Warning about hawks or predators in the sky.
Alarm call (ground) – Warning about ground predators.
Food call (“tuk-tuk-tuk”) – “I found food!”
Egg song – Loud cackling after laying an egg.
Distress call – When frightened or separated.
Rooster crow – Territory marking and announcing presence.
Submission call – Used in social hierarchy situations.
Broody growl – When a hen is protecting eggs.

If you're attentive enough to animals you find their intelligence is far more sophisticated than the 'dumb chicken' stereotype we assign them. The above is just a guide - there's different clucks for different ground predators, or aerial predators, annoyance, calming chicks, and so on.

I bet theres a noise for 'we love this chicken tunnel'.

With Love,

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