A mucky business

 

Moving the ducks so we could demolish the old duck run on Thursday turned out to be a very mucky activity! I hope I don't have to do that again in the near future.

Buffs in the new duck run

 

When we built the new duck run last week, the first birds to go into it were not ducks! Instead, we moved the Buff Orpington chickens in. We will be breeding them in the spring so they will remain in the new run when we move the ducks back out into the even newer duck run we are building where the old one stood.

Starting to demolish the duck run

 

Yesterday we made a start with demolishing the old duck run. The roofing net was removed and we also drained the pond. All that is left in the pond now is the silt (see below). The initial plan was to build a new duck run on the same footprint as the old one but we are considering building a bigger one instead. If, as is likely, DEFRA each winter orders a poultry lockdown because of avian flu, it is better for the ducks to have the extra space.

The pond will need to be fully cleaned out before we start building the new run. The silt is destined for the rhubarb beds. It will be an excellent fertiliser.

A dirty afternoon

 

We are planning to demolish our old duck run so we had to move the 26 ducks in it today to a new run. It turned out to be a very messy afternoon.

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How we recycled your Christmas trees

 

At the start of January we asked people to give us their Christmas trees to feed to our goats. We ended up with 130, far more than we needed for the goats. So we shredded the branches to make a mulch for the Whinnies Community Garden and the chicken runs. The trunks will be chopped up, dried and used as firewood. Nothing wasted.