As the weather warmed up in April, I decided that it was warm enough for the chicken coop door to be left open at night. The chickens were free to go to bed when they thought it was getting dark enough and get up as early as they pleased, giving me and Hubby a chance to have a lie-in. It worked marvelously and I loved waking up to the sound of the chickens having their breakfast and softly chatting away under the bedroom window.
It all changed one day about a month ago when my neighbour knocked on our door and told me they had seen a fox in one of the other neighbour's gardens. I had a bit of a panic and decided there and then to start locking the coop door again at night. I'm quite happy knowing that the girls will be safe if the coop door is closed properly, but I wouldn't be able to sleep a wink if I knew there was only the mesh run (although advertised as 'fox-resistant', I'm not looking forward to putting it to the test) between the chickens and the fox. The garden is dog-proofed to make sure that Hound can be left out unsupervised, but as you can see from the clip, it doesn't take much for a fox to get in. Although I haven't heard of any more sightings of Mr. Fox, I'm still locking the coop at night, just to be on the safe side.
The weekend lie-ins are over. Now I wake up to loud complaints coming from the coop if I'm not up at seven.
We've always locked ours up at night. The trouble we find is getting them into the coop early on summer nights if we're going somewhere :) Our first lot never wanted to go to bed in the summer months and we often had to coax them in, our second lot seem to go in earlier.
We've always locked ours up at night. The trouble we find is getting them into the coop early on summer nights if we're going somewhere :)
ReplyDeleteOur first lot never wanted to go to bed in the summer months and we often had to coax them in, our second lot seem to go in earlier.
They get let out at 6am in summer ;)