Feeling more positve

Yesterday evening while in with the chickens, hearing a rat gnawing at wood outside was a bit like something out of a horror film. Today though I am feeling more positive. They can’t get in to the chickens now that we have blocked them with concrete and even if they try to chew through the wooden fence it will take time. So the next plan of action is to put poison in the shed, then unblock the hole to the shed and let them go in and take it. We will try to get rid of them as I feel that if we get rid of them and new rats come along in the future, they probably wouldn’t go to such great lengths to get in when there is no food being left out. We think the rats currently here are so determined because they were getting in and getting food in the past.

This morning when I let the girls out, Bluebell had already laid her egg. Pepper soon followed then Treacle. After the stressful day yesterday, which was a no egg day, today we have a three egg day!

We lifted the plastic cover from the concrete and found it wasn’t fully set yet, so we decided to leave it covered until tomorrow and I will take photos then.

The problem now is that the girls won’t go out into the snow so have confined themselves to the patio. It was quite dark on the patio because of the snow on the corrugated roof, so my husband used the step ladder and a broom to remove as much as he could reach.

I cleared a path through the snow and cleared the area under the umbrella but the girls were still not interested. I threw a few dried meal worms out and they ran out and cleared them up then returned to the patio. This means I have to keep poop picking the patio as it gets messy with them spending the whole day there. We have more snow forecast tomorrow and another week of freezing temperatures so I worry that if the snow doesn’t clear the girls are going to just stay on the patio.

In the afternoon I threw some sunflower seeds out into the garden area to encourage them out and grabbed my camera.