Darcy and Dave
Jus chillin
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A chance to do a spot of gardening whilst my hens sunbathe in the wild part of the garden. They have been elevated to pet status as they are no longer laying.
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Photo has great contrast it’s also great to see chickens rooming free. As from 2024 all chickens here have to be free range.
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That’s a great decision … we’ve some way to go on that. Due to bird flu last year many organic / free range enterprises went out of business, to such an extent eggs were being imported from Italy and Poland where standards were much lower.
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Farmers are overly excited but the public are on board, so no more birds stuck on a purch unable to move.
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On my Facebook page there was someone letting out hundreds of hens , I tapped on where from and it was Australia
Well done Australia !!!
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I don’t know what your standards are like, but here if you looked at the conditions a typical ‘free range’ hen has to endure, most people would think it was a battery farm as they are still in very cramped conditions. If you have to buy eggs from a supermarket, organic certification requires higher welfare standards than free range.
I’m in a fortunate position where we can buy eggs from friends, or from a small farm run as a permaculture project where hens wander around in the woods all day, otherwise I just wouldn’t buy them at all.
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I do enjoy your pics of Zhukov, he reminds me of our now passed Border Collies and what amazing dogs Borders are.
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I’m not sure about standards but I do know it’s a step in the right direction. We have a lot of large production farms around us and they’re busy installing fox proof fences around their properties.
Every improvement has to help, next target is live exports of cattle and sheep. Apart from the appalling conditions they endure at sea we have no control over what happens when they arrive often in a country’s with little or no standards.
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Poor Mog, the semi feral cat myself & a neighbour have been looking after for years had to go for the big snooze today sadly, she was about 16 we think. She had become very poorly recently and generally hadn’t been too well for the past year or more. RIP Mog, you’ll be missed 
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Sorry to hear Hollow. She may not have been “yours” but I bet it still hits hard. They do leave a hole
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Daughter 1 (and partner) in Plymouth had a visiting kitty called Moog, from a short ways down the street. Dau1 and the owners were in “txt” contact and the latter were happy for Moog to visit (kitty toys would be transferred from one household to the other), but sadly Moog came into contact with a motor vehicle last week. Daughter and partner, and owners, all very upset.
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Sorry to read that.
Is it difficult to “train” a cat to be house bound?
You can easily train a cat to do anything it wants to do. Training it to do things it doesn’t want to do is where it becomes problematic.
Cats visiting neighbours is very common, I have had several cats visit me over the years.
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Sorry to hear that, it also seems wrong to use the like button, on sad news, thinking of you all.
All nine have been indoor cats, coming to us either as kittens or rehomes, so we’ve never tried to switch an outdoor cat to indoors.
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