This morning when I let Bertie and Ping Pong out of their run, there was a difference in their behaviour.
Every morning for the past few weeks - every morning - when they've been let out, they go haring around their area, and then Bertie 'attacks' each Girl. Peace is restored quickly. During the day, Bertie pushes himself forward to get first dibs on anything edible, and has not shown any courtesy towards the Girls.
This is perfectly normal. He's a young, inexperienced, lad. The Girls aren't yet in lay and are of no interest to him so he hasn't shown them any courtesy.
This morning, for the first time ever, he warbled and called the Girls over to investigate a tasty morsel he'd found!
It was very appropriate that he should do that today, because today they were moving. It made me smile, it made me happy to see his behaviour improve, and it made me sad that I won't be seeing it from my kitchen window any more.
After breakfast, we got everything (apart from the chooks) packed into the car. Their feeder, veggies for them and veggies for the allotmenteers. I'd already brought in the carrying boxes from the car. I went out and managed to catch Bertie easily, which surprised both him and me. I popped him in the cat carrier, and he proceeded to crow and call and be a bit of a nuisance.
The Girls were going in a box together and, because of the way the lid works, we needed to put them both in at the same time. So, I caught each girl in turn and popped them in the Eglu, with the pop hole closed. Then DH and I picked up one each, and popped them in the box.
At the allotment, we put them straight in their Cube, with the pop hole closed. All this had been prepared 2 days ago. We did other jobs, like mucjing out the Allotmenteers, filling up the feeders, hanging up the Veg for the Trio. Then we let them out.
Bertie was straight out and in the feeder. Ping came out quickly and looked a little shell shocked. Pong took longer to come out. We continued with our jobs while they explored their new space. Teh exiating Allotmenteers were interested to see they had new neighbours, and there was a lot of noise going on.
When all was done, we locked up and left them to it. They were scratching around the area when we left, and seemed happy enough.
We'll go back this evening to make sure they got to bed OK.
I'm not sure how long it will be before we let them join the Big Girls. Maybe a couple of days, maybe a few weeks. We'll see how it goes.
Before we left, we caught Camilla to bring her home. She's got a nasty case of Bumblefoot. And then after a discussion, we caught Siouxsie as well. Camilla is bottom of the pecking order, and I think Siouxsie is not far behind. Siouxsie and Camilla both keep a little apart from the others; not exactly together, but I didn't want Siouxsie being apart on her own. It was a tough call as Siouxsie is 8 years and some months old, and I was concerned about the shock the change might cause.
