Yesterday was a special day for our chickens – George, Charlotte, Anne and Bess (named after king and queens) – their exchanged their hill billy shack for a hill billy house.

It arrived on the back of Al’s truck designed and prefabricated for swift installation in wind and rain. It was truly unpleasant weather to work in but before too long our chook house was built off the pen complete with easy access to the nesting boxes for egg collection.

Throughout the entired process the chickens were totally unconcerned and made themselves at home in their new pad pretty quickly. The only down side of the whole adventure was that we turned what was a mud patch into a real mud bath. We also had to do some emergency drain building as the rain water natural course was bringing streams of water into the chicken pen and house.

This morning George was yelling good and loud to be let out and the girls followed him quickly flying off their roosting perch into the pen for a good peck at the grass and waddle in the mud.

Al’s been a true wonder providing us with the chickens and designing us a magnificent house for them to live in. I’m slightly worried though he has ambitions for pheasants and quails to be kept in the bush. The way the water is flowing at the moment I think we have a better chance of building a pond in which to keep some ducks!