My little baby chicks have into teenagers and now live outside in their own little coop. I think one is a hen and the other a rooster, which I'm rather pleased with! Meanwhile, the larger Finnish rare breed hens have the run of the big coop and are totally enjoying the summer holiday. They are quite inventive and happily fly up onto the ladder propped against their house, or even onto the roof!

I keep the door too their coop ajar so they can wander about freely, and it turns out that they only go in at night or to lay eggs in the roost. Mostly they just wander about picking in the grass or having a nap in a comfortable little hole they dug.

Happy chicken makes for happy eggs, and each day it is a delight to see how many they have laid and what colour they are. Apparently the colour of the egg depends on the colour of the hen, so the darker brown the hen is the darker her egg. The egg yolk is insanely orange, which my zoologist friend tells me is from the protein in all the buggs they eat. Never mind, the eggs taste delicious!