Today I am grateful for my chooks. Two of them, both rescue-non-laying chooks. So they cost more to keep than they produce, but they are beautiful. I find myself telling friends “sorry, I can’t do that, I’m busy watching my chooks.” And that is what I do … stand at the kitchen window and watch them. They are quite close, and this might be a problem in summer with the flies. However, right now, in lockdown, they give me too much joy to want to move them.
My partner looks after them, talks to them, let’s them scratch around the unfenced area of our garden whilst he guards over them. And they lovingly follow him around the yard. (I like to think it is for love, not just for food!) But I just watch them, as well as the other birds that fly in to eat their food. We have a resident currawong, pair of parrots, and a small yellow beaked back bird.
We have a beautiful, unkempt, wild, weedy garden; great for insects and birds I say. If I stop and take the time to listen carefully, at every moment of the day, I can hear a bird. We are so fortunate to have this experience.
And, even if we are not getting eggs (which, as a vegan, I don’t eat anyway), we still have the darling chooks, scratching over the ground preparing it for a summer vegetable garden.