A chore with a bonus

Rotting straw always settles downwind from the Fortress of Attitude, and from time to time I rake it up and put it in one of my raised beds to help make soil. Since Monsoon has started, right now it’s holding quite a lot of moisture. One of today’s scheduled chores was to get it out of there, but it turned out to take a lot longer than I expected. In fact I only got about three feet done. Turns out it was absolutely infested with white grubs. Scores of’em.

So for forty five minutes or so, or until I had finally filled the wheelbarrow once and got tired of the game, I had the Red Ladies’ happy and undivided attention.

The bald one I call Edith is best at it. One of the other three learned quick to stay right at the fenceline, the other two just sort of hung out in the middle of the yard and watched with uncomprehending wonder as juicy grubs fell from the sky. And mostly they were too slow to react, because Edith was in and out with the goal before they could blink. Even when one of them would grab a grub, mostly she would try to break it into little bits rather than gobble it down whole, and Edith was there for the steal. I’ll bet she got more than half the total bounty.

This (the coop, not the cage) is Landlady’s portable coop. It’s lightly constructed and always needs something screwed back together; this time some of the hardware cloth is coming off so I’ll fix it tomorrow. In another week or two the pullets will be ready to move to the Fortress. Last year I made the mistake of just dumping them into the yard. Selma terrorized them all and killed one of them, and the survivors ended up in with the Brahmas temporarily until they got bigger. This time I want to start them in the Fortress, but I’ll keep them in the small coop – which has its own little downstairs yard – until the two groups get used to each other. I’m hoping a larger group will display less interpersonal violence. There’s plenty of room for eight, I think.