The fences around Church Farm's chicken enclosures serve many purposes. While the chickens themselves are free to roam large sections of the woodland within their bounds, the chicken wire ensures that they never wander too far away and that predators such as foxes can't attack them during the night. It also helps to segregate the roosters from the hens. However, some of the roosters have developed a knack for jumping the fence and escaping into the adjacent enclosures. This is even more of a problem than it may at first seem – surrounded by potential mates, the overly vigorous roosters actually pose a threat to the hens. Several have been found dead as a result of too much aggressive attention.
In order to contain the them, a new six-foot fence is being erected around one of the enclosures. This is no simple task; these are free range chickens and the perimeter of even the smallest enclosure comes close to 80 yards. Knocking in new fence posts and suspending that much chicken wire is a laborious job that will take two men the best part of a week to complete even for a single plot.
This is a particularly pain at the moment because we have a temporary shortage of labour. Much better to complete it now, however, because the winter brings its own problems. Plus, who wants to be putting up a fence in November? There's something satisfying about building a fence, anyway; you can leave something lasting before moving onto the next task.
