Families that scratch together, stay together!? 😃

I am always so amazed to observe chicken behaviour: scratching is the most natural one, and they tend to like to do it in groups. Apparently, scratching is fundamental to being a chicken: it's a basic instinct (even when newly hatched and without ever seeing another chicken doing it); it's a crucial skill for nest building and dust bathing; it trims their nails, but most importantly: it's a major way that chickens interact and bond with each other.
 
Hens are highly social, they form strong ties and bonds and use these activities as an expression of closeness as well. When they start to trust you, they are comfortable to scratch right next to you - or even on top of you, as I have experienced. Emotionally, it feels great. But boy, these claws can really scratch 😲
 
It may hurt, but it’s an expression of love. Isn’t that what we all crave and need: scratching together, and staying together 😊
#eggs #freerange #scratching #together #pasturedeggs #natural #behaviour #bonding

“The border is a line that birds cannot see.
The border says stop to the wind, but the wind speaks another language, and keeps going.”
 
The border is that favourite place to lay eggs, denying all knowledge of the nicely built, shining caravans. Anytime there is tall grass and a border to the road, or to the edge of the paddock fence, we just know we have to walk it every day. It must come from that original junglefowl, which liked to live at the edge of the jungle and cross the border to forage every day.
 
Ain’t no way to beat 5-6million years of history 😊
 
--from "The Border: A Double Sonnet" by Alberto Ríos

 “If all the skies were sunshine,
Our faces would be fain
To feel once more upon them
The cooling splash of rain.
 
If all the world were music,
Our hearts would often long
For one sweet strain of silence,
To break the endless song.”
 
The blissful mix of sunshine and a bit of rain, all in one day at the farm. A perfect sweet-bitterness or bitter-sweetness of Spring!
#pastured #eggs #bittersweetness #sunshineandrain #sweetbitterness #spring #pastured #eggs #rainandsun
 
--from the poem “If All the Skies” by Henry Van Dyke