Backyard Chickens

We got three chickens last April, which have free range of the garden. They do give us plenty of eggs, and are pretty funny, but hens are not exactly a gardeners best friend; or that great for garden wildlife either. Apart from eating plants and raking up the borders for worms, they do eat a lot of the bugs and molluscs in the garden, and have I believe also killed off our frogs. It’s not much of a plus, but the appearance of rats and more mice around the garden shed is likely linked to getting chickens, so I suppose I can thank them for adding Brown Rat (Rattus norvegicus) and Yellow-necked Mouse (Apodemus flavicollis) to the garden list. Yellow-necked Mouse is my first new species of the year and the 10th mammal species. Thanks girls!