It was a pretty eventful day we were out with the chickens Posh and Pecks for almost two hours this afternoon. John hadn’t seen the girls for almost a week and had gone out especially this morning to Pets At Home in search of some chicken food and treats unfortunately Pets At Home had nothing. It’s a shame they hadn’t considered catering for the needs of chickens as a growing number of people today are keeping chickens as pets.

He did however come back with some Vitakraft Millet to hang in the run and a Treat Tumbler ball (for rabbits and Guinea Pigs) to relieve their boredom. We filled the ball with mealworms and prepared their afternoon treat. As usual the girls started muttering as we walked across the decking above the run.

Treat TumblerBall

At first when we introduce the ball onto the patio Pecks became quite upset. Posh was very inquisitive and soon realised it was full of meal worms, it took Peck’s a while to come near the bright yellow ball. The idea of the ball is as it’s rolled about the treats fall out, we are hoping to train a chicken version of Becks the footballer.

First steps

Whilst the girls were free ranging in the garden I was sat on the steps of our raised decking drinking a mug of coffee. To be honest I was teasing them with meal worms. It wasn’t before long that Posh started to navigate up the steps; I was surprised to see her actual stepping up on the steps one by one.

Posh on top of the world

Pecks followed shortly once she had noticed that I had a full pot of yummy dried meal worms. Once they were on the top level of the decking (which is above their run) they quite happily pootled about.

It was only when we were trying to get them back down we learned it was something they didn't know how to do yet! Climbing up steps was one thing, climbing down was another! 10 minutes later and us short of a few mealworms they were back down.