We live close to a free-range egg farm, where the chickens roam all over the fields and down the road.  Recently, two of them started coming down our drive and into our garden and, before long, up to the front door and perching on our dining room windowsill.  Of course Sandy, being a softie, rewarded them with scraps of bread, and they would come down first thing in the morning and stay till the evening, after which they would scamper back to the egg farm to be locked up for the night.  The farmer popped by the other day to tell us that the annual cull of the birds would be taking place, so he could get new stock.  We told him that two birds (now named Chicken Kiev and Chicken Tikka) were coming down and we'd got, strangely, quite attached to them.  He said, of course you can keep them (and no doubt left us thinking "those strange English keep chickens as pets").

We urgently needed somewhere to keep them so Pete made up a hutch out of discarded delivery pallets and, in two days, we had "Maison Poulet" ready, complete with perches and nesting boxes inside.  A true exercise in recycling and inside it has perches and nesting boxes, and is lined in straw.

The next job was to keep the chickens down so we shut the gates during the day.  They meekly accepted that they couldn't get back to the farm and went into the hutch and, the next day, we found one egg!  We've put leg rings on the birds and keep the gates shut, so they can't escape up the drive, but they seem content to roam around the garden and scratch for worms and grubs.  They particularly enjoy the strawberry patch and have kicked up most of the plants!  So far we are getting one egg a day but don't know which one ... Fresh eggs really do taste better!