Chickens and Dogs

Hello All
Here is a photo of my nearly big chickens Blackies, Whities and Speckeldies. I see have they have made themselves at home on my bench this week so not sure what that is going to be like to sit on next spring.Also not quite sure how to dissuade birds from perching, or whether in fact I ought to or not, as our Border Collies can be a little too enthusiastic herding, and occassionally find tail feathers accidentally in their mouths. As you can see their tail feathers are not super long yet so I would hate for the whole dog/chicken experience thing to end badly.
So a quick up date. The insurance papers are in, with regard to the dog sheep incidents we have had through the summer, and now we wait to see how much the insurance companies will agree to pay out. I asked how long they thought it might take and the response was unsurprisingly vague. Ho hum better start looking for some replacement sheep before we have to declare our sheep numbers in January. However it is not the best time of year to be doing that, a lot of shepherds are actually lambing or preparing to lamb right now.
As you are all aware the modern technology we have these days to provide telly has a habit of disappearing during heavy rain or dense cloud movement, so last night nearly turned into a disaster of epic proportions when we started to get a break up of signal during the final of The Great British Bake Off. Thank goodness tranquility was restored when we changed channel to the south west BBC channel and picture quality resumed. I was on the edge of my seat with all the collapsing sails and turny bits on the top of the showstopper cakes. But was very happy with the result, just wish sometimes we could have an edible, cookery programme, telly experience.
Hope the rain lays off a little for the market this weekend.
By the way we have just passed our one year anniversary for the Franklin Farm Blog.... Strangely the family was not surprised that I have managed to find something to prattle about every week for a year;-)
See you all soon
Helen