I just noticed this back door to the chicken pasture Lucy installed recently and growled at her while I stitched it back together.

We could double down on securing the bottom edge with some additional fastening, or hook up the electric fence charger and run a strand at nose height all along the perimeter.

Another option would be to stop giving the pastured chickens any scraps and divert that nutrition to the chicken tractors or worm bin.

None of these choices work for me because they avoid the root problem of Lucy's failure to recognize that all food scraps belong to us and she needs special permission to access even a banana peel.

It may seem like a tall order to train a dog to fight the urge to eat something yummy, but I've seen it happen before and feel that Lucy is serious about doing her part in being a team player.

We just need to discover where the communication is breaking down and put some extra effort in explaining this critical lesson.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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