Greedy girls

I came home today early enough to let the hens out for a couple of hours and they were straight down to the door, peering through the glass to see if I was being their food slave and getting them their seed (which I was). We are both huge pushovers when it comes to those three hens tanking down the lawn and making a beeline for the French windows and a food source.
We keep three bins in the house (well five if you count the usual rubbish/refuse bin and the recycling one too). The first one has layer's pellets (with the right ingredients to promote egg laying in our chicks), the next holds wild bird seed and the last has peanutsin it. We buy them in 20kg bags. Anyway, the girls want anything but the usual pellets and whenever they are roaming free and catch a glimpse of us by the French windows they charge down, wobbling from side to side in their uneven hurry to get to the food first.

6.20pm
I had the phone call from Luke, asking to be picked up from the train station just as Sweetie was making her way up the wooden ramp to the hen house and her perch (Buck Bucky is always the first to go up). I was telling Luke over the phone that they had just put themselves to bed when old chunky chick, Shakira (the brown one) spied me and was straight back out of the run and heading towards me again. She is always the one who has to fill up on 'supper' and peck a substantial amount of pellets before she joins the others on the perch. So I grabbed a handful of nuts and walked back up to the run with her before throwing the nuts in so I could lock the door behind her. Peck, peck, peck; she vacuumed up her offering before heading towards the ramp only to see two nuts that had landed in the layer's pellets that she had missed. Back again to flick those out of the feeder and onto the floor where they were greedily swallowed and then she had to have a little drink to wash it all down. All that time I was hoping she would hurry up as I had to pick Luke up in 15 minutes.

Chickens can't swallow with their head down. They take some water into their beak and throw their head back high so the water will go down their throat. Shakira was pretty thirsty so tick, tick, tick; on went the time as she drank and drank. Eventually she had satisfied her thirst and was ready to climb up the ramp and jump up onto the perch. A large 'thump' inside the house let me know that 'the eagle had landed' so to speak and our three hens were ready for sleep.

Years ago Luke had checked up on them one Bonfire night; concerned that the loud bangs from the fireworks would be frightening them, only to hear one gently snoring whilst her head moved slightly up and down in accordance with her snores. There's so much fun to be had from keeping hens. People always joke that we'll serve them up for dinner one day but once you've witnessed a chicken snoring all thoughts of eating it disappear.