Eating out of my hand.

So, Lola is settled in her temporary greenhouse home (until the hen house comes along). We've given her a mirror to admire herself in (and maybe trick her into thinking there is another chicken in there with her) and she's now eating grain out of the palm pf my hand and grabbing tiny tomatoes from my fingers. She can spend hours looking at her reflection and she seems pretty settled but then, how do you know if a chicken is happy in itself or not?  Because hens are sociable creatures we wanted to get her two companions. We looked into getting ex-battery hens and it's a sad tale. You might know that battery hens are kept for just about one year from point of lay (POL) as that is when they are at the peak of their laying capacity. Obviously battery eggs are all about profit which is fair enough, it is a business after all, but the welfare of the bird is very often not a priority; profit is the key.  After a year of overcrowded living most are sold for meat with a few lucky ones being rescued by the few battery hen rescue groups.
Although European law has recently changed and all farms in Britain have come into line there are still producers selling in Britain but producing in other countries who have not taken the new guide lines on. Battery hens have a brief and pathetic life; starting with when an egg has hatched and the chicken is sexed. If it is male it is killed and can be used as food for reptiles amongst other things.  If it is female it will be expected to live in crowded accommodation, with no access to a dust bath or perch and has just over an A4 space to move in. We've paid up to £26 for one of our chickens before now but battery hens can be purchased from as little as fifty pence each (we could have got 52 hens for the price of Buck Bucky). These overworked hens, once they have reached the end of their maximum productivity are not worth keeping - the producers can get new stock in and see no dip in the amount of eggs they can produce. However, the hens will still produce eggs, just not as regularly.
The ex battery hens that are rescued often appear in a very poor state of health (which has to have an effect on the egg quality). They are often too weak to jump onto a perch and can break their legs jumping down again. They will often have very few feathers and a limp comb and look very sorry for themselves. Amazingly though they do perk up, feather up and make lovely pets although they have never instinctively sought out a nesting box as they have just laid their daily egg where they are. So for the rest of the chicken's life it will probably just lay when it has the urge to lay, never mind where it is. This is like having a little Easter egg hunt all year round if you keep a few in your back garden. If you fancy looking into rescuing some hens and live in Britain, take a look online at  http://www.bhwt.org.uk

And here she is...,

Lola, also known as Miranda the big bird. Scary looking bird, isn't she?

Veg patch

One of the unexpected treats when digging the vegetable plot were last year's potatoes - still absolutely fine after months underground. Lucky as I had was ready for a baked potato after half a day's hard work.

 

The parsley has held it's own and the chickens love it - which is great as parsley is excellent for digestion.

Caught in the act!

Onto the herb garden.

Here is the newly weeded herb garden.

The golden Oak.

The oak behind our garden.

 
come forth the sunshine....,
& the late afternoon light makes the oak shine.

The sun makes everything look so much brighter.

The wood store.

We hope to have enough wood to see us through this cold snap but we are getting through it at a great rate of knots.

 Still, it's lovely to have afternoon tea with the fire going.

Two feathered bottoms.

Very often the chickens are so busy pecking at the ground that all we can see are their bottoms, high in the air.

Spring beckons

 As well as fat tulips pushing through the soil in my terracotta pots I also have lots of these mini iris - a beautiful blue in the clear light.

 Two very different hellebore, such a shame that they dip their heads so shyly and their full beauty is hidden to anything less than two centimetres tall. The flower heads are lovely when floated in a shallow bowl of water but I like them to have a long growing season. Each little dot on the white flower looks as if a fairy has painted it on by hand.

 

 

Home to roost.

This weekend saw the arrival of chicken number three, our second hand, previously unwanted chicken, Lola. She arrived in a cardboard box about 11.30 on Saturday and once we'd had a coffee with her old owner we hot footed it to the greenhouse to introduce her to her temporary new home. The plan is to quarantine her till she has been thoroughly de-mited (if that's a word!) and we have her hen house steam cleaned, reassembled and siliconed to keep out the draughts, rain and mites before she goes in there with we hope a new chicken to keep her company. Although she has cocked her head on hearing our original girls 'chatting' to each other she hasn't had any company for weeks so till we find a companion for her she has only a mirror to look into which is keeping her interested.
So, the moment of truth when we opened the chicken box -blimey,  this girl is e-nor-MOUS!
Because we have bantam chickens we are used to mini chicks which look like doll's house sized hens. Now we have an elephant cross giraffe sized chicken which is such a shock. She must stand almost 20 inches high. She's beautiful though, a big old black and white dinosaur who struts around with a slow high step. She's had the red spider mite powder dusted over her, worming powder in her food and clean water for the first time in what seems like a long time based on the slime in her original water container that arrived with her. Good animal husbandry is so important for the health of your birds so we are hoping to get Lola back to maximum health in the coming weeks. We know that the hen house that hasn't been dismantled yet and is still at the original owner's house is teeming with red spider mite so as I've explained we have to ensure it is completely cleaned before we put her into it. Till then, Lola is strutting around the large greenhouse space, checking herself out in the mirror and pecking away at the greens that are in the dry soil. I am thinking of calling her Miranda (as in Miranda Hart, the big bird from TV) but for now, Lola is our new girl.