It is 3.14 - or 15.14 on the twenty four hour clock. I am seated in a garden chair with a big ole chicken on my right and the noise of the other two chirruping behind me. In the near distance there is wild bird song and in the far distance the slight hum of far away traffic, some going home early for the weekend. I'm already home, in my garden having just made an iced coffee and looking at my gardening handiwork.
Having braved the shed to clear it out as a surprise homecoming treat for Luke who is constantly complaining he cannot find anything in the shed, I found the expected vermin droppings. I say vermin because I know those pellets are too big for a mouse and I cannot be tough enough to knowingly share my space with a rat, for goodness sake. Still, being many times it's size and many times stupider than it is I know only one of us will be in there at the same time and that it would have scarpered at the sound of my footsteps (I hope!).
It's the 2nd of March and I've just heard a buzzing in my ear as a hovering bee buzzed past. That is the third one in the garden today. Is everything being tricked into believing Spring is here? The temperature is high enough that I can sit out here quite happily in just a vest top and thin linen trousers and I've had to open the vents, windows and door to cool the greenhouse down. That's why Lola is out in the garden right now being a real chicken, rather than in solitary confinement. Not only is it a trifle warm in the greenhouse but very stinky too. It reminds me of the elephant house smell at the zoo. We think she is broody too by the size of her droppings, similar to the size of an elephants!
Broody hens' droppings are much larger than their usual ones (you wanted to know this, didn't you?) and they absolutely stink! Added to that the baking temperature and you have a very fragrant house! So Lola, it being her turn to be out in the garden, is just loving scratching up the dirt in the veg patch (me having dutifully gone through it today for cat litter (is my life consisting of cleaning up muck from every animal known to man? Well, not the rat droppings, that is for sure). She is very touchingly now right next to the chicken run, so desperate is she to have some company. You know how daft I am about animal welfare? Well, I spent a long time crouching down talking gently to all three birds whilst they were separated by a thin width of chicken wire. I don't know if this did any good but it seemed to calm our bantams down whilst attracting Lola and in the end I had a handful of freshly picked grass stems for the girls (pushed through their chicken wire boundary) followed by a handful for Lola. The girls are settled in their run and Lola is three feet away enjoying the lawn. In fact as I type this Buckster has come close to Lola, lowering her shoulder as they do when they are threatened and then deciding she will be all nonchalant and peck around for grub before slowly stepping back to sit behind the bulk of Shakira who really doesn't seem to care one jot.
 |
| Lola makes her feelings known to our original girls. |
I had terrible trouble with the noise from them earlier though. Shakira has just come back into lay and so trots up and down to the nesting box which has always driven Buck Bucky mad. 'Bukster' crows and complains constantly; what must the neighbours think? I was in and out, trying to entice her with tidbits and gently talking to but the minute I stopped that she was off again, "Squawk, squawk, squawk". In the end I had to catch her (no mean feat, it took me fifteen minutes of trying to get her somewhere she couldn't escape from) and put her in the shade (you wouldn't believe how sunny & warm it is for winter-time) in a cardboard box. She is such a good girl that once she is in captivity - her chicken prison - she shuts up and settles down immediately.
Eventually I felt around in the nesting box, underneath Shakira and found a teeny egg and a very hot breasted hen. Shakira is a very good broody which means we could use her to sit on a clutch of eggs till they hatched if only we had a cockerel to fertilise them. As non of the eggs are fertilised it would be a pointless exercise but some hen keepers do have certain broody hens whom they can trust to sit on the eggs for the three weeks needed to turn them into newly hatched chicks.
 |
| Faster than a speeding bullet! |
 |
| The parsley is a big attraction to the hens. They are eating their greens. |
Today has consisted of two little hens following behind me as I turned the soil over. They were probably hoping for thick, pink worms and I'm gratified to have found lots of them, proving the soil is good. I did hide each worm under a forkful of soil again though. I didn't want them to be eaten after I had unearthed them.
I dug over the bottom border that was originally made into a monochrome bed when we first moved here. A combination of digitalis (foxgloves) that turn into the native pink and a few bought plants that must have been incorrectly labelled means that the monochrome bed is slightly brighter than I expected in full flower but after that first flush in 2010 it has never quite achieved the glory days again and needs some serious work this year in order to regain some semblance of lushness.
I've just had to "Oiy", Lola who is chest deep in my parsley plants. Not only has she trampled a major clump completely flat she is now pecking around and scuffing the soil on the hunt for those darn worms I had hoped to hide. She does look rather funny, head down, bum in the air and two powerful claws flipping out behind her every few seconds but now I'm facing total parsley destruction and can smell it's scent as it gets battered and bruised ..., enough is enough. A small stone thrown in her direction to alarm her and then a handful of picked grass scattered elsewhere is enough to move her on. This weekend we are hoping to go and get her hen house (the people who have given her away have reneged on their promise to clean it up and bring it over. We have cold weather and heavy rain forecast for Sunday but as they have a party tomorrow (Saturday) we can't collect it then. Still, once she is settled I shan't concern myself that she is overheating in the greenhouse.
 |
| Preening in the sunshine, Lola looks like a ball on legs. |
As I had boxed poor old Buck Bucky in Lola's original travelling carriage (a large cardboard box with holes punched in it for ventilation) I thought it wise to dust all chickens with mite powder just in case there was anything lurking in the box and the best time to do Shakira was as she was coming out of the house. All was fine until the lid fell off the tub and she was transformed from a bronze beauty to a ghostly grey apparition. I picked her up, blew the dust off her face and flicked the excess off her feathers before rubbing the rest in. Then I dusted Buckster and popped her back in the run. A quick clean of the greenhouse floor with the rake, a sprinkling of crushed oyster shell for Lola to eat whilst she is pecking around for grain (this is because hens don't have teeth so need something to grind the food down with in the stomach) and some of the bubble wrap removed now that the temperature is rising before giving her clean water with a drop of apple cider vinegar for good health and removing those stinking 'elephant droppings' A proper Spring clean! (I still have the unenviable task of disinfecting the slats she has messed all over). Having flown on top of the chicken run twice and both times being encouraged to immediately fly back down again by me, she has walked back into her house for a proper tea of chicken pellets and her drop of 'booze'; her vinegar and water drink. She seems happy enough and her first proper meeting with Jack's cat, Socks, also went off without a hitch - both of them warily watching the other as Lola strode by. Socks took herself off to the warmth of the shed roof.
 |
| Cat on a hot tin roof. |
I have allowed Lola to come out again rather than just shutting the door behind her when she goes in to her greenhouse home because I don't want her to associate going back in with being shut up again on her own. This could prove troublesome when I need to guide her in later so for now she has her freedom whilst the original two watch enviously as she struts around.
Alerted to a furious fluttering of wings I turned around as a stray sparrow flew back over the fence, worried at my presence. Jack next door is in his workshop at the end of his garden, banging at a piece of wood that he will probably make into a lampshade and still the hum of traffic is just audible above the various bird song coming from every direction. A little shy wren hops into the shrub to avoid further detection and I see it is exactly fifty minutes since I starting tapping at the keyboard. The sun is now so low it is making me squint and in mere minutes it will sink behind the roof tops and once obscured will stop giving it's warmth to me. Time to pack up the laptop, let the chickens rest in their own homes (with a big flapping hen like Lola I can't leave her out out here alone - she could just as easily fly up to the roof of the hen run then over the fence and into the field so for safety's sake she will have to go back to the greenhouse) and I shall start the stripping of the handrail indoors as I intended to do before the day turned into such a surprisingly beautiful one. It's days like this that I think I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.......,
