Head on crash

We have taken pity on the lawn.  When it was time for the Cluckers to have their afternoon treat, we had got into the habit of throwing things onto the grass. Unfortunately, a summer of being scratched and pecked by over-zealous chickens, bent on finding every last piece of whatever-it-was, had left several bare patches.   We decided to give the lawn a break and plonk goodies on the paved path and the patio flag stones instead.

With winter fast approaching, we have been putting down lots of little heaps of mixed corn, dried mealworms and sunflower seeds.   We want the flock to fatten up a bit before the really cold weather arrives.

There is plenty for everyone; each chicken can have its very own, exclusive heap.  But what happens?   They all want to munch the same heap!  Wily old Tu-Tu always stays put; that way she has a whole row of heaps all to herself.

I always pick Pom-Pom up and deposit her at the pile which is furthest away from everyone else.  If I didn't, she would spend all her time running away.  Whenever she catches sight of Rebecca, she scoots off in the opposite direction.  Chasing Pom-Pom may be the furthest thing from Rebecca's mind, but the little Poland dashes off anyway - just in case.

Fizz spotted Pom-Pom chomping away on her own and decided to join her.   She didn't mind at all, but an unexpected problem presented itself.     The predicament took the form of their crests.  They collided if both chickens tried to eat simultaneously.

Two necks would stretch forward, each aiming for a tasty mealworm or a piece of barley, but neither beak could quite reach it.  As a result of their combined bounteous feather arrangements, if they both tried to eat at the same time, neither could get close enough to grab anything.  Their crests met and held their heads apart.  As a result, a cosy beak-to-beak supper was quite impossible.

Following this year's moult, Fizz's crest is rather more lavish than it has been in the past.  Pom-Pom's has always resembled the 60's Dusty Springfield bouffant hairdo I used to have. (My hair was so rigid from all the lacquer I used in those days, that had you dropped me on my head my skull would have been undamaged).

In the end, the pair of them gave up and wandered off to find alternative stockpiles to demolish independently.

A tribute to Titian

This has been a difficult blog to make myself write.  We have lost Titian.

She became unwell and after visits to the vet and phone consultations, she was diagnosed with heart failure.  She was clearly deteriorating and the vet said it would get worse and become very distressing for her.  So we had her put to sleep.

As you can imagine, No. 1 Son and I were very upset - she was from our original flock.  Then yesterday an odd thing happened.  For the first time ever, I found myself sharing the village bus shelter with two pullets.  And furthermore they both looked remarkably like Titian when she was young.  I stood quietly so that they didn't get scared, they decided I was harmless and continued poking around in the dead leaves.

As I watched them, I couldn't help remembering Titian and her antics over the years; before long I found myself smiling.

Her most enduring, and endearing, characteristic was her chattering.   The first thing she did when she got up in the morning was to have a drink.  The second was to come over and fill you in on all the latest gossip.  Woe betide you if you let your attention wander!  She knew and would tug on your trouser leg to bring your attention back to what she was saying.   Only when she'd finished telling you what you needed to know, would she go and eat her breakfast.

The day after Titian died, for the first time in her life Maggie came out of the coop when I opened up and straight over to me.  She muttered a quick "Good morning.  You all right?" and then headed for the food dish.  She hasn't done it again, but I appreciated the gesture.

Titian was a slow, ponderous hen on the whole.  Place a tasty morsel in front of her and she would gaze lovingly at it, apparently anticipating its flavour with each of her 24 taste buds, one by one.   She rarely got to find out if her anticipation was matched by the reality.  One of her companions invariably dived in and scoffed said morsel before Titian's beak got anywhere near it.

There was one time, though, when she got what she wanted.   Maggie walked past her and rather rudely dropped a poo just in front of Titian, before joining the rest of the flock on the lawn.  There, sitting on the edge of Maggie's whoopsie was a piece of corn.  Complete.  Undigested.  Only one previous, careful owner.   Titian gave it her usual measured consideration, then ate it!   Well she couldn't let it go to waste, could she?

She gave Pom-Pom a very hard time when the little Poland first arrived in the flock.  One evening she decided to give everyone else a hard time too.  She went to bed early and positioned herself on the perch, just inside the pop hole.  As each chicken entered the coop, Titian pecked them on the head.  Once pecked, the chicken was then allowed to go and roost without being molested further.  Maybe she was doing my job for me and counting them in.  Who knows?  She certainly never duplicated this performance.

She was highly strung as a young hen, but nevertheless found a great way to relax and enjoy herself.  We had left a full bag of wood chips leaning in the corner of the run, so it would be handy when we needed to top up.   The bag itself was plastic and very slippery when wet, as you can imagine.  This suited Titian's purpose admirably.   She would jump onto the side of the wet bag and slide down the front.  Then she would repeat the process several times until she got bored and wandered off. I often wondered why none of the others joined her, but they never did.

Like most chickens she loved her dustbath, but woe betide anyone who was bathing in the spot she wanted.  She was our largest hen and used her bulk to advantage to shift the offender.  She would sit as close to the guilty party as possible and start her ablutions, while gradually moving sideways and pushing the other chicken out of "her" spot.   She always won.

Right from the start Titian aspired to the role of Chicken-In-Chief.  Unfortunately she was never able to work out how to make the climb from middle ranker to top of the heap.  Being such a slowcoach, by the time she'd developed a strategy, someone else had bagged the position.

Titian was not a lap hen and hated even being stroked.  It took her most of her life to work out that if we leaned towards her with an outstretched hand, all she had to do was run away, not squat to submit to one quick stroke.  On second thoughts, maybe it was just as well she didn't like sitting on our laps.  In later life she developed the habit of letting off totally silent, but world-class smelly farts!   She would stand at our feet, let rip, then assume an air of injured innocence as she walked away.

Our Rhode Island Red may have been a bit of a bird-brain, but the gal sure was a looker!  Her abundant deep auburn feathers gleamed in the sun and even shone in the shade.

We miss Titian.  We can't get used to counting seven chickens instead of eight.   But we are so very glad we had her in our lives.

Exciting news

I'm so excited.  The paperback version of Mucky Cluckers - Tales from the chicken run is finally available as a paperback.

It's £8.99 plus P&P  from http://www.muckycluckers.co.uk/

Lots of people have been kind enough to say how much they've enjoyed it.  Best of 
all, it makes people laugh.  

So the Cluckers are rightly proud of themselves - because all I've done is record 
their daft antics.

 “Recommended to animal lovers, whether you keep chickens or not” 

“What a fantastic read!  Made me laugh out loud in some parts.” 

“Wonderful book! Entertaining read & very well written”

An historic event!

I have fond childhood memories of chickens because my grandfather kept them. But whereas he simply saw them as providers of eggs ..... or Sunday lunch......, to me they are pets, just as much as my cat is. If Granddad could see me now, cuddling a chicken, he'd probably have 50 fits!

He certainly wouldn't understand why I should get excited over a chicken having a dustbath. But I did, because it was an historic event, in its way.

The chicken concerned was Pom-Pom and yesterday she took her first dustbath ... ever. She's 4 years old and has never felt it necessary to mingle at ablution time. In reality, she is at the bottom of the pecking order; but in her mind, socially we are all way beneath her, both chickens and humans. That may explain why, when she finally decided that a bath was in order, she condescended to bathe only with Fizz. At least he's family.

For those of you who haven't met the Mucky Cluckers before, here's a short video to show you everyone except Rebecca, who was busy laying an egg.

A model hen

No. 1 Son is less than impressed with the local bird life these days.  We were sitting in the garden enjoying a nice, cool lager when a piece of bird poo was delivered from above - straight into his glass!

Irene is now back to normal, despite a bit of a mishap with her last day's medication.   She had finally cottoned on that the butter we were kindly giving her was not just butter.  It hid half a tablet!  So just to show us how smart she is, she ate the butter from our greasy fingers and threw the tablet on the floor.   Quick as a flash, Rebecca darted in and ate it.

We thought that was accidental and offered Irene the second half of her tablet smothered in butter.  Blow me, she did the same thing again!  This time Punk dived in and ate the discarded tablet.   It seems none of them suffered any ill effects from not eating or eating the antibiotics, thank goodness.

Then Pom-Pom decided she had better walk like a model, just in case any paparazzi were filming her from the other side of the valley.  She took half a dozen steps, carefully putting one foot directly in front of the other.  Somehow that didn't feel quite right.  So she took a step, lifted her leg right up close to her body for a moment, then stretched it forward to take another step.  Then we had the same performance with the other leg.  This went on for a few minutes while she gave the imagined photographers time to get good shots of her from various angles.  After that, it was back to normal and blow the paparazzi.

Watch out Julia Nobis, Pom-Pom can walk the walk too

Punk has no time for posers, so she rushed over to have a go at Pom-Pom.   Luckily No. 1 Son spotted what was going on and put his open hand in front of her to halt progress.  She was incensed!  If she couldn't have a go at Pom-Pom, then she'd jolly-well have a go at him!  She flew at him feet first, then bit his hand so hard it bruised!   No wonder I've used three exclamation marks in succession! (Make that four).  Then she stomped off, muttering to herself.

It's just as well the paparazzi weren't around a couple of days later.  We had given everyone some cooked broad beans;  Pom-Pom managed to wander round, blissfully unaware that she had a bit of bean stuck to the end of her beak.  She did look silly.


To make matters worse her far end looks daft too, as she's moulted all her tail feathers.  At least she's not on her own there, as Fizz has discarded all his lovely tail feathers too.  At least where the Polands are concerned, they truly are "all in it together".

A visit to the vet

It's been quite a week one way and another, some of it amusing but part of it very worrying.

First Fizz decided to bonk Titian while she was dozing in the dust bath.  Titian's usual routine is a quick wash followed by a long sleep, as he well knew.   Quite what Fizz was thinking I don't know, but he decided to mount her sideways!  A novel approach, but it doesn't achieve the desired result as I've explained to him before.

Titian got her own back the next day.   Fizz decided to take his biannual dust bath, which is always a long, thorough affair.  Titian bided her time until Fizz was having the chicken equivalent of a long soak and a nap.  Then she casually sauntered over to examine a lone surviving piece of grass growing right next to Fizz.  The only way she could see it properly, of course, was to stand with one foot on Fizz's head and take a good, long look at the grass.   He had the good sense not to even attempt to wriggle out from beneath Titian's dinosaur-sized tootsie.  She finally got bored and moved on, much to his relief.

While all this was going on, we were getting a bit concerned about Mad Irene.

The lovely Mad Irene

Normally, before we open the run gate we say "Up Irene" and she jumps onto the nest box roof (which is next to the gate) if she hasn't already done so.  But on Thursday, she couldn't be bothered, no matter how much we encouraged her.

When the Cluckers trooped out we noticed that Irene was rather lethargic, her eyes looked tired and her comb was paler than usual.  There was a lump high in her throat, but her crop was empty.  Worried that food might be impacted in her throat, we fed her some tomato and then went off to search for maggots, hoping that these two remedies for impacted crop might work for whatever was going on in Irene's throat.

Harrogate has three huntin', shootin' and fishin' emporia because it's a posh town and one has to be able to purchase one's deerstalker and shooting stick from somewhere, doesn't one.  But they are far too upmarket to stock maggots.  Took us a while to find an angling supplies shop that hadn't either gone out of business or turned itself into a trendy wine bar.  But we finally got back to the chicken run with half a pint of the little wrigglers.

Irene ate a few, but didn't approach them with her usual "Mine, mine, mine and so are yours" attitude.  In fact she was unusually quiet and subdued;  she just drifted around a bit of the lawn near us.  Usually she rushes about all over the place, scared she might miss something that should rightfully be hers.  We gave it a while, then massaged the lump in her neck and eventually got the clump of food moved down to her crop.   But then I could feel a hard, forefinger sized lump in her throat which no amount of massaging could get rid of.   By now it was much too late to get to the vet.  We would see how she was next morning.

Disastrous as it turned out.  She wasn't too bothered about coming out of the coop, although she normally rushes out first.   She was very sluggish and had no appetite.  Then she did a semi-fluid poo with blood streaked starkly across the urates.   We immediately made an appointment with the vet.

She was the perfect patient.  She allowed a thorough examination with far more grace than we ever realised she possessed.   The vet could find nothing drastically wrong and concluded that she had something going on in her digestive system.  He then gave her an antibiotic injection, which she bore with great stoicism.   He prescribed a course of antibiotic tablets and off we went.

I had assured the vet we'd have no problem getting tablets down Irene.  Irene made no such undertaking.  Consequently the next day, when we wrapped small pieces of tablet in bits of raspberry, she ate the fruit and left the tablet.  We put the bits in with some corn, which she ate with relish, leaving the bits behind.  We put those same bits in with a few maggots.  The maggots got started on the bits - just very briefly before they were chomped up by Irene.  Who left the damned bits behind.  Again.

Then No. 1 Son tried smothering the bits with butter.  Irene nearly took his hand off in her eagerness to get the buttery bits eaten!  That evening we simply broke the large tablet in half, smothered them both in butter and they disappeared down Irene's throat so fast it made your head spin.

She rapidly improved and is back to normal now, as she proved by excavating one of her world famous "this way to Australia" holes this morning.

Oh, and that sinister finger-sized lump?   That turned out to be ..... her neck bones!

For LilyRaine

Can't seem to find a way to send you a direct message Lily.  You asked for a picture of Mr Pheasant and I will try to get one for you.  In the meantime, if you take a look on my blog at the post of 5 March 2012 "Pheasant Company" there's a picture of exactly the same type of male pheasant as the two who come to see me every day.  The head feathers look black in the picture, but in sunlight they have a beautiful deep greeny-blue shimmer to them.   There's also a picture of a female with her young.

Hope this helps.