Drama Queen's understudy

As you may remember from previous posts, our little flock's Drama Queen is Pom-Pom.   Her performance on the days she condescends to lay an egg deserves an Oscar, if not two.   Starting around 11 o'clock, when she's had time to come to a bit, she parades round and round the hen run.   This perambulation is accompanied by recitations from various Shakespeare plays, a wide selection of poetry, the famous aria from Madam Butterfly and her interpretation of Meg Ryan's 'When Harry Met Sally' performance.  You know that bit - after which an old biddy in the restaurant says, "I'll have what she's having"?  Honestly, Pom-Pom goes on and on for hours until she finally rids herself of her pesky egg at around 4 pm.

All our girls stop laying in October and refuse to start again until late February/early March time.  However, we saw the sun for a few moments last week.   That was enough to fool Mad Irene into thinking Spring had arrived, so she laid an egg.   

Not to be outdone, the next day Punk decided she'd lay one too.   When I went down to check up on everyone, she had made herself comfortable in the nestbox and had a far-away look on her face.   Unfortunately, things did not proceed as planned and when No. 1 Son went down to check them again, she was obviously not at all well.

She was tottering round the lower end of the run, wings drooping and looking very sorry for herself.   A quick look and we saw what looked like egg white dribbling down from her vent.  Her vent also didn't look right at all.   There was no egg to be found anywhere, so we were very worried that it had broken inside her.   Although it was Sunday, we knew our lovely rural vets run an emergency service.  OK, it would be expensive, but what choice did we have?  So we phoned, explained the situation and got an appointment to see her in a couple of hours.   Back we went to the chicken run to see how poor little Punk was doing.   

How was she doing?   I'll tell you how that scrawny-necked cockroach was doing.   She was absolutely fine!   She had deposited an egg in a convenient piece of mud by the cage gate and was busy tucking into some corn with the others.

We picked her up, checked her nether regions and everything was perfectly normal.   She started swearing at us (she can be a foul-mouthed fowl when she wants), so we let her return to yumming the corn.   Then we trudged back to the house to cancel the appointment with the vet.

Pom-Pom, watch out;  I suspect you have competition for that Oscar!