A tale of two Polands

Do you remember how astounded I was, a couple of posts ago, about the huge changes in Pom-Pom's regime?

"Puts herself to bed in the coop," I said.

"Gets up at the same time as the others," I said.

"Lays her eggs in the nestbox," I said.

Well delete all of the above!   She waited until that story had been safely stored on my blog and read by you, then went back to her old habits.   

I do find myself wondering about a couple of things though.   You know how sometimes you get so comfortable on the settee that, much to your surprise, you wake up to find you'd nodded off without realising it.  Well perhaps that's what has happened to Pom-Pom this last day or two - the log being her equivalent of a settee.   And to be fair, we all oversleep occasionally don't we.   So that could be why Madam didn't appear at breakfast time yesterday and blinked groggily at me when I opened up the coop to check on her.   And I'm sure there's a plausible reason why she laid her egg in the furthermost corner of the spare coop yesterday too.  I just can't think of one at the moment.

And so, inevitably, we come to Fizz.   When I let everyone out yesterday, Maggie and the two Araucanas scooted to the top end of the run to hoover up the pellets they knew they'd find there.   A minute later, Fizz dashed up after them (he'd stopped for a quick bite to eat downstairs first).   He headed straight for Rebecca, his intentions being strictly dishonourable - as if we didn't know. 

Unfortunately for him, Rebecca was breakfasting right beside Maggie and Maggie does not like to be disturbed when she's eating.   Poor old Fizz found himself being chased back from whence he came.   It was just his luck that Irene was on her way up, just as he was on his rather rapid way down.  That irritated her because breakfast was being delayed..   So there he was, sandwiched between a grouchy Orpington and a tetchy Light Sussex.   His only way was up and he made a magnificent vertical leap.

The snag with his strategic withdrawal plan was that he came straight down again and found himself in the same adverse circumstances.  Before Irene and Maggie could have another go at him, he ducked under the log and legged it across the run.  Then jumped onto the smoking shelter roof and down into the lower run, coming to a halt by me.

I stroked his back and reassured him that he was still the prettiest cockerel in the run.  He seemed happier after that and went on his way.

Follow my leader

It was cold and wet here this morning, so I decided to give the chickens a choice of breakfasts.  They could get their beaks into some warm mash, or they could munch on their normal pellets.

I put most of their food in little cups which can be hung on the outside of the cage if it's good weather, or inside the cage if it looks like rain.  I also throw a few pellets around the run so they can have fun scratching around to find them.  As it was raining heavily today, all their food went inside the covered cage area.

When I opened the pop-hole, Rebecca and Punk hurtled out as usual, got to the open cage gate ....... and hesitated.   Hmmmm.  Was that rain they saw before them?   Did they like rain?   Neither of them could remember, so they dithered around, just inside the gate.

Mad Irene had no such problem!   She ran full pelt down the ramp, forced a path between the two Araucanas and raced up the steps into the top part of the run.   The two little Lavender bantams took off after her.  After all, Irene knows best.

But confusion reigned once they reached their destination.   Where were their pellets?  There were always pellets round here in the morning!  Punk did a quick recce in case I'd hidden them somewhere, discovered I hadn't and realised she was getting wet.  So she took herself back to the cage.

What made things even more confusing for Rebecca was a distinct lack of  Fizz.  By now she would normally be doing her best to avoid his amorous attentions, but he was nowhere to be seen.   He, very sensibly, had taken one look at the weather and decided that today the chicken equivalent of a Full English Breakfast was called for.

Rebecca looked hopefully at Irene; were they going back inside too?  But apparently not.  Rebecca is too young to remember the time I heard a commotion in the hen run and rushed out to the rescue in a torrential downpour.  I arrived, drenched through to my knickers, only to find it was Irene doing her Gene Kelly "Singing in the Rain" impersonation!   I was not impressed.

So Rebecca trudged round after Irene, but cast many a longing glance at the rest of the flock, all nice and dry.  It's one of the drawbacks of being an acolyte.  Where the leader goes - you must follow.

Change of tactics

Pom-Pom in her favourite place

Pom-Pom's behaviour over the past week has had us totally bewildered. 

If you remember, this is the chicken who absolutely detests laying eggs.   Her normal modus operandi has been to start grumbling (quite loudly for her size) from around 11 o'clock each morning.  She would carry on complaining, while marching round and round, until late afternoon.   Then she would rid herself of the offending egg wherever she happened to be at the time.   On one momentous occasion, she dropped her egg (literally) while she was standing on my foot!  It wasn't even too unusual for her to dispose of the distasteful item whilst still on the move!

Almost a week ago we were astonished to find one of her eggs in the nest box.  Obviously this was an oversight on her part - or so we thought.   Then blow me, we found another in the nest box two days later and a third two days after that!  And there's been no histrionics all day long, not a peep!

As if that wasn't enough of a surprise, she's changed a couple of her other habits of a lifetime too.   At bedtime, we've always had to remove her from her favoured roosting place and put her in the coop with the others.  We've found her in the tangle of honeysuckle branches or on the roof of one or other of the coops.  For some time she favoured the gate of the cage beneath the main coop.   Lately she's been nodding off on the log in the run.  But for the last three nights on the trot, we've found her inside the coop with the others, comfortably tucked up on a perch.

As if all that wasn't enough for us to contend with, she now gets up at the same time as the rest of the flock!  She may be the last one to leave the coop, but out she comes.   To be fair, she does look rather groggy as she staggers down the ramp, but there's no more of the "Don't bother me in my boudoir, it's far too early" nonsense.

We find all this somewhat disconcerting; it's not like the Pom-Pom we know and love.   Or maybe it's just that our little girl is all grown up.   Oh dear, I think I need a cup of tea while I leaf through her baby photographs.

It's bath time!

The chickens spent a good part of last week trying to dig up my dwarf ornamental cherry tree.  For the most part it was sunny, they had nothing better to do, so why not?

Tu-Tu quietly let them get on with it, watching their progress from the other side of the lawn.   When she judged that they'd got rid of most of the grass and had churned the earth up nicely, she acted.  

Irene, Rebecca and Punk  thought they were digging for worms.  Tu-Tu, however, needed a bath and took advantage of their hard work to get one.   She settled down in a nice little spot next to the tree and began her ablutions.

Maggie thought this was a great idea and came over to join her.  Her big mistake was choosing an area immediately behind Tu-Tu because that's where she kept finding her face.  Buried in Tu-Tu's behind.  Every time either she or Tu-Tu wriggled around in the dry earth, Maggie's face seemed to end up buried in Tu-Tu's exuberant mass of tail feathers.  She tolerated it for so long, but after the 5th or 6th time she decided that enough was enough.  So she stood up and slowly walked round Tu-Tu,  thrusting her head towards the little Pekin and glaring at her.  Then she went and settled down again -  exactly where she had been before!

This bit of action aroused the interest of some of the others, who wandered over to see what was going on.

Irene gets up close and personal, Fizz nestles down beside Tu-Tu

After a moment or two, Fizz decided to have a bath too.   But as usual, things don't turn out quite the way he intends them to.

Fizz has to do things the awkward way!

He ended up with his bum jammed against the tree and his face wedged up against the compost bags!   His antics caused Titian a great deal of concern, so she came over to check that he was all right.

Titian trying to work out what on earth Fizz is doing!

Watching chickens take dust baths is always lovely - but this time it was like going to a pantomime, it was so much fun to watch.   But it must have made Tu-Tu particularly tired this time because come bedtime, look where she chose to sleep:-

Tu-Tu nestles under Irene's wing

Shock tactics

It seems the chickens have devised a game of "let's see who can make Trish jump most". 

It began with one or other of them quietly creeping up behind me and then brushing against my leg as they walked past.  It doesn't matter that there's plenty of room for them to pass without touching me.  Oh no - that would spoil things because it would be unlikely to make me jump.

When they got fed up with doing that, they changed tactics a bit.  Sometimes I like to just sit quietly in the garden, thinking of nothing in particular.  Usually, I let the flock out to play, but now and then I just want the garden to myself.  So they gather at their gate and mutter darkly to each other about how selfish some people are, not sharing their garden.

Then Irene discovered that if she gets up on the coop roof and jumps down onto the nest box roof as hard as she can, she can make a hell of a racket.  And that racket will make me jump out of my skin!   Ha!   Another point for the chickens.

Pom-Pom very often wanders round beneath the bench, pecking away at random bits of corn that nobody else has noticed.  I'm sure the little madam pointed out to Irene that if she sneaked under the bench, she would be perfectly placed to rush out between my ankles.  That, she thought, should have a remarkable effect on my nerves.  Irene thought so too and put the plan into action, with the result that that I nearly dropped my mug of tea, I got such a surprise.

I can't work out if I've done something to upset them, or if they just like a bit of fun at my expense!

Last egg standing

I belong to a lovely Facebook page called Down The Lane.   The members are not only very knowledgeable when it comes to the care of chickens, they are also great fun.

Which is how I found myself trying to emulate what one of the ladies managed to achieve.  I couldn't.  But my son managed it - see if you can do it too.

My eggs rolled all over the place, but my son managed to make an egg stand upright

Faster than a speeding pullet

It's exceedingly rare for me to be lost for words.  But not only has it happened, the incident causing this malfunction with my mouth took place in the hen run!

It was a lovely morning.   The birds were singing and the sheep were making their way into the field with their new offspring when I went down to open up the coop.  Irene, Rebecca, Maggie and Titian had all made an appearance and were followed, as usual, by Fizz.

It goes without saying that Fizz immediately chased after Rebecca with only one thing on his mind.  And, as is always the case, Rebecca took off like a bat out of hell up the run.

The run is a triangular shape and narrows sharply at the top, which is where the little Araucana was heading, Fizz hard on her heels.   Almost too late, she realised that if she didn't do something, and do it rapidly, she was going to be cornered.   In a second or two, she'd have nowhere to go.  That would mean submission to Fizz's attentions, and she simply wasn't in the mood this morning.

Fizz was closing in rapidly, so she took evasive action in the most novel way.   She swung round and escaped by running between his legs!   

And that, dear readers, was when words failed me.