Getting stuck in

No. 1 Son commented today that I seem to have a lot more grey in my hair.  Given Maggie's stunt on Tuesday, this is hardly surprising.

It was a nice sunny afternoon for a change and we'd all spent a happy hour or so in the garden.   I know Maggie was out there because I'd watched her and her best mate Tu-Tu meandering round the garden together.  Anyway, I'd counted them all out hadn't I, and she certainly wasn't missing then.

The two old biddies exchanging gossip

However, when it came to counting them all back in at close of play, I discovered I only had 7 chickens instead of the 8 I had started with.   A quick look round the garden soon confirmed that nobody had been left outside.

Convinced she had quietly popped in to lay an egg, I checked the nest box.  No Maggie.  Nor was she in the caged area below.   Then we spotted the daft old biddy stuck fast behind the spare coop.  

She's not the exploring type, but she does love her food.  So my guess is she spotted a solitary piece of corn back there, or maybe a tomato seed and thought "That's for me!".   Having squeezed and pushed her way in, she then found she could move neither forward nor backward.   Luckily we came along fairly soon after and No. 1 Son moved the coop so she could escape.   She had to make her way out backwards (most undignified), but at least no harm had been done.  

We've now blocked each end so further exploration by any of my daft flock is impossible.  But I bet they are plotting how they can add further grey hairs to my collection, even as I'm typing this!

Doing one's duty

It appears that Fizz is finally taking his role as a cockerel seriously - sort of.  I'm talking about leadership qualities here; he's taken bonking seriously ever since he learned how to do it from Rocky (an Araucana cockerel, junior to Fizz, who used to live with us).

I used the words "leadership qualities".  On reflection, "escort duties" might be a bit more accurate.  Or do I mean .............. oh never mind, make your own mind up when you've read the blog.

It started at the weekend.  The pophole was opened and as usual out shot Rebecca, immediately followed by Mad Irene.  Then Fizz danced down the ramp.  Obviously he'd spotted the early birds and, being a Marvin Gaye fan, had decided to give them a little "Sexual Healing".

He got to the bottom of the ramp and realised that there were only two girls.  Good gracious, he couldn't manage on just the two!   In any case, he'd never been able to persuade our Light Sussex that she loved shorter men.  So he danced back up the ramp and into the coop.   There was a bit of a kerfuffle, then out stomped Tu-Tu looking more than a little hacked off.  Fizz followed close behind her.   As soon as he was certain she was safely downstairs, he turned and went back up again.

This time the air went blue, so he was obviously tackling Punk.   There was a heck of a ruction before she made an appearance.  She stood for a moment in the pophole, might even have turned round and gone back to bed.  But Fizz was having none of it.  So she flounced down the ramp and headed for the nearest food dish.

Back up the ramp strode our tireless little cockerel, only to come beak to beak with a very bleary-eyed Maggie at the top, whose beauty sleep had been ruined by the noise.   What Fizz wanted to do was get behind her and give her an encouraging push.  But being a bantam Orpington, Maggie has enough feathers to fill a duvet.  So there's no getting past her.   She began her slow, stately progress down the ramp.   Fizz had no option but to descend too - backwards.

At that point, Fizz gave up and didn't even bother Pom-Pom.  Something similar happened last year, so maybe waking the girls and making them get up is going to become an annual event.

A few days later he thought of another angle to try.   He'd escort them to the nest box when they wanted to lay an egg.   He decided to practice with Rebecca.   The trouble was, Rebecca didn't want to lay an egg right then.   So although she was happy to go for a walk into the coop with him, she turned round and walked straight back out again.   He followed.  That wasn't what he had in mind at all!   So he ushered her back in.   She immediately led the way out.

Things weren't going according to plan at all.  Well, not the original plan.  But then he spotted Maggie standing knee-deep in one of Irene's craters - the perfect height for a bonk!  So he did his cockerel duty and felt so much better for it.

Irene is on the case!

I'm convinced that our chickens' main aim in life is to provide us with laughs, no matter how cold and miserable we and the weather may be.   Eggs are simply a secondary by-product.

The flock had been let out of their run for a while so that they could either dig up or eat the lawn, depending on their inclination.   A series of little heaps of corn were placed along the pavement too.   The leftover corn was thrown into the upper half of the run, partly to give Pom-Pom a chance to have a quiet munch on her own and partly to give everyone something to scratch around for later on.

As usual, Mad Irene was running round like the maniac she is, checking that nobody had anything that she felt she should have instead.   All of a sudden, she remembered that we had disappeared into the run.  That could only mean one thing;  we had sneaked something in there that she didn't know about!

Any normal hen would have made her way through the gate, walked along between the smoking shelter and coop, climbed the three steps and got to the top of the run in a calm, ladylike manner.  Not Irene!  No time, you see.  Must check for goodies.  Hell of a rush.   Vital she got there first!

So Irene being Irene, she roared in through the gate and decided to take a shortcut across the smoking shelter roof.   Neither timing nor elegance are strong points with this girl.  She took off a tad early, landed almost on her bottom and slithered across the corrugated plastic roof.   This meant she met with the  low fence instead of hurdling over it like poultry's answer to Sally Gunnell.    However, walloping into the fence didn't prevent her toppling over it.   She somehow landed on her tummy, but ...... oh joy!  There, just a neck stretch ahead of her, was a piece of corn.

Mission accomplished!

Spring is here - or is it?

At the end of January Mad Irene spotted some sunshine.   It only lasted about half an hour, but that was enough to convince her that Spring had arrived, so she laid an egg.   All the girls had given up producing eggs at the back end of October, so we were delighted that Irene had gone back into production.   We hoped that the rest of them would take the hint too.

We waited and waited, but although Irene was now in top gear and presenting us with lovely offerings every other day, nobody else showed any enthusiasm whatsoever.   Then, a fortnight later, Punk dramatically produced one as described in an earlier post.   But just the one.   She now seems to have settled into a routine of laying one egg every two weeks.  The other part of her egg laying routine is to drop them just outside the coop, preferably in a bit of mud if she can find some.

A couple of days ago I remembered that last year she laid her eggs in a nest box in the spare coop, so I went off to check if she was hiding some there.  Instead, I found three Titian eggs.  She has continued to keep them at half their previous size and with a very pointy end, but at least she's laying.

Earlier in the week, I was delighted to find that Tu-Tu had joined in the egg laying bonanza.  She has always been totally reliable, laying an egg every other day from the day she arrived, except in Winter.  Now I'm beginning to wonder if she's taken a leaf out of Punk's book and intends to lay only on alternate weeks, because there's been no follow up.   We shall see.

There's no sign of Maggie even considering getting into the nestbox for any purpose other than sleeping.  I am, however, surprised that Rebecca hasn't laid yet.  Normally when Irene does something, Rebecca is hot on her heels and copies her.   Seems she's drawn the line at egg production though.  The one hen who doesn't surprise me is Pom-Pom.  She hates the whole egg laying thing and tries to avoid doing it as much as possible.   She managed to reduce her performance by half last year, and she's no doubt hoping like mad that she's gone into early henopause this year.

And then there's Fizz.   The day Irene spotted the sunshine, Fizz spotted Rebecca and chased her round the run.   He's done a bit of chasing and dancing, but not nearly as much as in past years.   Last week when they were all out in the garden munching on the lawn, Tu-Tu actually invited Fizz over by squatting before he'd even made an improper suggestion.   He gratefully accepted the invitation.   So it came as something of a surprise to him when she gave him a sharp peck post-coitus!

It's not too long before we mess around with our clocks and end up with an extra hour of daylight.  Hopefully, that will remind all the girls that their job is to produce our breakfasts.

Sitting ducks they ain't!

In January last year I passed on an hilarious story about chickens that invaded someone's house.   This time it's ducks that have caused me so much amusement.   Their escapade appeared on the Down The Lane Facebook page and is reproduced with the kind permission of their owner.

The adventurers

"Tonight, I had to do several laps of the kitchen, into the hall, into the dining room, back to the hall, into the lounge, out of the lounge, into the dining room........and so on.....following my two ducks.  Not impressed.  I had to follow them very slowly so as not to scare them.  The second they get worried....yup, splat on the floor....thank heavens its wooden.  Cat was doing the rounds with the ducks.  She even lapped them.  They took no notice.

"I had been madly busy all day, in and out of the house 5 times.  When this happened I was only home for about half an hour.  I thought - go and check on/lock up chickens.  Darned ducks.  I came through the back door, following the ducks inside.  There were 2 eggs in each cardigan pocket, 3 eggs in my hands and I holding an empty feed bucket - chasing these ducks.  Hubby sat on sofa laughing, daughter sat with headphones on, staring at PC saying "what?" while I'm flapping around trying not to drop/crush eggs in pockets.  Stress or what!   As if that wasn't enough, went out for 2 hour lecture on web design, came home to cockerel crowing (11pm) and ducks on patio shouting for dinner.  Went to investigate cockerel noise and guess what happened......

"At least they only made it into the downstairs bathroom this time.  I will remember to shut the door when I go out next time....I think...."

Temper, temper!

Punk being jolly cross

One of the reasons we could never fit an automatic pop hole closing thingy to our chicken coop is Pom-Pom.   Unless it's pouring with rain, she always roosts on the cage gate; sometimes she stays out even if it is raining.  This means one of us has to go down to the run every evening, check whether she's out or in and deposit her inside the coop with the others if necessary.  Only then can the pop hole be closed up.   That "someone" is generally No. 1 Son.

Yesterday evening he went down to lock up and Pom-Pom was comfortably hunkered down on the gate.   All the others were nicely settled inside the coop.  Maggie and Titian were snuggled up in the nest box, Tu-Tu was in solitary splendour on the back perch and everyone else had jammed themselves onto the front perch.

Then No. 1 Son opened the side door of the coop to pop Pom-Pom inside.   This annoyed Mad Irene so much that she got off the perch, leaving a convenient space for Pom-Pom.

So far, so good.  Unfortunately, that meant Pom-Pom was right next to Punk, who took strong exception to having to sit next to her ladyship.   So the Araucana decided to give Madame a good, hard peck.  Fortunately the hand is quicker than the beak and my son managed to move his between Punk's beak and Pom-Pom's head.  So she got him instead.   This made Punk even crosser and more determined to get at Pom-Pom.   So she drew herself up to her full height, stretched her neck to its greatest extent and tried to deliver her peck over the top of the offending hand.   Her effort was just that bit too much for her equilibrium;  she overbalanced and fell off the perch!

That was the last straw!  She stalked off to the other perch, delivering a totally ineffective peck to Pom-Pom's tail as she passed it.

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!