Odd title I know but all will be explained in due course. It is Sunday evening and I can hear the moorhens chirping outside so there must be some sort of predator hanging about that they are trying to dissuade.
The new hens are starting to settle although they have suffered a great deal of pecking whilst the hierarchy is established. Their names are as follows; Honey, Phantom, Mimi and Candy Floss. Their names will make some sense when you look at their pictures. When we went to collect them we were having a general hen discussion which prompted Brodie to ask why some hens were called Phantoms?! Yes we did stop laughing eventually and decided to name one of the new batch in honour of his malapropism.
The new arrivals have necessitated some internal adjustments to the Hen House. They now have a bank of three nesting boxes, an additional wine box having been added. The original wine box, or Trap 3 as it is now known was the preferred laying spot from day one, although I collected four eggs from Trap 2 this afternoon so who knows how they decide where to lay from one day to the next. The Fortnum's box seems to be out of favour now, possibly too close to the door. The new hens are not laying yet but I don't suppose it will be long. We sold all our spare eggs again last Sunday so I am sure that we will have no trouble when they do start to lay.
It has been raining all day today so the whole brood looked very bedraggled indeed this afternoon. I did try and make some drainage holes through the clay last weekend but got absolutely nowhere. The gate way to the coop seems to be the absolute lowest point of the field so most of the water is accumulating there. Our constant coming and going seems to be making the ground sink even lower making the problem even worse. We decided to let them have a bit of free ranging last week so allowed them out into the field where they happily scratched around for an hour or so. Mostly in the daffodils that we have planted around their fence it has to be said. We don't let them roam free unless we are within sight as there are still too many places that they can wander off to at the moment so after a while I decided to put them back in the coop. Obviously I didn't properly take account of the fact that they hadn't decided that they wanted to back in so a merry chase began. The original four are now quite easy to catch as they cower as soon as you go near them. However, as quickly as I put them in they were wandering back out so I decided to close the gate and return them to the coop,by gently lobbing them over the fence. The newbies however were rather more difficult to deal with, being somewhat less accommodating and considerably faster than their fatter and more domesticated colleagues. The last two fugitives were Candy Floss and Honey, the latter of which had given David and Linda the right run around the night before! Apparently it had taken then half an hour to catch her to put her away and that was while she was inside the coop! How on earth was I going to catch the little rascal and her mischievous mate when they had the whole field to run away in?
"Are you coming to bed?" Joanna is calling?
"Who, me?" I reply.
"No! Jack Essery, who do you think?" she calls back.
Jack Essery was apparently the man who lived next door to Joanna when she was growing up and this was the phrase that her mother used to use when presented with the type of stupid question that I asked above. Joanna has now started to use it with our children and whilst at first they didn't really understand what she was blathering on about they now find it highly amusing whenever they are the victims. I actually rather suspect that they ask the stupid questions on purpose just to hear her say it.
"Are you,going to wash those dishes?"
"What these dishes?"
"No! Jack Essery's whose do you think?"
Try it, it's quite fun!!!
