Wednesday 27 January 2010

Chooks update











Well, today my girls went walkabout...I eventually found them gardening out front. They had been very busy scratching up a storm of slugs and snails that had foolishly been trying to sleep the winter out...bit silly to choose flowerpots and crevices within the reach of the girls manicured talons...I heard them all before I saw them...chattering away amongst the bamboo. Then once they saw me...carrying their breakfasts in a dish, they came rushing out to tell me what they had been doing and how well they had done it..then they formed a helter skelter rush to escort me back up to their little house where they threw them selves onto the corn. Three wonderful brown eggs lay in amongst the yellow straw....cheese omelets for lunch..yum.

Keeping chickens is far more rewarding than I thought it was going to be.
When my parents bought 500 of the little darlings back in 1972 they were a complete nightmare...seriously ykk. Hen pecked is a real expression....and well observed. They were beastly birds all with evil in their eyes..Alfred Hitchcock would have loved them. Murderers everyone of them....apart from the victims...who died gruesome deaths. The job lot came with the small holding and we all naively thought they would be fun! Hah.....Not one solid path was there to push the wheelbarrow of feed along...only knee deep mud and my poor little mum was only 5'2".....she'd practically disappear. We moved in on December 6th and it rained everyday for about 6 weeks.

That first Christmas morning my father went down to collect the eggs and found one solitary offering. This he placed in his pocket and you guessed it...as soon as he got back in the kitchen he sat on it. At least it was cause for mirth. A little later that same Christmas day we had all settled down for the traditional festive lunch when the calm was shattered by a phone call to let us know that all of our horses...knewly moved to the pasture, had found gaping holes that had previously remained hidden..everyone of the had trotted off down to the village to explore...Ahh happy days.

But my three little lovelies are a constant delight and so affectionate. They are called after three other lovely thespian ladies. Helen, Meryl and Judy...and they are such characters...the bossy one is Helen.

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