Chickens - The Serial

Scraping around in the courtyard

Well, I have to say they are fun! They're not much work, we're getting two eggs a day from our two new point-of-lay hens and they're all getting on swimmingly. Or is that ducks....?

There's something very homely and comforting about the gentle noises these birds make as they scrape around their run. It's very much a sound redolent of comfortable living, lazy days and cups of tea in a sunlit garden. Perhaps a cuckoo calls in the background as the postman waves cheerily as he passes your gate - no bills today thank you!

As I write this I'm sitting in my back yard with the hens scraping around my feet. The traffic on the A21 is slow as hoards of families head towards Hastings and the beaches, the sun is blazing down, the breeze is lazily susserating through the beech trees and I have fresh bread in the kitchen and a coffee in my hand. The Olympics are drawing to a close and Great Britain have done more than enough to still the voices of the curmudgeons like myself who initially showed concern about the cost of the games and a lack of interest in the results. The sound of screeching U turns is very loud around here! Even my son Ben, an avid tweeter of all things that feel foul, has been to the Olympic Park and enjoyed his day.

The hens love the back yard; compared to their run which is now devoid of life and where a snail can be spotted by a beady eye from 50 yards, it's a veritable jungle and I had an odd flashback to fishing as I watched them rooting around. I used to love seeing reeds flicker as the sub-surface activity of fish caused their trembling movement and in the back yard, it's the swaying of raspberry canes, rosemary bushes and sage plants. Occasionally a head pops up or a long neck is stretched to reach a ripe raspberry, but the result is the same.

So the two new girls, Peggoty and Polly, had a few problems being accepted by Molly and Hilda initially, so for one day I kept the two new girls in the inner coop cage. Then I thought "Hang on, why am I punishing the victims?" so I put Hilda and Molly in the cage instead and that did the trick, in less than 24 hours, the twins had taught the youngsters to go to bed at night and were snuggling up together in the hemp bedding. Result, and peace in the hen house.