What Day is it in the Big Girl Household?

With the sun shining again today, I ventured outside with every intention of a day in the garden. I am slightly distracted by a puzzle at the moment, which the tall one started but then lost interest after five minutes. Determind not to immediately return the pieces to the box, I decided I would undertake the challenge to complete it when I had a spare moment. This decision, of course, has meant that when I do have some spare time (waiting for a zoom meeting, after lunch, whilst watching the nightly Govt coronavirus briefing) I have been there, searching for the relevant piece to complete a section. Back to the garden, which I was late getting outside too because of said puzzle.

First port of call was checking up on my girls (we have 4 chickens) as one of them seems to be off colour. They are always round my legs when I am outside, pecking at my shoes or trousers (or bare legs if I am in shorts!) but today there were only three of them following me about as we seem to have one wee girl under the weather. I had noticed at the weekend that she wasn't keeping up with the rest, But it was noticeable when I put them to bed last night as she was right by the door of the hen house and apparently last out this morning.

I found her wandering about lethargically, sitting down every so often to rest her weary wings, but she is still eating, chatting and drinking so I am taking heart from this. These four girls (a picture of one is attached as she was quite happy to pose yesterday when I was out in the garden with the camera) have only been with us for about a year, given to us by someone who  has a local chicken farm and sells the eggs. When I say has a farm, more a business as they have around 20,000 which is slightly more than the four we have in our garden. Therefore, I hope she is still with us tomorrow.

We started keeping chickens about five years ago. I had always wanted them but could never persuade my other half that they would be an asset to any household. Luckily, I found an ally in the lad who lives up the lane who had rescued two from a local chicken farm just before they were about to be despatched to chicken heaven.He also bred his own chickens and offered to give some more, which he did. Inevitably we ended up with cockerels as well as chickens. The two cockerels were gorgeous (N nicknamed them 'Frango' and 'Kip' - both words for chicken in Portuguese and Dutch accordingly) and they, of course, got friendly with the other chickens. Soon there were wee chicks everywhere including twelve born in our compost heap and five by my husband's BT van. As much as they were so cute, we knew we couldn't keep them all so started to give them away. We soon had complaints when folk realised it is quite difficult to sex a chicken and some of the cuties turned out to be cockerels!

    Our chickens have gradually gone over the years so last year we sought replacements. I do like my feathered friends; I quite like the way they chat to me when they are in the garden.  The way they get under your feet when you are attempting to hang out the washing or help you with digging the garden. Yes, parts of our garden have been mistreated as they search for bugs and there are bare patches of grass too. And they do have a temptation to use our veg patches as a dust bath. But I wouldn't be without them. They are lovely little creatures plus keep us supplied in eggs. There is acknowledgement of their presence from the cat and they all tolerate each other within the perimeter of the garden. So I hope when I get up and let them out tomorrow that there are four chickens that meet and greet me first thing, and that we are not one bird down. Fingers crossed.