Sunshine on my Shoulders

Another week, another country...

I feel less guilty about leaving the gorgeous one as he has the girls to concentrate on and to occupy his time! But, as I'm not home right now, it's very difficult for me to give you a true and/or full update on how they are and what they've been up to.

So what I'll have to do is share a couple of pictures I took of the girls sunbathing last week and not tell you about the carpet of poo I cleared up from their run on Sunday (2 bags worth). Oh, I wasn't going to tell you that was I?

Sorry.

Anyway, here are the pictures as promised.

Speak soon!

You've got a friend

The gorgeous one is cleaning out the girls as we speak and he just had a little bit of a row with one of them as he needed to get them away from the house to hose it out and one of them wanted to be in the run. I could see him trying to reason with her to get her to leave the run! It won't work, you know, they won't be reasoned with. When you want them in the run, they want to stay out and when you want them out, they want to go in!

They're following him round the garden as well, although they still don't want him to stroke them (Omelette especially). Must be because he gave them a treat this morning, even if it was unintentional, I'll explain. There was a moth in the kitchen this morning so, friend to all animals, the gorgeous one, picked it up and chucked it out the back door. It flew for a bit, landed and was promptly eaten by one of the chickens. Not very friendly that, he's now insisting that the girls are murderers. It's true actually, they chase butterflies and flies round the garden trying to eat them!

Omelette and Yoko have more new feather growth which is good as Omelette still looks like we brought her back from the battery farm yesterday and it's such a contrast to Mabel who is just beautiful. Yoko has lots of the new feather growth too which is good and hopefully they will both catch up to Mabel. Omelette is still worrying us slightly as her eggs are not really forming their shells as they should. The gorgeous one is going to look into what else we can do, specifically to help her. they already have a mineral added to their food to help strengthen their shells and it seems to be working with Mabel and Yoko (who produce just lovely eggs). I think we need something we can give to Omelette directly that's a bit more concentrated. I feel another internet search coming on! She's laid another one like that again today.

At the weekend the girls got a new friend, this new friend was very happy to follow in their footsteps and gather all the leftovers and small bits of loveliness that they dug up and missed. Their new friend even came over to their house and hopped around a bit, it looked very funny actually as their new friend was a Robin! It was a little odd actually as the girls are normally a bit funny about birds in their space and when we had cherries on the floor they wouldn't let anything else near them!

Anyway, they have a nice treat and are out all day today and they will be again on Friday. They do believe it's their god given right now, they have forgotten completely that they only used to have a tiny bit of room which they used to share with four other chickens. Everyone should adopt a chicken or at least stop buying battery eggs.

Walk like a man

Hey there chicken fans

Updating you live from the garden - okay, well the house but I can see the garden!

I know that there has been a big gap in the lives of you all which I am now going to fill with Chickens!!!!! As an apology for this you will get an update picture of the three of them!

This summer we have been infiltrated by some MASSIVE spiders - they seem to be hiding in the drying washing for some reason, and when I say massive I mean HUGE! Now neither myself or the gorgeous one like spiders very much but I haven't been as brave as my lovely man as he has been catching them under glasses and bits of paper. This has made me big happy as they are too huge to just be left, this has also made the girls big happy as he has been feeding the spiders to them! They are big juicy spiders but they don't stand a chance against 3 hungry hens and they do love their bugs!

Not only are we keeping chickens in our garden, but I have been growing vegetables in pots at the bottom of the garden (protected from the chickens). I have been growing parsnips, beetroot, carrots and cucumbers. It's my first time growing anything and I was super excited when green shoots appeared in the tubs! Well, with a busy life, they maybe haven't had as much attention as they should have had and so the harvest has not been the greatest in the world. BUT, I have had carrots, admittedly very small carrots but carrots nonetheless. Well, when I was pulling them out of the tubs on Sunday, there were certain girls who were incredibly interested in what I was doing but when offered carrots fresh from the earth they pecked at them and then walked off. These chickens don't like carrots then. Do chickens like carrots usually?

Omelette, our comedy chicken, has started to do this move every now and again. It reminds me of Louis Spence doing one of his over the top dance moves. She stretches out her wing and the leg on the same side goes stretching out behind her and it just looks very funny and a little bit strange (well, that's Louis Spence for you isn't it?).

On Sunday we had a little (!) gathering to celebrate the girl child's (and mine) birthday so we had a few people over. The gorgeous one wanted to put music on in the kitchen and so he wanted to keep the door open, I kept telling him that he had to keep an eye on the girls then as they do think they should be allowed to go wherever they like (including the house). Well, he wasn't paying all that close attention and Mabel got in the kitchen and made it as far as the fridge! Now I don't mean she stopped when she got to the fridge for a snack, I mean she got that far before the gorgeous one stopped her!

They do like it when we have a lot of people over and they're not at all worried by anyone. I think they know that there will be crumbs or little bits of dropped foods so they're quite happy to hang about, wander round, socialise with everyone - it's lovely to see.

The girls are at various stages in growing back feathers and looking lovely, Mabel is ahead of them all, with a full plumage of lovely new feathers. Yoko is middling with some nice new feathers but still has straggly wings and Omelette, well she looks like she came from the Battery Farm yesterday! Bless her.

Anyway, sorry for the long drag between blogs, I'll try and keep you better informed next time, so until then I'll be clucking off now!!!!!