“Who laid an egg like this? David, it's over to you.”

Imagine mine and Mr Swift’s excitement on returning home on Thursday evening to find not one but two eggs in the nest box! I’ll give you a hand conjuring up the mental image – picture a man and a women in their late 30s, jumping up and down in the pitch dark, asking a couple of chickens “Which one of you clever girls laid this?”

One egg was definitely Margot’s finest; 65g, mid-brown with slight speckling. Next to it was a small but perfectly formed 50g egg which must have been from one of the new girls (unless they’d shoplifted it from the Spar). Immediately photographed it for posterity then texted everyone with the good news. Dear God, just typing that makes me realise how tragic that was.

Only one problem with this tale of happiness – which girl had laid the egg?

I love a good mystery, so in true Nancy Drew fashion I set about hatching (ha!) a plan to identify the girl responsible. I figured the most obvious route would be to catch the hen in the act – Plan A. This was cruelly thwarted from the offset as only Margot laid on Saturday. Hmm, time for Plan B; analyse the new girls’ appearance and behaviour for any tell-tale signs. Both Barbara and Tomasina are exhibiting different, but equally compelling signs of being in lay. So that was Plan B buggered. Figured I’d start again with Plan A on Sunday.

This morning i let them out at 7am – no egg. Popped back to bed for a couple of hours only to check back to find another perfectly formed 50g egg. Marvellous - I find myself outwitted yet again by a bird with the brain capacity of a cheap digital watch.

Time for Plan C - the webcam.

Give a warm welcome to....

Barbara (top) and Tomasina, my two beautiful new hens. They have been at RCC for three weeks and have settled in nicely. We only had 24 hours of bickering before a new pecking order was established. Naturally, Margot is top hen. Equally unsurprising news; Eli is bottom of the order. He’s so uniformly hated by all three hens that they manage to corner him in the greenhouse and chase him up the tree every time the four of them appear in the garden together.

Max doesn’t fare any better. This afternoon Tomasina gave him a sharp peck (in her defence, he was asking for it), forcing him to retreat to the safety of the command centre (shed roof) to dream up a cruel and unusual act of revenge he’ll never manage to execute.

Gerry, our recently departed hen, may be gone but certainly not forgotten. Mr Swift and I have decided to grow a tree in her honour, so I am currently trying to source a dwarf cherry tree that we can christen Gerry the Cherry. Think she would have appreciated the comedy value.

A sad day at RCC

I am heartbroken to report that Jerry the hen was put to sleep this afternoon. She became ill on Friday with peritonitis and despite mine and Kate the vets best efforts we were unable to save her.

She spent the weekend living in the house, sitting on my lap watching TV. I don't think she cared much for the Joe/Gail storyline in Corrie but seemed to really enjoy Glee.

I now have to put my sadness to one side and start looking for some new companions for poor Margot who is having a thoroughly miserable time as a flock of one.

I'll keep you posted.

The Cove

I'm not one for crying at films; Mr Swift is the sensitive creature in our house. He sobbed for the last 15 minutes of Monsters Inc. - I could have died with shame.

However, yesterday I cried my eyes out for most of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Cove (now out on DVD). I won't spoil it for you but it surrounds the Herculean efforts of a group of filmmakers and activists to expose a horrific dolphin culling practice in a Japanese coastal town. If it doesn’t win the Oscar I will be mightily outraged.

Go watch it now, but remember to have your hankie to hand

Psycho chicken

It’s a milestone birthday for my Mother this year (clue - she’s past 50 and not yet in her 60s....). so in order for her to go away on holiday, safe in the knowledge that all’s well at home, I have agreed to spend the week in Shropshire looking after her six hens – Rose, Petal, Hyacinth, Esmée, Violet and Gertrude.

One small problem – it would appear that Hyacinth has anger management issues. Since coming into lay she will attack anyone who disturbs her during this delicate time. My poor Mother had to fend her off with a bucket as she tried to climb her arm and peck her face off.

Imagine me, alone in this house for a week. How long do you think it would be before anyone found me; lying at the foot of the coop, a veritable chicken buffet?

I’m thinking of investing in a taser.

Operation run improvement – stage one

Never let it be said that i don’t deliver as promised. Here are a few pics of the extended run with its new flooring. Unfortunately not all went to plan due to situations way beyond my control . The ground was far too wet to lay paving slabs underneath the pond liner base so this has been shelved until Spring. The corrugated roofing has yet to materialise so I’ve been keeping the bedding (aubiose – wonderful stuff) dry with an IKEA shower curtain and the Eglu winter shade. Not the most ascetically pleasing set-up but as Pluto said, necessity is the mother of invention.

The girls seem to be enjoying the extra space and have really taken to the perches i've built for them using terracotta window boxes and old brances from our apple tree.

Just in case you were wondering quite how bad the run had got i took this photo just before we got started on the new set-up.  Bearing in mind my chickens get a thorough clean-out every Saturday morning this is still what i ended up with after a few weeks of snow and sub-zero temperatures - a woodchip/mud/newspaper sludge.

Thankfully, with the new system in place the run will be lovely whatever the weather - hurrah!     

 

Goldfish vs chicken

Happy New Year from RCC! Thank goodness that snow's buggered off.  Right, back to blogging business. Let's start the New Year with a bit of sarcasm.

I am always highly amused by the following statement on the Omlet (Eglu makers) website:

If you are looking for a low-maintenance easy-going pet then your search is over - chickens are seriously chilled out! No need to take for walks, chickens quite happily look after themselves and unlike a rabbit or goldfish, Omlet chickens come with a lifetime supply of eggs.

So, ‘seriously chilled out’ chickens are quite happy to look after themselves....hmmmmmm.....now that’s utter nonsense. I know what the wonderful team at Omlet are getting at here; Chickens do happily get on with their lives during the day whilst you’re at work. But they’re far from low maintenance and my ‘lifetime supply of eggs’ has, as expected, dried up for the winter.

As regular readers will know i have both chickens and  a goldfish - the much maligned, enigmatic Ron. Here are a few examples of where Ron wins hands down in the maintenance stakes:

1. I have never had to apply Vaseline to any of Ron’s extremities. I have, however, had to commando crawl through a muddy, poo-ridden run at 6.30am in sub-zero temperatures to apply Vaseline to Margot’s comb to protect her from frostbite (Of course, when I say ‘I’ here, I do in fact mean ‘Mr Swift’)

2. Ron has utter respect for hangovers. M and J have to be let out of their run at 7am every day, without fail

3. Ron has never performed a ‘brassica massacre’. M and J stripped my raised beds of every last cabbage and broccoli plant in under ten minutes thanks to Mr Swift’s half-arsed ‘supervised’ free-range session

4. Ron has never caught lice off the filthy local feral bird population resulting in thrice-weekly spraying sessions with Johnson’s anti-mite spray. Mr Swift and i have inhaled so much of that stuff that if we ever had children they'd have three heads and five arms each

5. Ron has never tried to tunnel out of his tank. M and J are digging holes to rival ‘Tom’, ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’ in The Great Escape.

6. Ron has never wandered into the kitchen and laid an egg on the floor, much to the horror of the onlookng resident cat

Seriously, I love my hens and my Eglu to pieces but any would-be chicken owner should go into this endeavour with their eyes (and their wallets) wide open.

Speaking of the girls’ wellbeing, they have been less than impressed with the snow/ice conditions. My woes have started since the big thaw begun. Thanks to several weeks of frozen conditions rendering cleaning out their run utterly impossible what was once was a lovely, tidy space with plenty of wood chippings is now a muddy, stinking hellhole.

I can’t possibly let my girls live like this so next weekend ‘operation run improvement’ begins (really couldn’t think of anything snappier). This involves myself as chief engineer/site supervisor; Mr Swift (builders mate/chaiwalla); industrial paving slabs; one Eglu classic run extension; corrugated roofing panels; sand; bungee cord; plastic lawn edging; horse bedding; half fence posts; Ikea shower curtain and a pond liner*. Before and after photos to follow.... my DIY-obsessed father will be so proud.

*A prize for the person who produces a detailed expanation of how each of these components will be utilised, the use of diagrams will secure you extra marks.