The Golden Girls

At long last I am the proud owner of a very swish Chicken Arc, thanks to a generous gift voucher from my work mates at Nuclear Medicine, and also my part time mother, Aunty Dorothy. Well a chicken arc is not much use with out chickens,so we have obtained three young ladies. They are Light Sussex, mainly white with some black feathers around their necks, and are just starting to lay. We have called them the Golden Girls after the TV programme, cant actually distinguish who is who, so not quite sure who is Dorothy, Blanche or Rose. We will see.
The chicken arc has upstairs accomadation, with a nesting box, a fancy stair case that goes up and down to close the chickens in at night, and a run on the ground floor.The general plan was to keep the girls in the run for about a week to make them feel at home, and then gradually let them out for a bit each day. By Day three that plan had gone to the dogs, as one of them managed to escape while I was cleaning out the nest box. After five minutes of playing chase the chicken ( looking a real sight in my nightie and wellies at 07.30) I decided to give up and have let them all out.
They have very gentle characters (so far, I have heard theres another side to chickens, they can be quite vicious) and potter around the field, usually following who ever has a spade as that means we might be doing the digging.Like naughty children, they keep returning to areas you have chased them away from, almost to taunt me. I am trying to convince them that the poly tunnel is not actually a chicken beauty parlour, and they can find other areas to sand bath and snack. They were very interested when were adding some planting around the nature pond, and seem to rather like the taste of hostas. I thought you used chickens to eat the slugs that eat the hostas but we seem to have missed the slugs out, and the chickens just eat the hostas instead. LOL.

Talking of eating, the purpose of getting chickens, apart from the entertainment value , is to have our own eggs.The girls are young and have just started laying, quite impressively I think, one or two eggs most days, and occasionally even three ! They seem to have got the idea of the nesting box, and they might all be scratching around the field, then one dashes back to the arc to lay an egg. When that one comes out, the next one might go in, and the other day I had to have a chuckle when I could only find one girl in the field, had a look in the nesting box, and the other two doing a double decker act together. Only one egg though so dont know who was shirking. Occasionally we find an egg without a shell, and I get the impression that these are sometimes a surprise to the chicken as well as they may not be in the nesting box. We even found an egg in the long grass in the field  when we were cutting it !! Didnt eat that one, gave it too the dogs. Now Seun is very interested when we go to check for eggs, thinks he should have one for breakfast each day. Not likely. I have had to make a plan to deal with all the eggs , so have been baking, which is a bit of a pity as it means we have to eat the baked goodies!!!! I have even had a go at making lemon curd which was yummy. Most surprising  was when I cracked six eggs, I had 8 yolks... well done girls.