Bathtime!

But Snowdrop who really needed one opted out of the action... and just look how they are wrecking the garden :)

Bringing you up to date...

Hi!

It's been ages since I reported on hen activity here.  I've been away for a week and left the girls in the safe hands of my friend David.  In the week before I went away they started laying 4 a day with just Gingernut wondering what was going on up in the nesting boxes!

I read that it is possible to make some good "biscuits" that I had to make sure not to get mixed up with anything for human consumption as they contain mealworms:

I also bought a cabbage for £1 from Birmingham market that weighed 7lbs 5.5 oz, in fact it is still going strong now!

During my week away they performed well with 32 eggs including a superb monster weighing 72g - 50g is good enough for me!

Since my return I have sold a good few eggs to some neighbours and we have eaten as many as we can - check out the breakfast eggs from last week-end and there are more where they came from:

The colour differential relates to their varied diet as they are both Bluebelle doubles!

Now we are up to 5 a day (maximum) and have 105 laid  in total.

The girls go out most days but once they have been out for a little while they just want to get back in to the run, play with the new bedding and eat their treats:

...and does anyone remember those Beswick salad bowls...

The girls continue to give great entertainment.  Also entertaining was when my boyfriend nearly drove off with a work colleagues weekly order:

Goings on in the henhouse

It's been a while since we've put pen to paper but the light in the coop is not good and we find we constantly squabble about whose turn it is to write and then when we have finally decided it is dark, so tonight we took it in turns... me (Snowdrop) first:

Look what happened last week - someone joined me in the laying arena - in fact I know just who it was - Bluebell, as she insisted upon sitting on top of my whilst I laid mine, so Jane had a little shock when she found 2 hot eggs laid at the same time.

It is not clear from the picture but the non-white egg is slightly torpedo shaped - it proved to be a double-yolker in fact, so now I need to work harder to get my eggs preferred to hers!
 

Blubell here - that's me above - look at my lovely big fluffy bottom - well, I am all proud now that I am laying breakfast for Jane and the boyfriend.  The reason that I have such a large bottom is that I lay double-yolkers - well, one out of one ain't bad!

Gingernut here - we are playing a little trick on Jane, because today we laid 3 eggs between us and now she does not know whether it is me or Jet who has added to the layers amongst us - well, unless you give me a mealworm I'm not telling you...

Jet here - it was me - well, it might have been, only I'm not sure as I am a little bit forgetful - you know how it is, I can get up the ramp to the coop and then say to myself "what have I come up here for then", so it is no use asking me is it...

Cuckoo taking over for the remainder of the blog now and I am also a bit forgetful but don't think it was me, if it was then I forgot to "speckle" it - we will keep her guessing again tomorrow.  Well, we have to as Jane the the boyfriend abandoned us on Saturday night and went galivanting off to Leicestershire to see the boyfriends parents (does that make them Granny and Grandad?) and left us to the care of David - he looks after us well but on principle we will sulk when Jane goes away!

In fact, they also went to an airshow and saw a hen called the Vulcan flying around - I can only assume that she has not had her wings clipped...

We're out!!!!!

It is so easy to find an excuse to NOT let them out - today I seemed to have run out.  We got back from an afternoon out and the girls were cooing and chatting and I just decided to open the door and let them go for it (well, the net arrived the other day and having already walked by the run with it I know that Snowdrop (the fast one) knows what it is for and pops upstairs for a rest when she sees it ;)

  Left to right, Gingernut, Bluebell, Cuckoo, Snowdrop and Jet

They soon had stretched their legs and wings and were enjoying the lush green grass  (note to self, get the lawn mower out next week) whilst I cleaned out the coop and run for them and topped up the water and food.  They seem to like to stick together...

I recommend the self-service here, says Snowdrop:

But the packet was securely shut.  Maybe there's something in here?

Nope, nothing there...

Surprisingly, once the bedding was refreshed in the run they were keen to get back in there.  It was a case of three in, one out, two in, one out, two in, one out and then, WOW, they were all in - time to shut the door and get myself a long cool beer methinks!

Down, up, up, down?

...we don't know what a Bank Holiday is (nor actually what a Bank is, if the truth be told) but presumably it has something to do with wind, rain, more wind, more rain and potatoes and rice.

"The Boyfriend" has been here over the week-end and sometimes he lets us out in the mornings.  "Hellooooo" he says, as he counts us down the ramp.  "Cooooo, cooooo" we say in return and then dig into the layer pellets that mysteriously appear for us overnight and guzzle the garlic water that seems to come with it.

Now we don't know whether we are supposed to call him "Dad" or not, so are waiting to see if Mom gives us any instructions in that area - we like to try and do everything she tells us or we may find that the grapes and wiggly worms stop coming in our direction and we don't want that!

I'm "Ginger" and wonder if I was named after "Ginger" from Chicken Run, the film that Mom and The Boyfriend watched last Thursday night?  She should have called me "Bunty" then she might have had more neggs from us but, as we currently stand, there have been 11 neggs, all white, all laid by Snowdrop and ranging from 38 to 48 grams.

We are learning new words every day and so far, whilst our favourite word is "grape" we also like "potato" and "rice" - "banana" is good too - today we had a whole one and had minutes of fun tearing around trying to cram as much as we could into our crops.

There are two further words that we just can't seem to grasp, they are "up" and "down".  In the mornings when we are let out we come down and then we are up.  If, during the day, we go up for a nap then we go up to go down but then come down again when we get up.  We are like the 10,000 hens that the Grand Old Duke of York had...

..and when they were down they were up, and when they were up they were down and when they were only half way down they were neither up nor down (actually, I like being neither up nor down then no-one else can get past me!)

I'd like one of these!

 Uncle Kazza is coming to stay tomorrow (so Mom says) - so we'd better get a good nights' sleep tonight and make sure to have a good old preen tomorrow morning.

Night night.

The ice cream man cometh...

...just as we are all about to go up the apples and pears to Bedfordshire there is is a sound of distant music - apparently it is the music that the ice cream van driver plays when he has run out of the creamy white stuff (or is that something Jane was told as a child and is never quite certain?) but we never get to sample any - let's have a collective ahhhhhh dear readers please.

Tonight was no exception - "The Yellow Rose of Texas" came nearer and  nearer and up we went to roost with our bellies full of layer pellets, apples cores, banana, grapes and corn (I can recommend the full board menu here!).

Later (the Boyfriend was here and he was getting fed things that didn't look like corn to me) we got cleaned out and a quick check from above, here we are:

...but next time please give us advance warning and we can shut our eyes tightly so as to avoid the flash!

Goodnight from Snowdrop (centre), Cuckoo (bottom), Jet (bottom left), Ginger Nut (top) and me - Bluebell (somewhere under the left hand side!

All quiet on the Western Front

There is very little that I can consider worthy of writing for our activities today - unlesssssss you count the two slices of cucumber that made their way through the mesh this afternoon!  Not that it was the only treat that we had today - no - we had some grapes and an apple core too along with some rolled oats.

We had lots of attention with Grandad being here and so I think Snowdrop got somewhat confused and forget to go and lay a negg again.  She really had better try harder tomorrow as Jane has already eyed up somewhere that we can be taken when we have stopped laying - mind you, as the landowner said...they haven't even STARTED laying yet apart from one ;)

Noooo, she hasn't really found us a retirement home already, but a very nice retired scrap metal dealer who she sometimes sees in Tesco did say that he needs some more hens for his cockerels - he rehouses hens and cockerels from anyone and anywhere and has rather too many boys to his girls!  He has around 70 boys and girls and Jane will pop in to see them next time she is passing!