It's seven thirty and I'm out of bed on a Sunday morning. I haven't done this since my son was tiny and needed entertaining, feeding or his nappy changing. But being a chicken keeper places a certain degree of responsibility on one's shoulders, and on a weekend therefore I get up at least two hours earlier than I might have done otherwise to let them out.
It has been a difficult few weeks for me and the chickens. The weather hasn't been too good, with more wet days than dry ones since I last blogged, which has resulted in the garden becoming a quagmire where I've walked across the lawn to the chicken run. Not that the chickens have done anything to help on that score. They scratch at any patch of land looking for food. In terms of clearing out dead leaves from the undergrowth, they've done a fantastic job, but I've also had to place wire netting over the main flower bed to stop this being scratched out and to preserve the primula that have been pushing their way up.
Egg production has fallen right away, initially tailing off to one every three days and more recently to none at all. I haven't had an egg in two weeks. (Having asked friends and colleagues to save their egg boxes for me, I've now amassed quite a collection which grows into an increasingly vertiginous pile on the top of the refrigerator). Whilst the prospect of egg cartons collapsing on me is a growing risk, I'm not worried about the lack of eggs to place in them - yet. Two of the hens have moulted over the past month and have only now grown their new feathers back, and various articles I've read suggest that the chickens won't lay in winter, so I'll only start to be concerned when the weather turns warmer. Yesterday's Guardian had an article saying you should think of chickens as pets rather than profit, and in terms of income and expenditure that has certainly been my experience. The other stuff I've read suggesting that I'll have more eggs than I'll know what to do with sounds like the rantings of evangelists.
There has been one moment of real panic in the past few weeks. The chickens stay in their run when we're not at home, but as the evenings have become increasingly light, Bill lets them out for a while when he gets home from school. On one such evenng, he had let them out but not put them away again when it got dark. It was pitch black when I went out to put them away. I could only find three of them ensconced in the hen house. It was a bitterly cold evening and the thought that one of them had chosen to roost in a tree on a night like this made me fear for its safety. There was no evidence of feathers in the garden, which led me to conclude that it had made a bid for freedom and hopped over the garden fence rather than been predates, but a quick survey of nearby trees, shining my faltering torchlight into the lower branches, revealed nothing, as did my peering over the fence into the two adjoining gardens. Bill and his friend Bruce were despatched to search neighbouring gardens and knock on doors, which they dutifully did. When they came back chicken less I had to tell Bill that I thought that was the last we'd see of her.
Next morning it was still quite dark when I got up, thinking that by allowing myself an extra 15 minutes before I set off for work, I could have a further look for the missing chicken or its remains. It was as I was opening the door to the coop to let the others out into their run that the missing bird emerged from the wood hut where she'd chosen to roost for the night. The only place I hadn't looked! Since then, I have clipped their wings, as my friend Jenny - who has kept chickens for twenty plus years - said that the advice of the hen refuge place I got the chickens from not to clip their feathers was 'silly'. In casevi have to do another search of the local trees, I've also invested in a new torch.
Bill and I have also been away for a week's holiday in Tenerife during this time, so early on we've had to face up to the question - who's going to feed the chickens while we're gone? This seems to be a concern that all chicken keepers agonise about, and which prevents some peole from getting chickens at all, but I am lucky enough to have my ex wife Kathleen and Bill has his school friend Bruce, each of whom live nearby, who were enthusiastic volunteers. Kathleen has fed and watered the cat previously, so knew the drill regarding getting into the house. For Bruce, I put a new lock on the side gate so that he could get into the garden without having to come via the front door. Although I then left him the wrong key (which seems not to have stopped him getting not the garden!). The novelty of being temporary chicken farmers seems to have persuaded both that they enjoyed looking after the chickens, even if they weren't rewarded with fresh eggs every day as I'd perhaps suggested they might be. "You can keep anything they lay," I'd said.
In the event, there was only one fresh egg that week and, as I've said above, egg production generally has declined. Poo production, on the other hand, continues apace. The birds insist on roosting in their nesting boxes, and when it stops raining for long enough, I'm going to modify the hen house so that the perches are higher, since I've read that that may be the reason they choose to sleep in the nesting boxes. I've told Kathleen, again based on information gleaned from websites, that chicken poo is an excellent accelerant for the compost heap, and so she's asked me to supply her with a bagful. We got divorced because of all the shit I was giving her, and now she's asking me for shit!
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