It's Saturday. I've had the chickens a week and, after the excitement of getting two eggs on the first day, laid in the undergrowth up against the fence, we have now entered an egg-free zone. Now I don't know if this is some sort of protest by the hens at their new coop, or whether they're just taking time to adjust to life in their new home. But so far all I'm getting in the nesting boxes is small amounts of chicken poo.
The Parcelforce man finally delivered the goods around 2.30pm on Monday and I assembled the hen house, finishing the job in the dark after dragging my son away from watching Friends on TV to act as Principal Torch Bearer and shed some light on the shed while I slotted home the final screws. It isn't huge, the hen house. Apparently chickens don't like large homes because they like to huddle together for warmth, and this one must be like climbing aboard a Tokyo train carriage when they squeeze in at night. Well whether or not they like to cuddle up together at night I'm not convinced that they are totally enamoured of their run, which is four feet long by two feet wide, and which they're confined to on the days I'm not around to deter predators. (It seems foxes won't come and take the chickens during the day if you're at home, as though it is somehow impolite to do so).
Jolene, I'm pleased to say, is limping less than she was so hopefully she'll soon have recovered from her leg injury entirely. Of course, this means I'll have to identify some other physical characteristic of hers that will enable me to differentiate her from the others. The others, who have yet to be officially allocated the names of Shirley, Penny and Angie, all seem well. But with a chicken, it's hard to tell. There's a lot of flapping of wings, pecking of the ground and looking at inanimate objects in a vaguely interested way. Oh, and getting panicked by a blackbird flying low across the garden. These creatures have not seen a lot of the great outdoors.
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