I’m just differently active. Burning the candle at all three ends is not to be recommended, just in case anyone was thinking of trying it; but spare a thought for Kitchenwitch who is currently having all her ends burnt for her by the arrival of Miniwitch on June 1st. Go on, get over there and say congratulations before the hormones eat her last remaining brain cell. Babies are all-consuming for the first six weeks or so – and I should know, I’ve got five of them running around the garden at the moment.
Chicken For A Hat successfully hatched out five of the eight eggs I foisted upon her whilst she slept, and has proved to be a diligent mum. Given that a chicken has a brain the size of a pea – a petit pois now, none of your cannonball varieties – it’s amazing how much latent behaviour is packed inside that little nubbin of jelly. As I mentioned before, C4aH had sat still, zombie-like and hovercraft-shaped, for three whole weeks apart from brief stretches and mammoth egg-turning sessions. All that changed the day after the chicks hatched.
All together now, Ahhh. So cute! So fluffy! So nice with thyme and garlic! From the very beginning the chicks were able to climb over the two-inch lip into the broody coop, so I need not have worried about building a little ramp for them after all. Chicks look feeble, but once they dry out they are actually surprisingly strong for their size. Having agonised about how to leave water down without choking or drowning the chicks – apparently they drown easily – I settled for flooding a large plant saucer filled with coarse gravel so that they could drink from the gaps between the stones, but not fall in. It worked perfectly.
Food has not been a problem. Although I provide them with a specially granulated feed sold as “chick crumbs” the chicks are as keen to forage as their mother is. She makes sure that they get access to some of whatever she finds, nipping juvenile slugs in half or cracking pieces of scattered corn and then dropping it for them to discover. C4aH is also incredibly watchful, keeping her head up all the time to look for trouble – for trouble there is aplenty in the Hollow neighbourhood.
M. Reynard the fox has not been in evidence since his rather painful experience with the electric fence when it was first installed a couple of years ago. It would seem that he gives the garden a wide berth now – there are easy rabbits a few hundred yards away in any case – but I suspect that he pops in now and again to see if we’ve got sloppy. We haven’t. The chickens are always enclosed by the fence, and although it isn’t always on the only way to find out would be the hard way. Having been whacked by 100,000 volts on both nipples a few times (it’s the perfect height for doing that if you lean over) I can personally confirm that you develop a very visceral aversion to doing it again. Ever.
When it comes to rats we’ve been lucky so far, but airborne predators are a more serious threat. A buzzard hunts just one field away but happily she nests off to the north somewhere, and hasn’t bothered us. Not so the three crows who live in next doors’ trees, though. For a couple of worrying days they took a close and personal interest in the wellbeing of the chicks, but C4aH never took her eyes off them for a minute. The moment the crows came too close, she would issue a throaty warning note and the chicks would tumble under her wings in no seconds flat, turning her into a Kentucky Southern-Fried Panic Bargain Bucket. She would then fix the crows with a baleful eye, and after a bit of half-hearted teasing they got bored of the routine and gave up. Or perhaps a newer visitor spooked them, for I have been finding owl pellets on the roof of the chicken house and don’t know whether to feel relieved or concerned about it.
More about the chicks soon, but in the meantime just one question – if I put eight eggs under the sleeping chicken and she hatched five, how come I only had to remove two duds?
