Blowdrying chickens

Today the girls have been out and about, mostly sheltering under the bigger trees and shrubs while the rain drizzled on. Except for the silkies, of course, for whom wet feathers are a real health risk. So I've just been sitting on the floor in the lounge, blow-drying them one by one until they were safe to go to bed. Two of them absolutely loved the pampering and the warmth of it. The third one honked like an offended goose throughout the whole experience. Made me laugh like a drain.

Meanwhile, back at the incubator, seven red pekin and eight lavender pekin eggs are cooking away. Very exciting! The reds are quite rare and due to hatch on the 3rd (ish) of May. The lavenders are fairly common but extraordinarily pretty and due about four days after that.

Fingers crossed...

Chickens are just so fan-bloody-tastic. They're straightforward and functional. No politics, no moods (apart from the cockerels, but isn't that always the way?), no paperwork, no birthday lists, no crap. Apart from all the crap, obviously.

I just bloody love them.
Getting chickens was one of the best things I ever ever ever did.
Ever.

I've just spent several fruitful hours chuckling at a site from a link from a link...
Here's the site:

http://sashen.com/index.html

And here's something from it that made me laugh:

I've seen my daughters doing this loads of times, but I'm not entirely sure I'm doing this right... Hope so, because this is stunning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krKZIyime4k

Oh, arsebiscuits... you'll just have to click on the link until the girls get home!

Spring walk

Well... we went for a walk and it's spring. And the sun was beautiful.

GU Walk

Finally it struck me that all I was doing was talking about things that mattered to me, and that all that posting was taking time from actually doing them. This despite the fact that I rarely post there now - which maybe makes it very much easier to stop altogether.
A poster on GU once made a glorious exit after telling everyone that they were engaged in the worst form of procrastination imaginable, and to me that was an immediately recognisable truth. It's just taken me two years to follow that example.

I didn't want to leave in a blaze of glorylessness, so I just left. And I'm only putting this here in case anyone from there should wonder, worry or check. It's been a wonderful place to spend time, I've made some much-loved and valued friends. Once or twice it's been a life-saver. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. After a while, though, even the most admirable virtue becomes a vice. Other vices are more fun and you get to do them for real!

Buffy's new babies!!

By Request...

This morning my younger daughter and I decided that it was time to put Buffy into a quiet place to wait for her eggs to hatch. She's in with the father and his other four wives, which seemed like it might be a bit crowded and hazardous for newly-hatched chicks. So we made a special nesting box for her out of a massive banana cardboard box from the local supermarket and trotted out into the garden at half past seven this morning to do the broody business.

Stage 1 - Open the chicken house and allow all non-broody chickens and one psychopathic cockerel to leg it down to the end of the run. Block run so that they cannot return during subsequent stages.
This went well.

Stage 2 - Remove broody from nesting box while she is still in broody trance and clearly Not Bothered and place her in the cardboard box in a very cosy nest, ready for her eggs.
This also went well.

Stage 3 - Quickly move eggs from their current location and place them beneath Buffy, close up the box and take box and happy contents to a place of warm and quiet safety, there to await the hatching event in a haze of blissful and natural wondrousness.
This could have gone better.

As I picked up the first handful of eggs, the air was rent with screams from the raindrop, who alerted me to the fact that Buffy had abandoned her maternal trance and was now pelting down the garden in homicidal pursuit of one of the free-ranging chickens (who had clearly made the mistake of looking at her in a funny way). I replaced the eggs, ran down the garden and separated the two chickens (who were now locked in blood-thirsty embrace). As I turned to take Buffy back to her broody box, the air was rent once again by the truly scared and scary announcement from daughter that The Cockerel Had Escaped.
At this point the theme from Jaws began playing in my head as the definitively appropriate soundtrack to the whole event, given that Titch - although small and perfectly formed - has the beak of a horror movie baddie, a temperament to match and the ability to fly (which means he is the only one of the chickens Not Allowed In The Garden). He stood in splendid profile in the doorway of the run and then launched himself out into the forbidden territory of the garden. Daughter ran off screaming.
Buffy was placed very rapidly back in the broody box, so that I could pursue Titch down the garden, Chuckle Brothers stylee, trying to trap him under the top half of the broody box and shouting in a manner so hysterically uncontrolled that I am now embarrassed to recall it, "OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!!!!"
At which point, my neighbour - a devout Jehovah's Witness - popped up on the other side of the fence and called (in a ludicrously jovial fashion) "Morning girls - how is everyone today?" I continued to pursue the cockerel, whilst suggesting to JW Neighbour that things could perhaps be going a little better. Just as Titch decided that he was starting to get a little pissed off with me and that it was time I had some of the skin stripped off my arm, my neighbour added the thoroughly redundant piece of information that there was a cat in the vicinity and I should really watch out. A cat being the least of my worries at this point, I launched myself at the cockerel in a last ditch, if-I-don't-catch-him-this-time-I'm-going-to-be-so-late-for-work-they'll-sack-me attempt to contain the situation, no longer caring about skin, arm or anything other than STOPPING THE MADNESS.
Having now, and totally unexpectedly, grabbed Titch around the back side, I held on for all I was worth, got up from my ground-writhing position and carried him back to the run, avoiding his frenzied and furious assaults on my hand by millimetres. I just managed to close the run in time to see Buffy jumping out of the box again and hurtling back off down the garden. Luckily, at this point the daughter in residence realised that it was safe to come out from behind the sofa, and after another five minutes we finally and successfully coordinated a pincer movement in retrieving the motherly role model from her Fuck The Lot Of You jamboree around the garden. Whereupon we managed to install her in the box with the eggs underneath her, the lid strapped down and the door to the room firmly closed in the space of three breathless and panicky minutes.
And then I went to work.

And I still love my chooks.