Halter Training 2

Well maybe I spoke too soon. Yesterday I really had to catch up with the office work, especially the dreaded VAT return and today we went dog training in the morning and made a bit of headway clearing out my Mother's room when we got back about 2.30p.m. After that I was not in the right frame of mind for it so have delayed until tomorrow, but then I really, really am going to do it every day. Honestly.

We were a bit disappointed that the hens who have been laying well all winter are only laying about six eggs a day now, when they should be laying one each - eight.

I think we have solved the mystery. Yesterday I noticed that one of the hens was sitting in the corner of the barn where they lay their eggs. I checked several times during the day and the same hen was still there. I thought she must either be ill or broody, even though I have experienced neither of these events, luckily.

I decided to pick her up. They are usually quite amenable to this and so I was taken by surprise when she became very aggressive and pecked my hand. I thought it would be a good idea to try and move her to see if she could move around alright so I got a walking stick and poked her. Surprisingly she liked this even less and pecked viciously at the stick.

Mike had the bright idea of putting on his working gloves and picked her up whereupon she squawked, flapped and generally made it clear that she was not happy with us. Millie, my brown collie, came up to sniff her whilst Mike was carrying her and she lunged out and narrowly missed the dog's nose. Millie found this hard to believe as she is usually able to make the hens run away at least, so she tried to sniff again and received yet another attempted peck. It was actually quite funny with Mike looking as though he had a chicken machine gun in his hands with Millie his target.

The good news was that the chicken seemed to be in good health but bad temper, which I thought possibly meant she was broody - recognising some of the symptoms from the alpacas who tend to get bad tempered when pregnant.

I phoned Nick Cox, our Shepherd friend who sold us the chickens. He confirmed that she was broody and said if he had some fertilised eggs she could have hatched them but it is too early in the year for his cockerel to be working. He said it is really hard to get them out of the broody state but recommended isolating her for a couple of days with no bedding,but food and water of course. We put her in a spare dog kennel and I followed his advice. When we got home this afternoon I decided that she should come out as I did not want her fellow chickens to forget her and think she was a stranger in the camp. I thought this might lead to some feathers flying.

I put some food out for all the hens and then let the broody one out - she joined in straight away and so far seems to have forgotten her ill humour, so fingers crossed there will be seven eggs tomorrow.

The second mystery (I think) has also been solved. Some of them used to lay eggs in the hedge and I have been searching in the areas where we used to find them, but this morning when I let them out I noticed that one rushed into the hedge instead of heading for the barn with the others. I could not see exactly where she went into the hedge but it was a lot further down than the previous places. I saw her come out when I was down in the bottom paddocks with dogs so again I could not work out exactly where to look. After a fruitless search I have decided to watch them closely when I let them out in the hope of finding a stash of eggs!!