Death at 4am...

Something was wrong though in my befuddled state I couldn’t work out what it was. All I knew that I had just been woken. There was no noise, not really. Nothing untoward as such. So I lay back expecting to drop off to sleep again, wanting to drop off but something in my brain was on high alert. I lay on my back listening.

There I caught it.

A semi crow croak sound.

"Stupid chickens! It’s the middle of the night!"

But this wasn’t the right sort of noise. This was wrong.

I carefully got out of bed and tripped down the stairs to the landing whose window overlooked the wood wherein lay the chicken huts.

I drew the curtain to one side and peered myopically out.

"Bugger, haven’t got my glasses...."

I peered harder anyway but as expected I couldn’t see a thing, it was too dark but I knew it wasn’t right.

Padding swiftly down the hall, careful not to wake the children, I wended my way to my husband's room.

"Charlie wake up. I think there’s a fox in my chicken coop...."

The sense of urgency in my hurried whisper had him awake in seconds. No arguing for once.

I scurried down the stairs and grabbed my boots from the cupboard, snatched a coat from a hanger and as quietly as I could opened the back door. By the time I was half way across the drive Charlie was with me torch and hockey stick in hand.

We shone the torch in an arc round the huts but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Then the light caught a white shape under the Victorian Coop. Definitely a chicken and very definitely dead.

Could it have just been this one solitary chook that woke me?

Knowing and not wanting to know I stretched foreword my hand to the hut door, pulled back teh bolt and shone the light inside.

Oh my god!

It was scene of utter carnage but no noise. Dead and dying chickens everywhere, feathers lazily settling on the slatted floor and the utter silence. As I glanced about I saw Rufus my enormous Silver Grey Dorking Cross rooster slumped on the floor, I thought he was dead too but he raised his battered head to give out a low croaky squawk – the very same sound that had woken me only a few minutes previously.

He continued to utter his muffled alarm. Struggling to rise and slumping back to the floor again and again. I flicked the light of the torch round the hut once again and then I saw it.

A big brown vixen - it had to be a vixen for there was no tell-tale stench that I would expect from a dog fox.

She looked dazed and glazed, not scared at all. Her muzzle was coated in gore and feathers; I’d obviously disturbed her feast.

She was sated like she had been on drugs. High and not likely to come down soon.

You see foxes do not kill just the one thing; they kill the lot in a blood lust but they do it silently - a swift nip to the back of the head and the chicken is dead.

One after the other.

And the more they kill, the more they want to kill beyond any hope of just a single meal. They will kill till all is dead and nothing survives. Till the hunger that drove them to the chicken coop in the first place raises its head and then they feast there and then or until they are disturbed.

And the chickens dozy in the night cannot fight back. Trapped in the hut there is no escape. Chickens have no night vision, they are utterly vulnerable.

So I shouted at her.

"Get out! Get out! Get out! You horrible beast! Bugger off!"

Then, only then she snapped out of her blood induced stupor and she started to get bothered but she couldn’t escape running from one side of the hut to the other confused by the feathers everywhere, the devastation hiding her escape. Jumping into a nesting box to hide from the light. Then running across the back of the hut to nose at the doors to try to force her way out and away.

"Get her out! Get her out! I want her out now!"

I don’t know what Charlie did but the fox found an escape and I could finally relax - sort of relax.Relax to survey the carnage - and note that there were chickens alive, overlooked by the fox.

But there were so many dead, and so many dying….

Having a healthy respect for chickens......

Butter wouldn't melt ...

I am rapidly revising my ideas about chickens mostly I think of them as dumb clucks, sometimes a feather short of a full wing but in no way do I think of them as cunning, vicious killers.
However, today my blood ran cold. Today I realised that though the velociraptor is extinct its legacy lives on in its feathered descendants far more than may commonly be realised.
I went to open up the Chicken shed. I call to the tree chickens first; they roost in the trees at night and are more bantam like than their Chicken Shed cousins. I think that being smaller they need to get a look in before the bigger birds are let out. Then I usually open up the small chick cage to let out the babies and when I think they’ve had a good old go, I nip round the back and open the hatch.
Out they pour, clucking and cackling, a blur of black, brown speckled, white and grey blue feathers. Clacking yellow, pink and black long toed feet on the ramp a few jump and a few fly and whoosh they are round the corner and tucking in – only today something else happened.
There was the most god awful strangulated squawk from behind me and I swivelled on my feet to witness one of the younger cockerels chasing down what I thought was a chick – just as I started to burst into action and chase the bugger away, Blue – my Old English Game hen - joined in from the opposite direction. The “Chick” jinxed and got passed Blue who had made a lunge at it missing it by inches.
Having survived that it seemed to falter and I realised that it was a juvenile Moorhen. I must have been slow because I could have grabbed it and rescued it but it dodged round me with both Blue and the young cockerel quite literally on its tail only to run straight into a few other hens. I thought it would be OK and relaxed a bit only to find that all the others turned on it as well.The bird was trapped and then all the hens all started to peck and jump up and down pulverising the unfortunate creature to death. It was all over within seconds and then my blood ran truly cold for with it dead the chickens started to feast. And those who has not taken part started to flock over and it was like out of some horror film – chickens grabbing at bits of gore, fighting, squawking and then it was all over and they were back to normal pecking away in the sunshine at the left over corn or wandering off to check out the garden, drink by the moat or else dust bathe in the sunshine.
Just another normal autumn morning…and I am left standing looking about for evidence of this extraordinary goings on. Just a pair of yellow feet and some dusty grey black wing feathers…I am not so sure I will dismiss my chickens in quite the same way as before.
RESPECT your chickens.

Being God

Fat Boy 1 as a poult

For a moment I AM God or at least a deity of some kind or another. It gives one such a thrill to know that you are, for that moment, the centre of their world.

The bringer of good things: food, shelter, protection.

If they could only articulate in a language I understood I truly believe it would be in praise of me each and every morning. As it is people are beginning to say my chickens make too much noise and if I am not careful the council will be on me about noise abatement.

But the thrill I get when they come flocking at the sight of me. Cackling in delight and anticipation at my benefice. It quite goes to my head. You can see me in my large Blue Down Jacket spreading my arms wide over them all as they peck about in contentment at my feet.

I am the harbinger of life and death.

It is a heady tonic and one which sometimes brings with it headaches.

My biggest headache at present is what to do with Fat Boy 1 and Fat Boy 2 who should have been hens but aren’t.

They are my acolytes waiting out for my return from the school run, rushing up to greet me as I get out the car chortling and squawking and telling me all sorts of things – I prefer to think they are telling me things rather than ordering me about and I am quite happy  in my delusions. They are characters. When I chat to Tatu or J they come and sit on my feet keeping them warm. They follow me about the garden and in reward I lob them worms and other tasty morsels.

But

They are boys and come the spring when the days are longer and the sap starts to rise again they are going to be quite a handful and they are not going to be nice to my poor hens.

So for the good of the whole flock they must be dispatched in some way or another.

Being a God is not easy and for those looking up to the god where the hand strikes must seem a bit random and essentially rather unfair.

It is not the part of the job I enjoy.

But no one said being God is easy…

Chicken and Egg mystery

Summer: Eggs Galore Autumn: On Strike!

I’ve just found an egg in the airing cupboard. It slightly threw me to find it there and I thought for a fleeting moment that I had finally gone mad - a tad earlier than I had hoped.

Luckily I remembered, before I got too worried, that I had had a chicken in there yesterday, so it was not terribly surprising to find an egg there today. However, it was quite nice to find the egg whole.

Pretty Poult

I suppose I had better explain before someone calls the Funny Farm. I had put the chicken in a box in the airing cupboard because she looked ill and past experience has taught me that by acting swiftly and warming up the chicken can and does make a huge difference as to whether they survive or not.

Problem is I have no idea how the egg came to be on top of my sheets when the chicken was contained in a box.

I can’t for the life of me see how she got out of the box to lay the egg. It would mean that she opened the top of the box climbed out, laid the egg, then got back into the box and closed it up after herself.

Now that would take brains and much as I have huge respect for chickens, it’s not for nothing that we say that people have ‘chicken brains’ when they do something stupid.

I am at a loss.

I did think the children might have something to do with it but they have not had the opportunity and my husband is away so they are all ruled out.

I thought it could be the cleaner; but I was the one in and out of the airing cupboard yesterday whike we changed the beds and anyway why would she? It is not a normal thing to do, putting eggs in the airing cupboards.

And I couldn’t have done it as none of the chickens laid any eggs* yesterday for me to have carried one about to absent mindedly put it there.

So it has to have been the chicken…but how did it do it?

(*This non-egg laying situation is a slight bone of contention at present; I have warned them that should this situation continue it could lead to STUFFING if they are not very, very careful!)

Chicken of the Week

Chicken of the Week: Belle, a Yellow Pencilled Friesian

Chicken of the week is Belle, a yellow pencilled Frieisan from Holland.

Belle is two and a half years old and lays lovely white eggs.

She loves gardening, digging, climbing trees, rolling in the dirt and hunting bugs.

She loves all good food and particularly likes worms. She loves newly planted brassicas.

She would like to have her own brood one day but has yet to find the right cockerel.

Nobody here but us chickens....

Just kidding....

This little lot were caught out in a shower so they headed straight for the nearest shelter...a chicken hut!

Hatched!

It was bad enough when there was only one now there are three and the noise levels are increasing exponentially.

As well as an incubator running in the office I now have a brooder as I am not tempting fate and putting the chicks out in the barn. It means there is a lot of background humming, clicking and whirring as well as cheeping. And it is only going to get worse as I have a further four eggs (out of 24) pipping.

I don’t expect all 24 to hatch as I forgot to candle the eggs but let’s just say it looks like I am going to have a handful. Those born so far are all what I term Fat Boys i.e. chickens for eating. Crossing fingers I may have a couple of Silver Grey Dorkings and a few Indian Game on their way out too. These would be my breeding stock and worth an awful lot of money £20 – 30 each at point of lay! I wasn’t just cross with those rats I was furious as they took two Silver Grey Dorking females (£60 worth of chicken!!!!) However, I won’t be counting my chickens until they have all hatched!

Hatching...

I have been going nearly nuts in my office as I keep hearing chicks cheeping. I can never rest when I hear a chick cheeping especially if it is only one and there is no answering cluck for it means that there is a chick somewhere nearby that needs a Mum.

I am sure that before I had children I couldn’t give a toss but after having them there is a kind of desperation that finds me hunting chicks high and low all about the place and putting them back with their frequently unimpressed parent.

But I have no chicks about the farm at present because the rats have eaten them all. So where could the cheeping be coming from? I opened my office window to hear better but of course there was silence. I narrowed my eyes at the Starlings and wondered if they were playing tricks again. Starlings are great jokers and just love mimicking all sorts of noises from telephones to car alarms just for the joy of seeing us humans running about getting confused. It’s a superiority thing.

The looked the picture of innocence coupled with the fact that I could still here the cheeping but the Starlings weren’t moving their beaks unless of course they can now throw their voices…

I retreated back into the office and then decided to turn the eggs in the incubator, and the source of the noise was immediately clear, the eggs are hatching. You notice a tiny hole and can just make out a little black beak and that is where the noise emanates from. It is called pipping. And the noise is just that a pip. Once one starts to pip it is a call to all the others to start as well and before you know it you have a whole clutch of eggs singing to each other as the chicks within start to make their way out. It is rather wonderful.

So now I am sitting here trying to work and resist the temptation to sit and stare at the chicks as they hatch. Wondering what will emerge and how many. It is a tricky time for us all and not at all conducive for work!

The Rat Man cometh

rattus norvegius

“It’s not the rat’s fault it was born a rat.”

Not the words of comfort I wished to hear yesterday evening but I bit my tongue and showed the Rat Man the problem.

He said nothing and in the way of true countrymen got on with surveying the scene in utter silence. I tried an opening gambit but with a slow raise of his arm I was curtailed. I longed to spill out my woes, to make excuses for the chickens, but the Rat Man now moved swiftly round the pens his expert eye taking in all the detail he needed.

He gazed out to the middle distance, rubbed the ground with his feet, bobbed down to take a closer look at the hut doors. He peered under the sheds. Standing up he walked purposefully back to his stolid green Land Rover, opened it up and started to talk. Caught slightly on the hop, I rushed over to catch what he was saying and was about to apologise for not reacting quickly enough when I realised that he was in fact talking to his dog.

I was just beginning to feel superfluous when he started to hand out an array of large wooden boxes and a basket of the meanest looking traps I had ever seen in my life.

“I only want to kill rats,” I thought, “not men!”

“Now you mind those fen traps, snap your fingers hard they would. Make you cry.”

I smiled weakly and tentatively put the traps on the ground.

“So who’s going to help you then?”

I looked blank.

“Who’s going to help you with the rats?”

I was slightly non-plussed. “Err, you?”

“Well, I can, but it will cost you. Better if you were to do it yourself. I can teach you.”

“Oh great, “I thought, “I am going to have to deal with the buggers!”

“Oh! Yes!” I thought, “I AM going to have to deal with the buggers!”

Sometimes I have great ideas like calling the Rat Man but sometimes I just don’t actually think things through as much as I should. Of course I cannot have him come out here every day twice a day when I am paying him £32 an hour plus £22 travel.

For the next hour he carefully told me what I had to do and helped me set all the traps, patiently going over the routine several times as I struggled to cope with task at hand.

I have no qualms about disposing of the dead rats it was killing those that may not be dead enough that I know I would struggle with.

“Whatever you do don’t try to hold one that is alive,” he warned darkly.

I looked blank

“Quick as a wink it will bite you and it won’t be pleasant.”

I blanched.

“Best thing is to shoot it. Rats may be a problem but that doesn’t mean that they should be in pain when they die. The art is to do it quickly and cleanly as possible.”

I tried to look enthusiastic as I contemplated this philosophy. Perhaps I would be able to take it better if I did not keep looking at the empty chick pen.

“I don’t hold with poison except as a last resort; don’t want rodenticide to enter the food chain if we can help it," he continued. I nodded not completely with the program but coming round to the idea that like all true huntsmen, this fellow knew and admired his quarry.

“Now we can get on top of this infestation but you will have to get these pens sorted, a good foot of wire at the bottom of the pen should help all the way round, rats’ don’t like having to work too hard see. And put wire on the bottom of the door, they don’t like having to gnaw through it.”

I looked at all my beautiful newly built pens and started to calculate the cost of keeping my hens anew…

“And don’t expect to kill many initially; rats are Neophobic,”

“Well them and me both!” I thought as I wrestled with the fen trap while trying to control my fear of having my fingers broken in one quick snap.

Apparently rats don’t like new things and will avoid them at all costs but once they get used to them they accept them as part of their daily lives. Hence the fact that I could keep the traps where they are placed forever and still catch the rats for apparently they will not learn to avoid things they know will kill them as their fear of new things surpasses any other.

“The inside of a rat’s mind is unfathomable, a bit like the Rat Man’s.” I thought.