those good girls

What an odd little boy I must have been.
One of those quirky children in the class. 'Bless him, he's a real funnyossity'.

Hoy: legbar hybrid

Had this fascination with birds since the beginning. Any kind. And have loved hens. Mum promised me that one day I would be able to have some: got 'em now..

And you can imagine my sense of satisfaction as my half dozen hens forage in the mulches in the Woodland Garden or sandbathe in a freshly prepared seed bed in the vegetable garden.

And each with their own distinctive personalities.
Jess, a great big, voluble galleon of a hen. The rest named after Scottish Isles. So Eigg is the inquisitive one, Canna nice but dim, Rhum the looker, Hoy slender and smart and as sharp as a tack. And Moussa, the baby. Like some kind of free spirited hippy.

We added Hoy (white eggs) and Moussa (Greenish blue eggs) to our little flock in March. It was a tempestuous time as the others felt their place in the rigid pecking order of the hen coop was threatened by new arrivals. And both pullets were too young for egg laying at that time. We've been waiting....

Moussa: legbar hybrid

Now you probably know that Jill has got the best smile in Britain. Well, it was as wide as Maid Marion Way when she went to collect the eggs and, for the first time ever, saw that Hoy's white pullet eggs had joined those of the brown egg layers. 

There are four nest boxes in the hen house, each similar. Why then do all the hens lay in the same box? Each sitting on the other? That's just one of the a mysteries of the chicken mind.

And doesn't apply to flippertygibbert Moussa. She will lay in her own time...