The days are getting shorter as we are
weeks away from Christmas. This makes looking after our hens a very
mathematical challenge. Monty likes to stand at daybreak and call the world to
order. The fact that no daylight turns up before nine in the morning makes him
confused. This means that some mornings you can hear him tooting away at 6am,
some mornings you wake him up at eight. When that happens he gets very
embarrassed and overcompensates and his voice brakes. Monty has grown a lot
this autumn and is now a handsome cockerel but he still tends to sound like
Tarzan, at times.
Having a chick in the house is fun but
when it's a mixed breed it's difficult to know if it's a boy or a girl. With
our Little Beep it's been a guessing game, back and forth, back and forth and
when we finally decided that it's Lisbet we were happy to add a hen to our
flock, so to speak. So to show us how wrong we usually are, Lisbet grew
massively in one week and Eric it is. To really drive home the truth, Little
Beep's voice broke so now our little chick sounds like a beeping drum. We have
two cockerels in the house and all we can do is hope for the best.
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| Credit: Dasha Dimitrova |
Monty does not seem to mind as he
follows Lina around, telling her what a beautiful hen she is. This takes up
most of his day and Lina is getting used to it, a bit. She pecks him when he
walks too close to her but most of the day she is fine with it. Last night when
I said goodnight to them Monty was not in his usual place, on his bed in the
sheep pen. I looked for him, thinking he might have fallen down in to the hay (he
can do that...) but then saw that he was in the hen house. First time in his
life Lina had invited him to lay next to her and he was stock still, trying not
to rock the boat. It just goes to show that persistent flattering can work,
eventually. So we just have to hope that Lina accepts Eric for the little boy
in the group he is and that Monty is too much in love to care. And that's Cows
Will Fly!
Feeding our hens is another math
challenge. They start eating when daylight brakes and stop in the dusk. This
means that we have to serve dinner an hour before the sun goes down or they go
to bed hungry. Lina is the only hen that eats in artificial light and she is
still giving us an egg every other day. But as we want her to stop and have a
winter break, there is only a dim evening light on in the stable for now. This
light is for the sheep and they turn in early too, so it's lights out and
nighty night at seven, seven thirty in their house. By then the hens have slept
for hours, dotted around the stable and some even in the hen house. Wishing
Mindy, Mandy, Molly and My a good night has to be done in a whisper or Eric
wakes everyone up, asking if it's morning and what's for breakfast. I guess he
is a teenager...
Our dear sheep like autumn and the cosy
atmosphere it brings. Due to constant warmth and stormy weather, winter seems
to make us wait, this year. We spend some time indoors, chatting and fixing.
Mindy loves her hens popping in for a visit, Molly steals their food and all is
well in their world. We just wish the rest of the world would get there, as
well.
Text by Nina
Next blog post on the 20th December.
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