Mom-to-be

 It’s not easy being a mother. If it were easy, fathers would do it! 

 From the television show ‘The Golden Girls’

Another one of Solly’s hen’s (she’s four months old now), has made herself at home in my garden and started laying eggs – against a wall, totally in the open with no protection over-head. I can’t actually provide her with any protection, I’m so scared she’ll leave the nest if I fiddle around too much.

The beginning of new life

However, I am preparing a warm place for them to live once she hatches her new brood, and hopefully Kingston, the Dad-to-Be will join them for good once they’re settled. Such exciting times! I just can’t wait to hold the little bundles once they’ve hatched!

Day 3

So far there are four eggs and she’ll probably lay 9 or 10 before starting with the serious stuff of sitting on them. I’ll be doing an up-date when the babies hatch, if all should go well – life on a smallholding for chickens is a risky business!

The proud Father-to-Be, “Kingston”, one of Solly’s youngest roosters – he’s also just 4 months old now.

It's Friday!

I crept out of bed early with the sound of the roosters crowing to one another - 4am - put on the kettle, made my coffee and came to the computer. By the time hubby surfaced around 6.30am, I had already updated a couple of blogs, up-loaded some artwork to RedBubble, let the chooks out, fed Solly's chickens and filled all the bird feeders in the garden. Time for another cup of coffee.

It's the end of the week and the weekend is lying ahead as an extra bonus, the hours are mine to do with as I please. No need to rush and open the doors for business, no staff coming in, just two lovely days of spending time with my chooks or whatever else takes my fancy.

But today ended up being busier than usual, with a constant stream of customers and eventually, when I did manage to join Chrissie in the garden, she informed me that Missy had been sitting in one place all morning. Very worried, I approached her to see what was the matter and was greeted by her screeching like a banshee! She fluffed herself in a threatening manner and I immediately knew what the 'problem' was - when I picked her up, I saw what all the melee was about - she was sitting on a couple of eggs. She had obviously been gathering them for some time and now she was broody and ready to stay with them till the little darlings hatched...

I remove all the eggs that my chooks lay - I've got nine roaming the garden, causing havoc, and I really can't afford to have any more. Missy obviously got sick and tired of me removing her eggs out of the nest boxes in the chicken coop and decided to do the sneaky thing and find a safe spot in the garden!

Missy looking on in disgust as I remove her eggs

And I have no idea how 6 eggs escaped our attention what with Chrissie regularly cleaning up and me watering the garden every couple of days. But the girls can be very innovative when it comes to hiding their eggs!

We spent another couple of minutes searching to see if there were any more stray eggs we might have missed and that sparked a major clean-up of areas trampled flat by the girls - it is just beyond and above me as to why they would like to sit ON TOP of the plants in stead of next to or under them...

.