I went outside to check the girls before bed the other night and the beam of my flashlight strayed yonder, just above the roofline of the meshed-in run, and a blanket of fur and pink little feet and long tails moved. The entire surface. It MOVED, I tell ya. Rats. Had to be two dozen of ‘em.

I don’t consider myself squeamish in thw presence of vermin. I grew up with gerbils, saved baby mice, shared ownership of a guinea pig named Rabscuttle. In all my years as a teenage barn-schlepper for my horse friends, I’ve discovered many a mouse or rat or possum lurking behind (or inside) a bale of hay. Shoosh ‘em away, I did–nothing more than a fly.

But this complete and utter CARPETING of rats, well, that called for some careful speculation. Like a, well, rat in headlights, I considered the situation. They did the same, their blinky little eyes flickering in the sudden light. Then, reacting to some high-frequency rat alarm, they scurried away. A chaotic frenzy of unravelling carpet, one might say. I shook off the slow-building panic that started to rise like vomit in the back of my throat and stood my ground. I will not run screaming and crying like a little girl, hands all aflutter. I will not jump on a chair and screech like so many apron-clad ’60s housewives. No, I stood my ground and watched them high-tail it behind the garage. I’m sure my teeth were showing through my gaping maw.

So yesterday found me standing in the insecticide aisle of Home Depot holding a variety of rat baits in my hands, considering the most humane–and poison-free method–of ridding my property of rats. After being assured by the department head that the $40 electronic rat zapper was “the best thing on the shelf,” I spelunked the cash down on the counter and went on my merry way.

This morning, eagerly (and very alarming to realize this) anticipating the night’s catch in the trap, I skipped outside to feed the girls and check the bounty, imagining two, three, maybe four or even FIVE dead rats piled up on top of one another in the trap. The light was blinking green. CAUGHTCHA! I howled inwardly, lifting the cover and peering inside to see–a dead cockroach.

Today, after resetting the trap, I hoped for a new chance. Upon feeding the chickens their dinner tonight, I noticed the trap had toppled over on its side. Again, rush up to the trap to check for goods, aaaaand….nothing. A squirrel must have gotten the shock of his or her life trying to get a little nibble of peanut butter out of the damn thing.

So we’re still working on it. I’ll keep you appraised of my progress.

On another note, Fall vacation kicks off Friday with a five-dayer in the Smokies. I’m anxious for the trip but nervous about leaving the girls. My neighbor will be Chief Chicken Tender during this trip, and I have no doubt he’ll do well this time as he’s done in the past. The real question is, how will the girls handle their new turnout area in my absence? (I just extended their outdoor range last week to offer a little more space. See pic…)

Back atcha next week!

Marge should be about halfway through her molt, and the others will probably start soon. I’m hoping that the variations in molting schedules will keep me in eggs over the coming weeks.

Random thought: when you’ve got chickens under your care, you’re like a walking almanac. You know when the sun rises and when it sets. Not by the local television meteorologist, but by your hens’ roosting and rising schedules. And I, for one, will NOT like this fall’s time change…

Time to put the hens to bed.

I reckon it’s going to be an early frost and a hard winter.

My sunflowers were pretty much done, so I pulled them all down and collected the seeds.

Then I started raking the vegetable patch. No sooner than the rake came out of the shed, my feet were surrounded by 8 clucking worm freaks.

Everywhere I went, they followed. I even ended up with a cat trying to help too, although she prefers to provide vocal support and stay out of the hens reach!

Here is V8 scratching at a sunflower stalk. These were big sunflowers,  didn’t measure them but they were easily about 15ft tall…..

The girls weren’t fussed about the seeds last year, but this year, they were quite enjoying having a munch.

I took all the seeds I wanted for next years sunflowers and left the rest in the flower heads for the girls to have a play with.

This is Spice, AKA Wench, Trout, Techni-colour Tramp…. she has many names.

When we first got her as a one year old, she hid under the table for days…. but now, she never shuts up meow, meow, meow….. she is lovely though.

We nearly lost her last year as she had an infection in a lymph node (here’s a link with some info about this condition) http://www.petmd.com/cat/conditions/cancer/c_ct_lymphadenopathy

She was very sick…. and she’s never been quite the same since, but she looks a lot better than last year!

Anyway, this is the cat escape shelf, my husband put up…. they sit here (we have 3 cats) and watch the hens from a safe distance.

If any cat should be so silly as to go near a hen, then all 8 hens chase the cats down the garden….. The hens seem to like chasing our 2 black male cats best…..

Back to the girls…. here they are sorting through the seed heads, leaves and sticks I’ve raked into a pile at the end of the garden.

A good thing to remember when you have hens, is a pile is like a magnet…. they will stand on top of the pile and scratch it all over the place….

They don’t seem interested in this stuff until it’s in a pile…..

Here are Ginger (front and well…. ginger) and Crispy at the back.

They are sorting through the pile of earth I’ve just swept off of the path.

I have to do this everyday.

They all like to go in the ‘flower’ bed and dig all the compost out onto the path, I sweep it up, put it back in the ‘flower’ bed and then they dig it out again. Good fun!

Here are 7 of our 8 ex-battery hens digging and scratching about.

Hens are always moving, they are quite hard to take pictures of, especially as I only have my ancient mobile phone! (we do have cameras, but I’m not good with technical stuff so it’s safer if I stick to the phone….)

The one missing in this photo is Mel, who had gone to check out the cloche.

Here is Chicken 22 in her ‘petrified hen’ pose. She’s actually very friendly, a bit nervous but she always looks terrified!!

She does make me chuckle!

Her bald patch on her neck is growing back and I think she looks great considering she only came out of the battery farm in July!

Here are our 2 remaining original girls. We got these ladies in July 2010 with 2 others (Chicken 11 and Terri).

When we got these girls they were about 18 months old, so now they must be getting pretty close to being 3!

Hens live to about 10 years. With battery hens though, they’ve been through so much already, been made to lay loads of eggs, so it can be hard to say how long they’ll live for.

They are with us until the end. They are pets and an important part of our family.

I have been asked if we eat the hens that die. The answer is no, they are buried in the ‘flower bed’.

This is their retirement home after an awful life and they deserve to be treated with love respect, especially after what people have put them through for the sake of mass production.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve had it fenced off since spring and our newer girls (Chicken 22, Bunty and V8) have never been in there.

Last autumn, our other girls had a great time digging it over for worms and rolling in the compost. Hen heaven.

So, today, just before I let them out, I took the fence down so the girls could go and have some fun.

Here is Bunty in the courgette plant….. she’s managed to squeeze in here a couple of times, but this is her first legal outing into the veg patch.

Her is Chicken 22 in her classic ‘petrified’ pose.

She is named after Chicken 11 who had the exact same look about her!

Here is Chicken 22 in the same place and pose, but Ginger is stood in front of her now…. she is a funny girl.

She did eventually relax!

Here is 22 (hiding behind a leaf in the top left corner), Bunty, Terri 2, Turbo and Ginger all having fun in the vegetable patch.

Ok, so 22 is still hiding in the top left corner, Terri 2 is next to her, then V8 and Bunty together in the middle and then Ginger’s bottom in the bottom left corner.

I’m convinced there are still some carrots in the ground, so I’m hoping the girls will dig them up for me….

They are wonderful rotivators and they also fertilize the ground as they go!

Some sunflowers crept into the veg patch this year…. they were huge! I’m convinced that it was due to hen poo.

On Monday, we had the high wind and even in our sheltered garden, it took it’s toll.

I didn’t let them out of the pen to start with, as with the horrible rain and wind, I was worried they might get blown away.

But later on, as the rain died down and the sun threatened to come out, I let them out to survey the damage.

The first casualty was one of my red sunflowers….. looking at it, it had been dug round the roots, most likely by hens, and then was blown over

So here are the hens tucking into the seeds from the sunflowers…. I was drying the heads out so I could harvest the seeds, but I guess I have more sunflowers….

In front with the purple leg ring is Crispy, just behind her is Bunty.

Here are most of them, all crowded round, munching seeds.

From left to right: Turbo, Crispy, Mel, Chicken 22, Bunty and Terri 2 right at the back! The missing ladies from here is V8 and Ginger.

So here is V8 all on her own. She’s a funny lady, a bit shy, but very curious…. she’ll quite often do a great eagle noise impression whilst I clean them out….

She lays brown speckled eggs and she always lays them in the same place.

She’s very friendly, and is very well feathered considering she only came out of the battery farm in July.

Here is Chicken 22, named in memory of Chicken 11 who sadly passed away in the spring….. I still miss her, but this lady is just like her!

22 is  lot bigger than 11 but she has that same crazy look about her and the floppy comb…..

22 is quite nervous and is the bottom ranking hen, she’s become much friendlier and doesn’t seem to be as worried anymore.

So, back to the sunflower massacre…. 22 is in the front, with her typical startled face, then Crispy, with her concentrating face.

Mel is just behind Crispy’s tail and Terri 2 is on the other side of the plant, mid-blink! I do believe that is Turbo’s neck in the bottom left corner.

Here is another picture of the ladies having a munch.

Ginger is in the middle with the pink leg ring, Terri 2 is on the left with the green leg ring and Crispy is still in best place with her purple leg ring.

You can tell that Crispy is the boss here, even though Mel is in overall command, Crispy is the right hand ‘bird’ and does Mel’s dirty work…..

Ginger has the biggest, puffiest tail out of all of the hens.

When we first got her, she didn’t have many feathers but her tail was huge!!

She was terrible trouble to start with, a real bully….. but once she settled and stopped trying to beat everyone up, she turned out to be a really lovely hen.

Here is Ginger when we first got her.

In this picture she is actually facing up to herself in the mirror….. she was a bully and thought she should be the boss.

When we first let her in with the other hens, she tried to take on all three of our existing hens at the same time!!

I don’t think any hen or person had ever been nice to her and she felt like she had to fight for everything….. poor girl.

Now, she’s very easy going, happy to be picked up and will sit on your lap for a cuddle…..

The sunflower is still laying on the lawn, the girls don’t seem to have finished with it yet…. maybe I’ll leave it there just a bit longer.

Today, the chickens got their fill of man tools, trucks and cranes, 20-foot ladders, spittin’ n smokin’ n chewin’ n all the testosterone that comes along with sweaty men in tool belts and hardhats. (And for the human female population, I’ll vouch that the scenery wasn’t half-bad. Except for the smokers, who are automatically disqualified–and who were kindly asked to cease and desist doing such things on my property.)

There was much BOK-BOK-BOKing going on from inside the coop, where the girls skedaddled after the first ladder-clad gent shuffled by. There was no calming down of the ruffled feathers–literally and figuratively. I tried bribing them with spinach. Nothin’. Black oil sunflower seeds? Nada. Mozarella cheese? Ahh, that’s the ticket. After a brief Q&A with the workers about hen-keeping and the origin of green eggs, I advised them to talk sweetly to the girls when they got upset. Of course I ignored the raised eyebrows and the ‘are you serious’ sideways looks. Yes, I’m serious.

Back in the house, an hour later, and the cacophony of BOKing starts again. Incredibly, I hear a deep voice croon, “It’s okaaaay, it’s alright.” Hahaaa, delightful. I didn’t have the heart to admit that all the sweet-talkin’ in the world wouldn’t make a beakful of difference to those girls if the voice wasn’t my own.

Finally they left. Two hours with no air conditioning, and the house was getting hot. Just before I’d have been forced to don my granny suit and head out to cool off in the pool….

A quick visit to reassure the girls their lives weren’t in mortal danger, and I’m back at work. Just another day for my city hens.

I have always enjoyed drawing, usually horses, but after having our son and general life stuff, I have not had time to draw.

Recently, I started drawing again and thought I’d try drawing some of our ex-battery hens.

I thought I’d share them with you.

This is the first picture and the first time I’d ever tried to draw a chicken….. This is Ginger. I chose to draw her first as she has a funny expression and a massive floppy comb…. also she makes me laugh!

This is also the first time I have drawn using ink. I usually only draw with pencils or use watercolour. But, there’s a first time for everything!

I then decided to have a try at doing a coloured sketch.

I chose water colour pencils to start with as they are quite easy to blend and I think they give a ‘soft’ feel to the picture.

This is a picture of Mel from two different angles. Mel is one of our oldest hens, I know her quite well now.

She is a very dominant character but very friendly at the same time.

This is another coloured sketch, this time of one of our newer hens, V8.

She is a funny little hen, with a very expressive face. I’m building up to drawing a whole hen.

This is my latest one, I thought I’d have a play with some more vivid colouring and a background….

I’m not totally happy with this one, the hen on the right (Chicken 22) her eye is a bit small and I haven’t quite gotten her expression right.

The other two hens (Ginger and Crispy) I’m pretty happy with….. not sure about the background, but I think I could pick holes in my own stuff all day!!!

They are quite peculiar animals to draw, I’m still practising!

I shall add some more drawings as I do them.

Thanks for reading.

I thought I’d write about the wonderful work my husband has done on our hens pen this week.

For sometime now, we’ve had some waterproof material covering half the pen to give the girls some extra shelter and keep the ground a bit drier.

My husband brought some waste material (solid sheets of nylon) home from work to make a solid roof for the pen in preparation for winter.

We have 2 extra hens this year, so we’ll need more dry space and they’ll need to spend more time in the pen when the weather is awful.

Also, our back garden gets a bit swampy and the grass suffers, so last year I kept them in their pen for a couple of weeks at the beginning of spring.

Just to give the grass a chance to grow, because as fast as the new shoots were growing, the hens were eating them faster!!

I re-seeded the lawn, just to make sure there would be plenty of grass for them for the summer and there has been.

So, my husband drew up a rough design, we bought some hinges, screws and bits of wood and got to work.

I helped, held stuff, passed stuff but he did all the tricky measuring and cutting. Being an engineer, he’s much better at that sort of stuff than me!

 Here is the supporting beam for the doors. 
There will be two doors, one at each end. 
The doors will open from a solid section, with the hinges over this piece of wood.
I have also put some sharp sand down on the floor to refill some of the holes that had been dug, and the girls love to pick the little bits of stones out of the sand. 

Here are the two sheets of solid nylon laid in place, ready for cutting. 
You can even see the guide line already drawn down the middle. 

Here is my husband cutting the sheets, ready to put the hinges on. 
This nylon is so strong he was able to sit on top of it whilst he cut. 
It should easily take the weight of the snow and provide the girls with a good secure roof. 

All cut and ready for the hinges! 
As you can see by the sand, the girls  have already tried to re-arrange everything. They are so helpful. 
In case, anyone is wondering, they weren’t at all bothered by the circular saw sounds.

Hinges on and working perfectly!
Yes, that’s me…. LOL! The doors are quite heavy, but that works fine for me. 
My husband has even made some struts to hold them open, as they don’t go all the way back. 
Clever guy! 

Here is V8 helping my husband to finish off. She’s a nosey thing and loves to be involved in everything, but then, don’t they all…… 

Here is V8 again, this time helping to carry a piece of wood. 
She prefers to supervise and I think she does a pretty good job. 
This wood was used to make some perching areas out in the pen. 
They have a little climbing frame thing out there now! 

Done, just got the tidying up to do. 
You can see Mel in the pen checking it out. 
She’s the top bird, so needs to see  everything first.
The others were happy grazing and rolling in the flowerbed. 

We have also put some bubble wrap around the outside of the pen just to keep any driving rain out.

We wanted to make sure our girlies stay nice and dry.

Thanks for reading!