Jun 3
When you keep hens for eggs you learn to read your eggs for information on the well-being of your flock. You begin to notice variations in the colour, shape and thickness of the shell, the consistency of the white and the yellowness of the yolk. Shortly after the fall of Beelzebub I noticed something very strange about my eggs – something that should no longer be possible. Most of them were fertilised. Read more
We both knew it had to be done but we had been procrastinating for weeks. Months, if I’m honest. He was a menace and he needed to go, but somehow neither of us had the heart to do it. Read more
As some of you will know, I live with a feisty cock who causes me no end of trouble. I have tried a number of approaches to keeping him at bay, including whacking him (judiciously) over the head, but nothing seems to work. Read more
Something is rotten in Toyland. I’m not getting any eggs. I haven’t quite figured out what’s happening but I suspect the hens might be suffering from post traumatic stress disorder after an intrusion incident. Read more
It appears I have been mollycoddling my cock. I need to treat it a bit more roughly, apparently. To keep it in its place. Easier said than done. My cock woes began the day the fucker arrived. (Sorry, but my thesaurus had no replacements for “fucker”.) He escaped from the run and Arūnas had to wrestle the poor dog to stop him from killing him. In retrospect we should have just let it play out. We spent the next half an hour running round after him like eejits, eventually getting him back, tailless but otherwise intact, into the run. Read more
What a bloody palaver. This morning one of our neighbours gave us a present of a cock. He’s a tall and handsome chap and the hens were very happy to see him. The dog however, was not. He immediately jumped up to grab him from Arūnas’s arms. Thwarted, he barked around the perimeter of the run all day. At least the cock was safe in the run, we though. Read more
My Food Odyssey 