It's Been a While

Hi everyone,

Firstly I must apologise to our avid readers for being away for so long. It is a long story and I will tell you the main bits.

At the beginning of the year, the area we live with The Humans, was hit by a disease called "Bird Flu". The Humans built a big shelter and run but the longer it went on the more bored we got. They tried to keep us occupied with different things, swings, straw bails, CDs and of course our favourite, cabbage pinata (for those non-EU types, cabbage on a string).

Now I don't want this to turn into a clucky moan but something weird happened to me over this period of 6 months.

I wasn't my normal self and felt quite blue, which is odd because I am black in colour with some speckles. I would look at my reflection in the drinking trough and see a blue chicken. Then my very best friend Brave became ill and went to chicken heaven. Well that was very sad.

I started to behave weirdly and when we were finally allowed back into The Chicken Garden all I wanted to do was sit on eggs and try and get them to hatch. Oh how I used to laugh at Bluie when she was broody but here I was sitting on eggs and golf balls all day. I was also very grumpy and wouldn't chat with the other girls or have any fun.

One day Charlie came up to me and said, " Val enough is enough, you are not yourself and I have asked Dr Quack to come and see you". So along came Dr Quack, the local bird Dr, "well," he said, "I have seen this before in hens your age Val and there is nothing to worry about. You have what we know as the 'eggohpause'". Apparently hens of a certain age go through a period in their life where they do weird things and behave oddly. He gave me some Hairy Rats Tails and a few days later I felt back to normal.

So now I am feeling like my old self again I thought I would write some more and thank you to those who have asked for my Cluck to come back.

We have had a glorious summer and welcomed three more girls to The Garden - Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. They have settled in well and are over-coming their shyness. Ruby is particularly adventurous and keeps popping into The Dog Garden, I hope she doesn't get caught. I keep hearing The Humans shouting "Ruby, what are you doing?". They then come into The Garden and give us corn to distract Ruby from going back in - this is of course great for us as we get more corn :-). They came from a battery farm so have had to get used to being chickens and we have been showing them how to peck corn and scratch the ground. Sapphire is still super shy.

I hope you have all had a good summer, the small human is getting ready to go back to Human School, we will miss her skipping around with us every day.

We also miss The Humans with the white hair who stayed with us for a while. It was lovely having them here and they gave us double the amount of treats we normally have. 

As the summer draws to a close here in The Garden I think it's time to get clucking fit and ready for autumn.

Have a clucking good week

Val.