a short walk with hens

The broody hen has stopped brooding, just like that.  She came out into the run for her share of porridge oats and sultanas when I opened the hen house pop hole, and stayed out, and at half past four when I slid back the door of the run to let them out into the garden for chicken exercise time, five hens trooped past me.  Unluckily for them, their free ranging was curtailed when spots of rain began to fall, and as they drifted back towards the run they found themselves chivvied along by the Systems Administrator, and shut in again earlier than they had probably meant to be.  The SA explained to me that the rain radar was showing heavy showers moving our way.  I said I hadn't known that when I decided to let them out, and were all five back in the run?

This threw the SA, who hadn't realised that the broody was now back on active service.  It took some minutes of opening and shutting the chicken house to check, since they can be quick movers, and trying to count them sometimes reminds me of a friend's nightmare audit when he was a junior accountant of a car firm where the staff would not stop driving the cars around during the audit. That was a case of deliberate obfuscation, whereas the chickens just like wandering about, but eventually we established that we only had four hens.

I found the fifth happily hunting in the long grass at the bottom of the garden.  I don't think she'd realised that she was all alone, and while she wouldn't let me grab her, she scuttled along up the garden quite amenably with me following behind, before taking a sharp right into the Eleagnus hedge.  I had to prod her out with the Systems Administrator's chicken wrangling twelve foot bamboo cane, and she grudgingly agreed to go back in the run with the others.  Poor chickens, they do enjoy taking a turn around the garden, and today's was very short.

They are not nice in their personal habits sometimes.  One of the cats had been sick in the gravel, and I regret to say that the chickens ate the pile of regurgitated cat food with every appearance of relish.  I hope that doesn't put you off eggs, but as long as you are normally happy to eat mackerel and crab, you shouldn't mind about it.