Bumped in to an old chum of mine, George, in The Wishing Well the other night. I'd only called in for a swift half, on my way home from a gruelling day on the allotment, but you know how it is? Well, to cut a long story short, and in retrospect, I wish George had done that, 'cos it would have saved me from an ear bashing and a sore head when I finally found my way home, it seems George and his good lady wife are now the proud parents of twelve contented, clucking, free range egg laying hens.
As it turns out, Brenda, George's other half, a fairly formidable lady by anyone's standards, has become quite enamoured with the internet, and Facebook, whatever that is when it's at home, being her all time favourite. Now, it seems, George explained, that one day Brenda was sitting on Facebook, and here I had to take a double swig of my bitter, as I was sorely tempted to remark how painful that must have been, when she happened to come across something about rescued battery hens, in need of good homes.
As we all well know, battery hens lead a pretty miserable existence, and sadly, very short lives. Their life span being usually around eighteen months old, when they're deemed no longer fit for egg laying, thus ending up in the slaughter house. For the sake of all those delicate ladies out here who may happen to be reading this, I'm not going in to the gory details of just how these poor creatures are disposed of, suffice it to say, it ain't very pleasant.
Although George doesn't have an allotment, he does have a pretty fair sized garden, and his prize veg is the talk of the village every year. So you can imagine mydiscern when he announced that a good sized chunk of it had been turned over to a chicken coop no less. Seems Brenda was so taken by the plight of these unwanted and unloved little blighters, that she'd agreed to take on twelve of them, at the princely sum of fifty pence each. I decided there and then, after swiftly moving from a half to a pint, that Brenda must have a softer side to her than any of us chaps had witnessed before, and I concluded that this Facebook thingy must be a pretty powerful medium indeed.
As George pointed out, and by this time a few more drinkers had formed an interested group up at the bar,
erecting a coop and acquiring the hens was easy compared to what came next. Although pre warned by the good people from the charity that had rescued the birds, Brenda and George had very little notion of how severely life in a shed had emotionally and physically affected them.
For the first couple of days, the 'girls',as George had now taken to calling the hens, had to be housed inthe garden shed. Letting them loose in the garden could have been too traumatic for them, so for a while, they huddled together, in the only way they knew, each in a space no bigger than a sheet of A4. Sounds a tad cruel, but apparently it was all they'd ever known. During daylight, the door of the shed was opened, offering the girls the opportunity to explore their new surroundings.
After the second day, one of the young ladies finally poked her head out in to the sunshine, only to retreat sharpishly, where she stayed, with her chums, for another twenty four hours. The following morning, Brenda, who's not usually prone to displays of emotion, squealed excitedly for George to move himself 'quickly down the bloomin'stairs'.
First one, then eleven more, some sadly underweight, others partly bald, and a couple even without their full beaks, emerged slowly and nervously in to the garden. At this stage, George proceeded to pull out of his inside jacket pocket a selection of 'before and after' snaps. By this time, our pints were swiftly followed by whiskey chasers, and one or two of our drinking buddies were fishing desperately in their pockets for long forgotten and largely unwashed hankies.
As is common with hens, a battle for supremacy took place, almost as soon as they realised they were free, but it seemed the skirmish only lasted a short while, when the stronger of the bedraggled group exerted her authority. George confided he had the strongest urge to call this particular girl Brenda, but being a sensible man, christened her Mildred instead.
Unexpectedly, the girls didn't immediately begin pecking the grass in search of juicy worms; this wasn't a pastime they had ever experienced in their short uneventful lives. George described how, for the first few hours, they shuffled hesitantly, still as a group, around their new found stomping ground. Matilda however, seemingly rising to the role of matriarch, was the first to discover the delights of the garden worm, proudly puffing up her partially bald breast as she devoured her prey. After quite a few unsuccessful attempts, including the near demolition of one of Brenda's sensible blue slippers, and a close encounter with the tail of next door's nosey cat, the others soon followed suit, happily pecking away in the garden, as if they'd been doing it since they were born.
The egg laying however, as George pointed out, was, to start out with, a bit hit and miss. Several of the girls laid almost immediately, and although infinitely more delicious than shop bought, they were rather on the small size. Some took longer, not surprising really, as the shock to their systems must surely have affected production. One or two, George admitted, never really got the hang of it, but he seemed quite unperturbed by this slight misfortune.
By all accounts, the girls have become favoured family pets, even following Mum and Dad indoors, with Matilda commandeering George's favourite armchair, much to Brenda's amusement. When my lovely lady has calmed down a bit, I might just suggest that she doesn't really need quite so much garden for flowers.
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