April almost!

It’s only April and so it should be arguably as it is, cold. Cold but not too bitter. Indeed my great Grandmar who I never met is quoted by my Grandmar who is still alive and asleep as I type this, in saying the it won’t be warm until all those daffodils have died! She was probably, even with climate change right.

I am getting to a mental age where the carefree childhood memories that you remember you hold onto dearly. I remember Easter being largely of a jumper cladded egg hunt affair.

Out in the fields of meadow that surround where I keep my hens, the cowslips are flowering and are glad of the rain that we had in the week. As a result their flower stems can grow tall.

If April proves to be a dry month, then their little dancing lemon candelabras will be short and not as dramatic. The meadows here are vast thanks to the farm being Organic, there are several acres of old well stocked meadow so I picked a jam jars worth. They actually have the most subtle and beautiful perfume.

I did my first flower arranging demonstration this week. For this, I picked these along with road side dead nettle which was beautifully transformed into something very vase worthy by stripping its leaves off.

Garden wise, the bulbs planted last year both in the dahlia bed I have within the land that the hens range on and in the raised beds of a neighbours garden are coming up well. Hyacinths Woodstock, Gypsy Queen, City of Harlem are all perfume factory’s albeit stupidly dumpy ones. I haven’t sown any seeds bar those of more sweet peas. The autumn sown sweet peas though are now big and I have planted them out gathering birch and hazel for them to climb up. Sweet peas need as much organic matter as you can dig into where they are to grow, chicken manure, liquid seedweed and fermented brews of toxic smelling comfrey are what they need to grow well. With hotter summers, they are also happier and grow better in parts of the garden that give them some afternoon shade.

Due to the cold, waiting for a broody hen has been an anticipation.

Purring and sitting tight on fake dummy eggs in a trance like state of self- neglect and raging hormones, one of the lowest ranking hens of the flocks pecking order has chosen to indeed go broody at last.

The broody hen has been moved to her private hen house suite rather than left to be amongst her trampling sister Cochin hens back in the main hen house.

Here she would be pecked at and seen as an annoyance by those hens who want to lay in the same nesting box. Cochins are docile and silly hens in a nice way so this hen was easily moved to her new abode without any fuss. Other breeds can object to being moved to a nest that is not of their choosing. My best advice is to move a broody hen in the dark of night so that she then wakes up in her new broody coop unfazed.

So far egg fertility has been dismal from the Cochins. Who knows how many chicks will hopefully be on the cards for the end of April and already writing the end of April is a dreadful thing when you consider the time needed to rear the little chicks well to adulthood before autumn!

The welfare of broody hens has to be well prioritised. Each day, a sitting hen is taken off her nest for a break. Much fuss is made of this interference of human hands but these luncheons help to keep her weight up. Left to her own devices, a hen might sit tight for several days despite developing eggs being happily cooled down for an hour without the embryos being at all affected. A hen left to sit and become thin and pale faced is not good, she needs to be in her prime so she can face single parenting with good energy levels. Her nest and tummy feathers need to be well powdered against as a guard from any mites and a dusting bath of dry soil needs to be supplied so that she stays in fine feather.

It is incredible to witness a sitting hens huge dropping of guano, a great steaming pat of brown and white dolloped down as soon as her legs begin to walk after she is lifted off her nest, signalling that a toilet break can be permitted.

One thing a sitting hen does not do is lay anymore eggs, her energy is used up to allow her to sit rather than lay. As far as she’s concerned whether they have been collected or not she has already laid clutch worthy numbers!

Tomorrow, Monday I will be taking some eggs to Chatsworth Farmyard for them to hopefully hatch they will be of both Cochin and Lemon Sablepoot millefleur bantams in haste but I am looking forward to seeing the Jacob sheep lambs . I’ll report from the orangery shop ! Best Arthur x

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