Right now she has claimed the best nesting box and all the eggs.
The other hens keep climbing in on top of her,
none of them are prepared to use the other boxes
to lay their eggs.
This photograph shows the remaining five hens,
heads down as they scramble for their favourite treat - grated cheese.
They adore it.
Not even grated cheese will budge Queen Mab.
With this flock we elected to get birds of varying plumage,
it makes it easier for us to name them and to get to know their individual
characters.
I know there are two white ones
but
one is quite large, the other much smaller and a very different shape.
It works for us!
Previously we have always had rescue hens,
they were lovely,
but it was difficult to tell one from another.
The last hen we had which went all broody
was the leader of her little flock,
funnily enough we had named her Queen Boudica...
she was one of the rescue hens.
Meanwhile, Susie, the large white Sussex hen has taken over the leadership
the others are not particularly impressed
but Susie doesn't seem to notice.
They sometimes lead us a merry dance as they free-range through the woodland
but they are beautiful to look at,
very entertaining
and they provide us with an enormous
number of fresh and delicious eggs.
Meanwhile, we continue to work long hours down at Cowslip Cottage.
Max and I have left Miles down there
he is busy turning some old bricks to show their best side,
he is also doing some re-pointing,
using lime mortar.
Max and I do the boring stuff - until we either get bored
or run out of energy.
Usually the latter!
Great progress is being made,
I promise to send you some more
photographs, Poppy. I snapped a few of Miles this afternoon,
hopefully they will have turned out okay.
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Lovely to hear from you.
I will try to answer comments in the next post.