Broody bantams

The broody bantams are entrenched. It seems that the warmer the weather the hotter they intend to keep themselves. Four are currently vying for position in the two nesting boxes, not helped by the fact that one of the boxes is clearly preferred to the other. Woe betide the chicken who plays chicken and rises for a drink or the odd bite to eat; the remaining three fluff their feathers self-importantly and assume an air of propriety over their small space.

It fell to me to much out the chicken coop and move the whole shabang to new quarters over the weekend, (there is a loose rota for such things, but it appears that 'mother's' turn crops up with increasingly regularity, perhaps this too comes under D for drainage - see earlier post).  Trying to rouse the broodies from their feathered beds is not an easy task. I left both sides of the coop open to give them fair warning, nothing. I lifted them gently from the boxes and placed them on the ground - broody hens, well ours at any rate, enter into some trance-like state and will often sit for some time on the ground if lifted from their boxes, seemingly incapable of movement - they had returned to their preferred positions by the time I had removed the fencing from around their coop. I shut all entrances and moved the coop, jolt by jolt around the corner and under the apple trees; they remained in situ.

The Sisters of Doom (Smokey and Feathers - originality not an issue when it comes to naming our feathered friends) are above being broody. They are the original pushers of the fowl glass-ceiling; careers only girls, being broody is clearly only for cissies. They laugh in the face of their clucky companions, defy electricity - they walk daily right through the electric fencing, seemingly untouched and uncaring - and stalk off to lay elsewhere in the garden. It would be totally below them to deign to fight it out for nesting space with paltry (no pun intended) bantams; although, should they so desire, they would of course assume prime position in the box of their choice.

The bantams Ginger (Chicken Run), Phoebe (the pheasant, colouring the same), Bess (Dick Turpin, no prizes for her colour) and Buff (a cross-bred Buff Orpington) are currently basking in the morning sun. Whilst broody they refuse to perch at night to ensure they're on site for best position to sit all day come dawn. They'd make great mothers, but no one has thought fit to tell them we have no rooster!