Reginald Iolanthe Chicken

so, being as this blog is supposedly about chickens and suchlike, i thought i shall start to profile my chickens. yes, this is happening.

i'll start with reg, as she is the first acquired of the three current members of the flock.

here she is:

reg is a black rock. here's some information about black rocks:


http://www.theblackrock.co.uk/

she was indeed acquired from a free range farm in the rhondda valley, as an 18-month old retired girl. we bought her to replace eric, one of the three ex- battery hens who formed the original chickeny lineup. she has lovely iridescent beetle black and deep gold feathers, bright red comb & wattles, and she weighs a ton.

as she was being retired, she cost £2. this was three and a half years ago, meaning she's quite an old girl now, but she's still going strong and lays very pretty pale pink eggs. she was retired as she'd had her first moult, meaning egg production slows very slightly and the shell quality isn't quite as good. fine for little old me though. if she were a battery hen she would have most likely become dog food at this point. as she came from a lovely small scale farm, instead she was sold for a tiny sum when prospective new owners presented themselves.

her first few weeks left me feeing absolutely awful though. coming from an idyllic mountainside farm full of her own kind and very little human interference, she was suddenly right at the bottom of the pecking order in a tiny garden which she also had to share with people. she was terrified, and was picked on mercilessly at first as the two old hens made sure she knew her place in the pecking order. these fights can be quite nasty and are horrible to watch, but they always sort things out and are just part of chickens' natural behaviour. still, i felt unbelievably guilty. there was an old bathroom mirror in the garden, and she kept staring into it, almost as if she just wanted to see another chicken that looked like one of her old flock (she was quite strikingly different to the other two orange hens and had only ever seen other black rocks before)

despite now very much being the senior party, she is second of three in the pecking order (though once the order is established, they get on very peacefully). she's lovely. she has the most adorable, quiet voice which wakes me up every morning as she paces up and down the run politely asking to be let out. she's also quite a bit cleverer than the other two, and is adept at stealing food from myself and my housemates. she's very accurate when jumping to get food from people's fingers, tables, plates... sneaky little thing.

(she's the one on the right)

not so long ago she had a very nasty injury when she pulled a nail off jumping from the top of the run.  she was quickly first-aided by me and whisked off to the saturday vet (upside down, to stem the bleeding) where she was cleaned up and kitted out with an enormous green and pink dressing which made her look like she was wearing a clown shoe. sad, but adorable. she had to be kept indoors, in the upstairs bathroom for a week while it healed. as chickens don't like being alone, the guinea pigs were recruited to keep her company.

she's grand now, and appears to be bombproof. further chicken profiles will follow, as will some better updates about my general life and thoughts, if only to break up the chicken rambles. (as for other things in nay's world, plenty going on but no "events" as such to report, but things are very lovely at the moment and on the whole i'm a happy lass.)

Home time and fruit

last weekend, i took advantage of the last of my time off and took a trip home to wolverhampton.

i went the pretty way on the train, via shrewsbury, just because it's nicer. it did prompt me to question why shropshire let the volume housebuilders in, but apart from the odd legoland blight, it's an extremely pretty route.

see?

the main aims of the visit were to visit my poorly aunt (hopefully mending), my very old grandad;

also to watch my sister's band play at the 02 academy (!)

here she is. she's a clever soul. she sings & plays sax in this band. she writes a lot of music too. i'm especially looking forward to her electro musical, or electrical.

the final purpose of my visit was to attend the opening of the new scorebox at my dad's cricket club, a place that has very fond memories for me. i'm a proper townie, i grew up in the city and have always lived in one, however this place is a few miles from my parents' house and is where i did all of my outdoor stuff on summer weekends when i was little. it's also where my fondness for cricket originates, even though it didn't really kick in until i moved away. here's the pavillion: 

as you can see it's rather idyllic. i remember when the row of trees on the right were planted. dad still occasionally plays, though he's 64 now so he's more of a reserve. in fact, he's known as emergency bob. he's club captain now, so he's very involved in the running of the club, admin, coaching, team selection etc. it takes most of his time, a good thing since he's unemployed. gives him something to do, like. mom is also unemployed and gets involved too, usually doing teas. she's known affectionately as matron. my sister and i are the bullets.

unfortunately, my grandad was taken ill the night before the opening so this did upend the plans a bit, it was a much briefer visit than planned. fingers crossed he's on the mend.

back in cardiff i did one of my favourite things: scrounging for free food aka bramble picking by the river. then i made this:

my housemates inform me that it is good.