Boom (and kahn)

Ha! it's been a while hasn't it? I am rubbish at this. but a big long academic holiday looms, so i'll probably get my rant on soon.

Anyway, it's time i told you about Boom. or Boomhauer the chicken (no other names, although they give her my surname at the vet), named after the blond indecipherable ladies' man in king of the hill, to which i was a bit addicted at the time of her purchase.

here she is:

she is an old cotswold legbar. (old cotswold legbars) she was purchased, along with her original sidekick kahn (also from king of the hill) in summer 2008 after the passing of Elvis (just because) & CJ (reginald perrin) in worryingly quick succession. so worrying that CJ, another black rock bought to keep reg company who died very young, was post-mortemmed. poor thing had blood cancer. very sad, but luckily, nothing environmental, which had been the fear.

they were the most expensive chickens we bought- about £15 each if memory serves, and were chosen because they lay those beautiful blue and green eggs which cost a fortune from the supermarket but are really rather nice. they are spectacular looking things too, with huge, floppy red combs, a fluffy crest (hairdo) and prettily patterened feathers. they are not known for being friendly. quite the opposite- they are reputed to be skittish, loud and a bit of a bully and quite a fan of escaping.

here she is as a whippersnapper:

that's before her comb developed and when she still had pink & purple feathers. the run is a temporary one-
so they could get used to the surroundings & the sight of the 2 old chickens (reg & arn, at the time) gradually. kahn is in the backround. she had the best hairdo of all.

boom's first act upon arrival was to try to escape. she did this by scaling the 6ft fence. one prompt catch-and-wing-clip later (wing clipping sounds horrible but it's actually just the feathers that get clipped) and she made it quite abundantly clear that she didn't like people and was going to hide in the coal shed until it was dark, at which point she could be caught & put in her run. kahn was only slightly more brave, occasionally poking her head out of the coal shed but swiftly thinking better of it.

boom got brave with the other chickens quite quickly. she was still skittish around people for a long time, long after she was all moved in and grown up and laying. in the meantime, kahn had become quite attached to me, however had stopped growing and was still petrified of the other chickens. it was very sweet having a tiny pigeon sized chicken that was really soppy, but we suspected that it wasn't right, so called the breeder, who asked us to return her and exchange her for another. (they were under guarantee, bizarrely, and she was not fulfiling her terms) so, kahn got exchanged for bobby, more on her another time.

over time boom got braver and friendlier, and moved up the pecking order. she is now quite firmly at the top. and she does things like this:

(excuse dire pyjama face picture)

in both pictures she is pursuing food. she is a legend. she tries to get into the house via a closed window a little too often. she has also made her way onto a dinner plate, and oven and a barbecue.
she no longer tries to escape, but is very feisty. when reg recently moulted, she picked on her quite mercilessly until all of her feathers had grown back. but she does lovely things too. being boss, she always puts herself between the other two & any predators- usually cats which have no intention of doing anything, but more recently a ferret, which burrowed into their run at 5 in the morning and attacked them. i was woken up by boom's loud squawking and all i could see when i looked out of my window was her flapping about the run in a very panicked fashion. it was horrible. she actually managed to break out, so by the time we'd legged it downstairs to find out what was going on, all of the chickens had scattered, boom being last. (bob made it into the house somehow, reg was nowhere to be seen for about 10 minutes, horrible hecause i thought she might have been eaten or killed or stolen) the ferret was still after boom when i caught her & put her on top of the guinea hutch. she kind of collapsed then- so i was worried she'd been hurt, but luckily i think she was just stunned and exhausted. reg had been hiding behind the bin, we discovered when the ferret found her. ferrets are horrible creatures. really vicious. or at least they are when they've broken into a chicken run at first light.

anyway, i've realised i can gibber waaay too long about a chicken that not many people care about. so, one last picture or two, & i'll be off.

Boom!!