Monday 17 January 2011

From Rocky to Rockette...

Its been a surprising few days on the homestead. We've learnt some very important things...

1. No matter how many books on poultry you read your hens will always surprise you.
2. No matter how many books on poultry you read your children will always surprise you.

I haven't seen much of the chickens over winter. I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark and BH sees to them in between. But I do remember that before the winter set in we had four fluffy young hens, a mixture of Buff Orpington Bantam, Wyandotte and Rhode Island Red - pretty little girls all of them - not any more.

As I was clearing up leaves, mini freerangegirl said 'mum, one of our hens is a cockerel' and it certainly did look like one. We called BH up to ask the same, but he insisted that it definitely wasn't as it had never crowed...

...and on that note the little fella stretched out his neck, shook his beautiful plumage and you guessed it...Cockadoodledooed. Not once, not twice but for the rest of the day and pretty constantly too. Needless to say we have a very embarrassed BH in our midst. Looking at him now its pretty obvious but then hindsight is 20:20 as they say...


My poultry princess got to name him and immediately called him 'David Beckham' which I thought was rather apt as he's got Spurs! But he has gone to live on a friends farm where he can cockadoodledo to his hearts content without driving my neighbours nuts. I think its back to chicken school for us - where my daughter is probably giving the lessons!

11 comments:

  1. We do continue to be surprised by life, don't we? We had chickens from the time I was about 10, and I always enjoyed hearing the roosters crow! I don't recall that we ever had complaints from the neighbors but those (complaints) would have been made to my parents.

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  2. Oh yes - what a good decision! We had a few years of chicken maternity ward 10! Noe just the gals! Talking of which I MUST go and get them some pellets - good job I read your blog! Cheers. Dxx

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  3. i'm sure there's a smutty joke in there somewhere but as there's kids involved I ought to leave it eh?

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  4. Hi Pat - our neighbours have been remarkably nice about our cockerels in the past but I wouldnt want to push my luck!

    Hi Mrs N - I totally agree, the cockerels are so handsome, until they start chasing me down the garden that is!

    Trust me Dom - whatever your thinking, ive probably said! BH is suitably red faced!

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  5. Well!I'm glad that's sorted!! Enrol that little munchkin of yours at Bishop Burton straightaway - she's obviously a natural.

    Word verification, 'conkwest' - which is what your David Beckham would have been scoring if he hadn't been spotted.

    Loving the new swish layout, by the way. x

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  6. Hi Elizabeth - you're not kidding, its all those practical poultry magazines we keep finding under her bed! Thanks for your lovely comments - Ive been meaning to give the site a makeover for a while but ive not been brave enough to press the save template button just in case I lost it all! I am very relieved to see that its all still up and running!

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  7. We did the same with my daughter's hamster, thought we'd got a girl when in fact he was a boy. It's a good job we'd kept him in a different cage to my son's girl hamster.

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  8. I've left you an award on my blog. Don't feel under any pressure to accept it if you don't wish to do so, I just wanted to let you know that I enjoy reading your blog.
    www.jo-throughthekeyhole.blogspot.com

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  9. Under pressure - are you kidding Jo - im thrilled - its made my day, and then some. Seriously , thankyou, Im really touched that you chose my blog, just got to get to work now on thinking of seven facts!!! x

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  10. This post reminds me of some friends of ours from Cumbria - they started keeping hens about 10 years ago, had a problem and googled it. VERY shocking results - none of them dealing with feathered creatures!!!!!!

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I lovelovelove your comments and I read everyone. I might not always get round to replying but I will try my best to...girlguide promise x