COVID-19, Coops and Chooks….

There is a song that keeps playing in my head; you may remember it from singing it to your children….

🎼 Chick chick chick chick chicken lay a little egg for me,

chick chick chick chick chicken I want one for my tea,

I haven’t had one since Easter and now it’s half past three,

oh, chick chick chick chicken lay a little egg for me.

The reason for the musical roundabout in my brain is because I am beyond excited because finally after 15 years we have some chickens!

Hubby is the busiest and hardest working person I know, and understandably didn’t want yet another thing to occupy his time. So we agreed to wait for a while; then the coronavirus happened followed by a lockdown and a lot of people clearly panic buying just anything and everything including eggs. So after six shopping trips and one online delivery without a single egg to be found I broached the subject with him again.

It went a bit like this…”sweetie, how about we get a few chickens while we’re on lockdown and after three months (because that’s how long I have to be isolated), we can review the situation and make a decision on whether we continue to keep them or give them to somebody else. “

You could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather when the response was “yes that’s not a bad idea!”

I’m not one to let the grass grow under my feet; I’m more the ‘moss can’t grow on a rolling stone’ kind of girl and immediately started my search for some chickens. It seems people are panic buying chickens too…and I don’t mean the ones you find in the freezer at Aldi, I’m talking live egg-laying chickens!

I don’t know whether you’ve got any previous chicken experience, but you probably do know they need somewhere to live. The race was on to get a chicken house built before they arrived home on Saturday; and this was Thursday evening.

I researched a bit about how to build a chicken house using reclaimed materials and, as quickly as possible. Now because we are restoring a grade 2 listed building we have our very own ‘scrapyard/junk pile’ along the side of the house where all of our usable and not so usable items are kept/dumped. It took us about a day to build a lovely little chicken house for them; we got it 95% finished five minutes before hubby needed to go and collect the girls. The remaining 5% is to make a more user friendly fence with a gate, and then I may paint it all a uniform colour – that’s only a maybe as hubster likes the rustic wood look about it. House ready, and all for the princely sum of £0, yep, £0 because every single items is reclaimed.

So today we are the proud owners of four beautiful 18 week old mixed breed chickens for egg laying and social fun.

The grandchildren are all racing to provide name suggestions for the girls, but until they actually come out of the house I won’t know which one to call what. So here I sit at the window looking out over the garden towards the chicken house waiting very impatiently for them to come out on the first morning. It may be British daylight saving today – it’s the 29th of March 2020, but the weather is so cold (1 Celcius) and blustery for spring that even I wouldn’t want to come out but they will be hungry and thirsty very soon and the food and water is underneath the chicken run so this should provide enough incentive for them to make an appearance sometime today – pleaaaasssse!

So you may be seeing the start of a lot of diary entries from the chicken coop.

That’s day 1 of the Chook Chronicles.

Cluck, cluck, over and out.