What's coming my way.

When our kiddies were little we kept chooks ~ mostly rescues who were semi naked on arrival & ever so grateful to be allowed to free roam.  They roosted in an upended trampoline frame covered in chicken wire & for the years we had them they provided us with lots of deep golden yolked eggs. 

What's more they kept our surrounds absolutely tick free.  Loved them for that alone ~ but lugging chooks from the mainland is a dodgy business.  Buying locally, Russian Roulette unless you are very, very sure of your sexing.  Our first batch all turned out to be young cockerels who went to a far, far better place & no doubt landed in the pot but 6 young cockerels we could not keep. They were great *guard dogs* & terribly aggressive. All the kids friends were terrified of them.  And they crowed ~ sort of.  All of them.  All the time.  No.  Just no.

We did better as we learnt & our ODD loved her chookies,  though they were far less enamoured of her, scuttling for safety as she swooped on one for cuddles before tucking it neatly under one arm to go adventuring.  What I  loved was the compost, the scrap binners, the eggs ~ & I have been hankering for chooks again: Australorps; Rhodesian Reds; Plymouth Rocks . 

I made noises about getting a *proper* chook run.  After all, we now have neighbours on all sides so it is better if we look semi respectable. Dearest hemmed.  Dearest hawed.  Dearest promised to build me one.  I sighed but one does not look a gift horse in the mouth.  I had my spot all picked out ~ the gap between our house & what used to be the MOTH's parent's place.  Perfect spot!  The right size.  Easy to get to but not in the way of anything else. 

And nothing happened.  Zero. Zilch. Nado.

Then today, out of the blue, we were on eBay & I made my chook noises & now one of these lovely delux chook houses is on its way here to me! Oh, me. Oh my! However, having kept chooks before, I am far more cautious this time. I have to wait for spring & point~of~lay which gives me time to buy the extras, things I never thought about first time round: a proper feeder because we have snakes & I know how many males it takes to remove a snake from a chook pen: every male you can find & then some!!!  A water drip because otherwise the stupid birds will sit & poop in the water, which is just disgusting.  Hemp bedding for the nests because that's cleaner & drier than anything else.  Cane mulch for the run. Shell grit so your eggs have nice hard shells.  Food, because kitchen scraps are never enough.  Worse than the cats ~ & they are spoiled rotten as it is.

But seriously, there is nothing quite like the soft chucking of happy hens  scratching in the garden or putting your hand into a nest & finding an egg, still warm. Little things make me so happy.