Tea time

I have gone into the archives for this blip. Turn the clock back four years to February 2012 and this is what tea time was like. Some of the chickens used to come in the garden and share the cat food, even pecking at the cats if they got  in the way. Smudge was quite a kitten then, and I don't think she had been with us for long.
It was about this time that our now quite elderly lady hen, Isabel, (who had flown over from the animal rescue next door hid under the lavender bushes and sat on a clutch of eggs. I found them one day just as the first chick hatched on a very cold and icy day. We managed to bring Isabel, baby and the rest of the eggs indoors and she hatched them in a large cage in our spare bedroom. Oh the smell, and the joys of motherhood!

Oh those were the days, when we seemed to share our house and garden with a variety of visiting animals. Now the chickens, geese and ducks are secure in  their field enclosed with an electric fence to deter and predators. And of course, the animal rescue has relocated - how I miss the sheep, pigs and other visitors that used to come and see us. Or maybe not!

Isabel had more babies in May last year, in spite of her now being quite an old lady in chicken terms.