Hens in Horticulture

Since then, I’ve become used to noisy squawking in the porch, being watched through the window from my picnic table by up to three of them, and daily entries to check my work rate. The table is one thing, but you try cleaning blackbird pooh from the keyboard of your laptop! I am uneasily suspicious that they actually come in to look for me. There are “signs” of them in almost every room, but when I am out in the nursery, one or other turns up within seconds and follows me about. This is behaviour I am used to in my garden robin (who has never come indoors), but I’ve not had such ridiculously tame blackbirds, nor was I quite ready for today’s new invasion – of blue tits!

On the domestic front, three of our “new” bantam hens decided en masse to go broody. One of them, Hector 2 (don’t ask) jumped and squawked every time I looked in, so I knew she was no match for motherhood. The others sat tight, and in nineteen days, Gold Top had hatched four chicks out of five eggs, who are giving us great amusement and pleasure, and so far show no signs of the precocious comb and strapping thighs that mark out a cock. It’d be too much to hope they will all be hens though – we will soon know if some start to crow!

We have decommissioned a cold frame to become a moveable chick and hen ark, and gradually they are strimming (and eating) all the dockens in the wild nursery end of the garden. Hens love dock leaves, and are good at controlling them, but unless confined they are difficult to reconcile with horticulture. On the plus side is their ability to act as living strimmers and harrows, their appetite for big fat slugs and other pests, and their ability to sort out the weed seeds from an ineffective compost heap.

On the down side is their determination to eat your greens and to dig out anything you planted in the last six months, an inability to grasp that compost needs to be spread in specific areas (none of which include the pond, the patio or the lawn), and an indiscriminate attitude to the bugs they are eating. But they are fun, and now and then lay you an egg by way of compensation!

Not to be outdone, Goose tried to make a nest in the impenetrable fastness of a Japanese Maple. We can’t really support more than a pair of geese, so my son chased her out with a walking stick. Sulking, she has refused to lay an egg since, but watches the chicks in their cold frame with envy.

I can see us relenting next year, so may be looking for homes for goslings! That’s if the blackbirds haven’t driven us out by then…..

© Margaret Lear

www.plantswithpurpose.co.uk