The Reluctant Girl’s Guide to Catching Chickens.

 

I like my chickens like I like my men: large, cheerful, and most importantly, ginger.

 

Yeah, you guessed it. A poultry attempt at changing the subject, because spiders are SO last season. The Autumn-Winter season is almost upon us, and according to those that know, it’s going to be all about chickens. And cobalt blue, apparently.

Which I’m happy with, because I LOVE cobalt blue.

I do NOT, however, love white chickens.

 

angry birds

 

There! I said it! I can’t be doing with white chickens. I wouldn’t say it outside where they might hear me, but I can confidently put it in print, because I’m pretty sure that white chickens are not big readers. Not that they’d really give a damn anyway –  most chickens are naturally curious, which is appealing and kind of funny, but to a white chicken the world is apparently divided into two categories: Sweetcorn and Not Sweetcorn. And if you’re Not Sweetcorn, then to white chicken you are NOTHING.

 

In the past we’ve always had Warrens, and I like those a lot. They’re the chicken equivalent of having a silver car: sure, there’s a lot of them around, but by heck they’re great for not showing the dirt.

Owning white chickens is like, well, owning a white car: Exciting to start with, when they look all bright and snazzy. The kind of chickens Jamie Oliver would have running around him if he was advertising Persil. But then you realise the upkeep required to keep them looking anything like that for longer than a week or so.

To be fair, that’s where the similarity to white cars ends. They are much slower. And you can’t jet-wash them either. In fact, they hate it – and the neighbours hate it too, especially when a rogue jet of water propells an angry chicken over their garden fence and slap bang onto their lap while they are sunbathing. (Yes… I’m yolking, of course! Our neighbours are pretty cool about that kind of thing, and this summer has been rubbish for sunbathing anyway.)

There’s always something. One white chicken has been plucking the other white chicken’s eyebrows while it was asleep. The other white chicken retaliates by pecking a hole in the other white chicken’s shoulders. Both white chickens mysteriously have bald bottoms. The dust bath they have been playing in all summer suddenly turns into a mud bath but they don’t notice until too late, then both brown chickens look a right sorry state.

 

Today, I’ve been disinfecting the henhouse, coating the inside in mite spray and puffing diatomaceous earth on anything and anywhere that the back of the packet suggested (which is pretty much the world and his wife and their cow and the kitchen sink by the looks of it. It apparently is good for EVERYTHING. In fact I’m surprised I was able to just buy it online and not have to wait for some guy to come around in a covered wagon, with a horse and a sharp suit and a mute assistant in a big hat, with the whole town gathering around to buy this miracle cure by the crateload.).

Yep. Scrubbing, spraying, disinfecting…and, all this in a black knitted mini-dress which I accidentally put on this morning! Like I somehow rolled out of bed and thought I lived in the city centre and was off to the pub;  like I completely forgot that today’s plans largely involved taking the kids to the skatepark and cleaning out the chickens.

All this, in the hope that ‘looking a bit rubbish’ is something I can cure, and not just an integral part of being a free-range white chicken in a damp country.

 

So, to be honest, it is small wonder that I like my chickens like I like my men:

Large, cheerful, ginger and…

 

ok, most importantly…

 

Easy to catch.

 

“So. Let’s get this straight. You’re NOT Sweetcorn? you haven’t BROUGHT Sweetcorn? So, why exactly are you still here? Go on, cluck off.”