The French Garden Blog

THE CHICKEN DIARIES…June 2012

Such a lot has happened in our poulallier (chicken run) this year to date. Births, deaths and probably a few marriages although – as we have lost all but one of our cockerels to the fox – Bad Boris, the loan male survivor, is now a total polygamist. He is not entirely sure about our tractor though and whenever he sees it pootling past he tries to drive it away. So does Richard, at speed. Boris has been known to draw blood.

We currently have 20 chicks. Eight have an auracana as their mother, eight have the Big Black Hen and four have an incubator as theirs. The latter group’s situation puts me in mind of John Bowlby’s experiments on maternal deprivation which I studied when I was psychology student years ago. He worked with individual baby chimpanzees and they huddled up to artificial mothers made out of terry toweling and chicken wire. They grew up to become very mixed up chimps. Happily my four have each other, but I still feel for them when I see the other chicks and their real live mothers.

The two mothers have behaved very differently towards their offspring. One, Big Black Hen, is exemplary – she goes broody every year. This is her third year as a mum and she is a heroine.


The other is irresponsible in the extreme. As soon as her latch key chickens could scratch around for themselves she dumped them, left home and shacked up with Boris, driving his existing wives out of their hen house. Social Service should be called. Boris had his wicked way with her and then started making overtures to BBH. She sent him away with a flea in his ear. Meanwhile Richard cut bad mother’s wings and returned her to the main hen run. Boris has had to return to his jilted wives, but he is starting to make alarming overtures to the eight abandoned chickens. He has no shame.