Who is Elvis?

So, who is Elvis?  Well, about a year ago we took the plunge and built a hen house, converted the old pigsty into a chicken run and got three chickens.  They were ex-battery chickens and were pretty pathetic looking when we got them - almost oven-ready you could say!  They soon got used to their new surroundings and learnt how to be proper chickens - perching (that took lots of training with cobs of corn dangled on string to entice them up), scratching in the dirt, dust bathing and stretching their wings.  An odd feeling when you realise that they had never been able to do that before.  We called them Mrs P (short for Mrs Pogle because I used to love Pogle's Wood when I was little and this chicken quietly took charge of the others with no fuss like mother Pogle), Molly (she was the quietest and spent her first afternoon with us snoozing in the doorway of the hen house - she could have had a little pair of spectacles and her knitting and just looked like a Molly) and then Sid (as in Vicious, because she really was to start with and spent her first afternoon crashing around the hen house making a terrible racket trapped in there by the dozing Molly).  We had our first egg within an hour of getting them home - the poor thing must have had her legs crossed all the way home!  After the first few days, while the pecking order was being established they all settled happily together and had a lovely life free-ranging where they pleased all day and tucked up safely in the pigsty at night.  They soon grew new feathers and were practically unrecognisable as the same chickens.  We had two or three eggs every day.  Instead of looking through recipe books and tutting to myself that six eggs was a bit extravagent for a cake I found myself scouring the recipes for the ones that used the most eggs possible! 

At Easter Mrs P died after a short illness (as they say in all the best newspapers) and the other two went into mourning.  Now I don't know if chickens do that, but that's the way it seemed.  The eggs became a bit sporadic and they just generally seemed not themselves.  We have heard it said, and I guess it makes sense, that when one of a batch of ex-batt hens dies the others may follow fairly soon after.  We didn't want to be left with one lonely chicken (and we did really want some eggs) so we decided to get a couple more.  These two were in a far worse state than the first batch and really made you want to cry to look at them.  I'm not sure if you can see well from the picture, but the reason for Elvis's name is obvious when you see the floppy quiff of a comb she has.  The other one took a while to name.  This is partly because for the first week we could happily have wrung her neck she was so nasty to Elvis and because she was, and I probably shouldn't say this, but she was so darned ugly.  Vulture was one possibility, but eventually Myfanwy sprang to mind.  Obvious really isn't it?!  There is, apparently, a lovely Welsh folk song about Myfanwy and the romantics among you can pretend that this is where her name comes from.  In fact it is from the lyrics of a song on The Decemberists CD about a chap who happily gets married and then feels lumbered when his wife starts having babies until 'ugly Myfanwy died on delivery mercifully taking her mother along' and then continues the tale of how he kills the other children by various means (including feeding them foxgloves) so he can get his old life back - all sung in a jolly sing-along sort of tune!  So, not quite so romantic eh?

Integration has not gone quite as planned and the first couple of weeks were quite traumatic.  We had a separate little run and house inside the main run for the new chickens for the first week.  Sid and Myfanwy were like cocks at a fight flying at each other through the wire and poor Elvis just spent the whole time trying to get out of Myfanwy's way.  They now all live together, and believe it or not Elvis and Myfanwy (she's not quite as ugly as she was by the way) are the best of friends and the two of them just steer clear of Sid and Molly.  But,  NONE OF THEM ARE LAYING EGGS!!!!!!!  What are we doing wrong?  They all seem OK and are not too stressed around each other, they have pelnty of food and water, the weather's warm, so no excuses really.  I secretly think Sid and Molly have had a word and said  'It's OK, you don't need to lay eggs.  They still feed you and talk to you so, no need to bother yourselves!'.  So, we have to buy eggs!  I'll let you know when they start doing their job properly!