Les chooks

    It has been eminent for now six months!
The coop has loomed its precarious but recycled frame (palettes), in various parts of the garden then about ten days ago, it settled under the shade of the ash tree.
Him indoors declared it - nearly finished , one hour at most, lets order the chickens...
We settled on two black ones, French apparently and great at ze laying of ze eggs, and two Sussex, for no other reason that I felt we would have a better communication platform with hens who ..gluck chuck? in Shakespeare's tongue. It would make life easier for everyone, including Dougal who, despite being born in France,  understand virtually no French.

I also remembered a discussion when, Him indoors had been rather deragotary  about the Frenchies vocalisations of "cot cot cot codeque and cocorico" saying something like - and they probably conjugate it as well!
Anyway, hens ordered...coop not quite finished.
Hens arrival...coop still not quite finished!
 Nothing much but a few gaps which would be sufficient for a fox or stoat to slaughter everyone.

So until those are fixed, "les chooks" have to be guarded all day!
I have been forbidden to give them names even though I thought naming them after fictional detectives and their side kicks - Poirot and Hastings, or evil nemesis such as Moriarty, was a good idea, because
 - we might have to eat them!  Aha! As if! Him indoors was totally besotted with "les poules" within minutes of their arrivals.
As we get to know each other I find that I am also getting very attached to les poules .  But goodness  what demanding and delicate girls they are! From the position of the coop (because they're jungle birds and like trees) to the colour of their drinking vessel.  After hours, days, of research on line, I found out in the the last few days that they're prone to a zillion rather revolting diseases and conditions and can be very aggressive to one an other.  The cockerel is a complete bastard who treats his lades very badly...
 and they stress easily ze chooks!
 Everything stresses them, apparently - wind, damp paws, not having a regular time table, the cockerel etc.  I assume, they did not find the presence of the huge dogs staring at their bread and the ginger cat prawling on their coop, doing his best fox impression, terribly reassuring, but despite this, after only 4 days with us, they have given us 4 eggs!
Brave little hens!

                                                          Flickr/themonnie