Counting Your Chickens

A lot has been happening recently...but since our human lives are really pretty tedious, it's best to focus on the chickens. The neighbours bantam cockerel, Napoleon, has joined our girls-and even been roosting with them overnight for the last couple of nights. His fancy feathered tail can be seen here. I have also 'rescued' another chicken-who has turned out to be a cockerel. So there will be trouble at the coop before long. Wellington (the new cockerel) is trying out his cock a doodle doo at the moment which currently sounds like a gurgling sink. Once he crows for real, it will be war between the two of them, or so I'm told. Currently. Napoleon has a harem of all four chickens, whom he looks after very conscientiously, and Wellington has to make do with raping the ducks when they can't run fast enough.

Here, the chickens are trying their new night-time game which is trying to see how many chickens will fit on the roost before it breaks. It is already bending. The posters in the background, which some of them are studying, have their pictures and names on them. I hope they might learn to read one day.
On a more serious note, some of them have deveoped a discolouration of their combs. They have no other signs of illness so I am hoping this is just a temporary affliction. The traditional approach to sick chickens here is a firm hand grasped around the neck and tightened. it is cheap, and effective. They have been warned...