Bad breath and hairy slippers

Imagine a big fish.  Imagine a great big fish.  Imagine a great big fish that died a while ago.  Imagine that it's been kept in a warm place in a sealed plastic bag with a pile of old, wet, black, slip-on school pumps that little kids wear.  Now imagine that this bag has been swallowed by an ancient walrus.  The bag bursts inside its belly and it does the biggest burp ever.  This burp clears the beach of all of his wives and children.

Now you may be getting an idea about Bertie's breath.

It's not his teeth.  His teeth have been cleaned by the vet under anaesthetic.  And I do them every day with liver flavoured toothpaste.  It's not his gums, which are healthy.  It's not his stomach, which is fine.  It's just Bertie's own unique thing.

We picked up the dogs from the kennel on our way back from Anglesey yesterday.  We were so excited about seeing them.  It had given us a lot of freedom, not having to constantly worry about whether they are too hot, too wet, going to kill other holiday-making dogs, eat the sea-birds, poo on the communal lawn, invade other people's tents, snatch ice creams out of toddlers hands etc etc.  But we were really looking forward to picking them up.  

After jumping around for a few minutes, Bonnie passed out on Olivia's feet in the front of the car.  She looked like she had a doggy hangover.  I suspect that Bertie had been keeping her awake at night.  Poor Abi had to squeeze Bertie onto her knee on the back seat, sandwiched between the cold box and the bag of dirty washing.  Within seconds his little black hairs were circulating round the car and the three of us were holding our breath and reaching for the window controls as his hot panting breath overwhelmed us.

"It's got worse!" I gasped.
"It's just that we're not used to it anymore," Olivia pointed out, holding her nose.

We bombed down the M6 with all of the windows down, bags and papers flying around the car in the near hurricane conditions.  Bertie talked to us in his high pitch whine all the way.  He told us that we must never leave him again, ever.  That he'd spent the whole week waiting for us, and shouting at the other dogs in the kennels.

Since we got home the dogs have attached themselves to me.  As I type I have Bertie's chin and hot breath on my left foot under the table.  Bonnie is stretched out over my right foot so that I can't move without disturbing her.  My feet are quite hot.  When I move the dogs follow me.  When I shut them out of a room, they press their noses underneath it and snort and sniff, checking that I'm not escaping out of the window.

Talk about guilt tripping!

The chickens were very excited to see me, especially as I'd brought them a huge lettuce.  This morning Delia laid an egg.  Is this the end of her broodiness?

Feeling broody? Off with your head!

These days my troubles are feathered.  Delia has gone broody.  Symptoms of broodiness include the following:
- making a weird, repetitative noise that is not at all hen-like
- pulling breast feathers out to keep the eggs warm.  (Not a good look.)
- sitting on the nest all day and night.  No little walks, no play, no pooing on the table, no dog-chasing.  Just sitting there, like a pudding.
- ceasing to lay.  This is a blow as she laid great big whoppers.
- resenting the other hens using the nesting box to the extent of sitting on their heads while they lay.  Polly, Daisy and Tracy do not like wearing Delia as a hat and make a lot of noise.  Worse, if they are disturbed when trying to lay they can retain their eggs, which go rotten inside them and make them really poorly.
- when forced to leave the nest by frustrated owner, making a nest in any odd corner of the pen and sitting on egg-sized stones
- not enjoying cuddles with me anymore.  Hissing at me and running away. (Sounds like my daughters.)
- neglecting her role as alpha female so that the other three are naughty and bewildered, like children when the teacher leaves the room.  However, their neck feathers are growing back without Delia's bullying.  There's always a silver lining.

So what do we do with a broody chicken?  (Pause for song).  Here are the suggestions I have received so far.
1. Get a cockerel and let her have some babies.  This means getting another hen coop as I already have 4 in my little capsule.  Good hen coops like mine (not wooden, so virtually mite-proof and easy to disinfect) don't come cheap.  Cheap!  LOL!  Like a pun.   It also means having a cockerel doing his thing wth all of the hens all of the time.  Like my own live sex show in the garden.  Hmm.  Not sure that floats my boat, but never say never.  Maybe I could charge an entrance fee. And then there's the crowing.  They don't just crow at dawn.  They crow all day.  And the eggs would be fertilised.  I know that there's nothing to see if they're not incubated and you eat them quickly but there's something a bit icky about eating a potential life.
2. Acquire some fertilised eggs for her to hatch.  But then I'll have more chickens and probably there'll be some uwanted males in the clutch and see 1. above.
3. Plunge her into icy water to snap her out of it.  Tip given to me by a mad friend.  Others assure me that it will just distress her more.
4. Since turning broody marks the end of her useful life I should ring her neck and serve her for lunch.

Regarding option 4 I have been giving myself some positive talk about this.  She is definitely not a happy bunny.  Or chicken.  I have made her a temporary home in the dog cage (minus dogs) with her own run.  It's a bit of penthouse actually.  But she hates it.  So maybe it would be kinder to just finish her off.  And why shouldn't she go in the pot?  She's had a happy life, up till now.  Much happier than your average Sunday roast which probably grew up in a barn where chickens are stacked three high  and fed growth hormones to get them to table quickly.  At least I know what Delia's been eating.  (Porridge with garlic and meal worms, layers pellets, corn, home grown lettuce.)  My dad, the son of a butcher, will happily finish her off, and tell me how to pluck and gut her and all of that.  But can we eat a friend who, until recently, was running around the garden, scaring the dogs and digging up my newly sown grass seed?  And she was always a cuddly girl.  Another sleepless night awaits......

Beautiful Delia, wearing white.

Delia's monster egg, next to Polly's.