It’s been all of a dither here at Domestic HQ this week. Best laid plans going askew as the pace of work and home life overtakes my capability to deal with it all. What’s amazed me is how I’ve re-calibrated my life to a more pleasurely pace and I like it best that way. Who needs to be rushing around, trying to be all things to all people when you can keep your scope of life smaller and more focused. My high flying and fast past career may be over but it’s not something I feel any grief over.
My priorities have shifted to arguably more mundane things. Like whether there is more I could be doing to make my chickens more comfortable as a means of improving egg laying productivity. Also, what new tricks I can be deploying to fool George in his menacing ways.
My rooster is up to his usual duties of parading around the chicken run making sure that his pecking order is applied across the hens. It’s quite funny to see how he’s matured in his roosterly duties since there are more hens for him to bully.
Our rooster has a new love in his life. Chloe is his favourite hen and insists she takes the roost at the end with him next to her to protect her and make sure she doesn’t escape from his clutches.
Milly and Molly the two feral dark chickens evade George’s clutches at every opportunity and manage to outrun him when he makes for a manly attack. They are quite content living in their female only roost at night in the gorse tree next to the hen house.
I love the iridescence on their feathers.
Zoe is starting to realise that living in the bush is not such a great place when there are lots of goodies available in the chicken pen. She is starting to be brave enough to return for breakfast with me around although it’s a risky strategy trying to steal from other hens who definitely see her as an outsider from the main crowd.
One of the things that makes me laugh about the chickens is the way that they can rotate their head and see what’s going on behind them. That would be such a cool trick to help me drive in reverse and save me getting a crick in my neck.
The comedienne of hens is definitely Ginger. She’s slightly deranged and runs around in a manic way generally upsetting all the other hens in the process. She thinks she rather further up the pecking order than she is in reality. I do admire her brassy ways.
And she is such a wonderfully brightly coloured hen.
Here are the two trouble makers of the hens. Partners in crime, up to their escapist ways. Heading off into the bush by the non traditional method (over the fence rather than through the open gate).
Chickens are definitely the antedote you need to the stresses of an executive day. Chickens have it sorted. They know their place in the hierarchy and create a free ranging community whilst still knowing their have a place to roost and lay their eggs. There are a wealth of organisations who might benefit from adopting chicken like behaviour – it would certainly save a great deal of heart ache.
On the other hand, if human organisations ran as efficiently as chickens live their lives there wouldn’t be any need for leadership coaches which would mean I wouldn’t earn money to keep my chickens in chicken feed. Now that would be something that would unsettle the natural order of my chicken’s lives. No on balance I think I’ll keep my theories on how being more chicken like would improve the way organisations run themselves.