After David had eyed up expensive, finely combed Basque fowl and we'd considered the pros and cons of a cockerel (he looks after his girls but might have your eye out with a claw) we eventually settled on three point-of-lay bog-standard red hens from the local garden centre. They were only about five euros apiece, but by the time we bought a coop, some food, a feeding trough and a water dispenser it's going to take a year or so to repay our investment.
We tucked them up against the freezing winter winds with generous piles of sawdust and stacks of straw bales, bought 'Chickens for Dummies' and hoped for the best.
Eventually, one morning around Valentine's Day (the traditional start of the laying season) we found our first tiny brown egg nestling warmly in a corner of the coop. After that the eggs became bigger and bolder, but only ever one a day which seemed to signify that only one chicken was in lay (unless they were taking it in turns).
Then last week one of the hens shuffled herself down into a big pile of straw in the chicken run and began to make a nest. David predicted the second egg of the day and he was right - we got a little brown speckled one. We celebrated with eggs for breakfast on Sunday.
It was all going well until Sunday afternoon when the chickens were pootling around happily in the shade of the pine trees. (They have their own run, but usually escape and wander around until we put them back.) We'd forgotten that the puppy was off her lead. There was some barking and clucking, then a lot of squawking, flapping and pounding of paws. The puppy isolated one of the chickens and chased her down down the terraces into the forest, David chased the puppy, I tried to herd the other two chickens into their coop, David rugby-tackled the (very happy) puppy in a gorse bush and dragged her back to her kennel, and eventually we pulled the miraculously-not-dead-chicken out of the forest. Only one egg the next day.
But then today we had three eggs - hurray!
