As they settle into a new life, Total MK follows the exploits of four former factory hens on their road to recovery...
Now my girls have been home for a couple of months, their individual personalities are really starting to show through, writes Allie Short.
There is no doubt Waffle is the boss and as such she has to do everything first – she samples new food first, ventured into the new coop first, explored my house first, figured out how to use the cat flap first, started letting herself in through the cat flap for unsupervised house visits first, discovered the location of cats’ food first.
I have now come to accept that Waffle will ALWAYS be wandering around my house when I get home from work each day, but yesterday was shocked to find Fidget wandering around downstairs while Waffle was upstairs feasting on the cat food as usual.
So Fidget, who is normally the most timid hen as she’s lowest in the pecking order, has now been led astray by Waffle who is now known as my top henfluencer.
Maud is the loudest of the four, in fact I can hear Maud’s morning “egg song” from the underpass behind my house which has to be a good 50 meters away.
She is the biggest of the four and lays eggs that are noticeably larger than those laid by other three, but sometimes struggles with her egg production and lays soft shell or even shell-less eggs; this is improving as her health gets better, but it wouldn’t matter to me if she didn’t lay at all as long as she was happy.
Twaddle was the sweetest, quietest, and most calm of the four – then she settled in and started feeling confident! Now she is noisy and extremely demanding, but still respectful of Waffle as top hen.
She absolutely LOVES food and will jump up high to grab banana from my hands, and sings a special song when she gets her favourite treat of live mealworms. Twaddle also seems to have named me as she has a special sound that she only makes when she comes into the house looking for me, so sweet.
Fidget, as mentioned above, is the most timid of the four but her confidence is growing with her feathers and she, like Twaddle, will now jump up to grab banana out of my hand although she still prefers not to be touched.
She is a very messy eater so the banana normally ends up all over her beak which always results in Maud carefully pecking and cleaning it for her.
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