Molly the chicken plucker.

Saturday 9Th April 2011
A really beautiful day today and all my various achy parts have calmed downso I went out to finish the chicken house. i will just have to getv it painted tomorrow.

I was even working outside without my pullover on, a rare thing in Orkney where I normally have a pullover and a windproof jacket welded onto me.

Peter came up to borrow the trailer to get some topsoil. He and Barbara are moving house to live next door to their old house but they are keeping a lot of the garden. He needs to till over the soil once he has got it down so we also lent him a cultivator. I am not sure how good the cultivator is. It is a little electric one that Pam bought from Lidland it is still in its box. It should be OK for turning over loose soil though.

On Sunday I saw my first bumble bee of the year and saw another bee on the rim of my teacup just as I was going to take a swig.

The MK3 hutch is finished now, all ready to be moved into chickenopolis in the field.





Pam bought a corner cupboard for the kitchen from an advert in The Orcadian, so we went and picked that up from Kirkwall and Pam spent a happy hour or two unpacking some of the remaining boxes of pots and putting them in the cupboard.

Molly had an excting day. WhenI was working outside she was on a long rope so that she could wander around.
Now you know how with children, if it gets quiet, you get suspicious. Well it got quiet so I looked round and all I could see was half of Molly's rope and no dog. The cunning little sod had chewed through the rope. Fortunately it did not take long to find her. I saw one of next door's chickens streaking across their garden considerably faster than they normally move even when food is put out. This was followed by a very excited dog trailing a length of rope behind it.
I shouted for Molly to "Come here" as per dog training class. Somewhat surprisingly she did not seem to hear me and she continued chasing the chicken.

The chicken must have been moulting heavily as I saw a lot of feathers flying off it on several occassions.
Eventually I managed to get my foot on the end of molly's rope and drag her in. At this point, the chicken realised that it had made a mistake. It had decided that the safest place to be was by my feet. This was sensible while the dog was running about but became less sensible when I was dragging the dog towards me.

I was quite surprised to see that although I had seen clouds of feathers coming off the chicken in its dog-assisted moult, there were no noticable bald patches.
Eventually, much to the relief of the chicken, Molly was hauled off home to be chastised and the chicken continued pecking aroundclucking in a disgruntled fashion under its breath.