Thursday 18 August 2011

And a long overdue chicken update

Wow, what a couple of weeks I've had. Blogging has been the furthest from my mind. It has been hard enough to keep up with my work let alone any extra-curricular writing. I have had a cancer scare, which was a roller coaster ride than can be very briefly summarised as: found a lump, went the doctor who confirmed the lump, waited 48hours for a mammogram. Thankfully got the all clear, proceeded with life (including dying/sick chicken dramas), then 9 days later the consultant telephones me to say actually they are now not sure about my mammogram, with one area of particular concern so can I go back in for another set of scans. Had to wait 5 agonising days for a 2nd set of tests. Which thankfully are still all clear. So grateful they were being extra cautious - time is always of the essence in these things - but the waiting and the up's and down's have been dreadful to say the least. But I'm aware that many people go through that and then don't have the positive outcome I had which puts it into perspective. Exhausting though.

So thats me. What about the girls? Doris is still with us. She seems ok, pretty perky, eating well but not laying. So I ended up buying 2 more chickens - yes we now have 5 - Peggy and Nellie. The 'chicken lady' - the lovely Annie Hall - advised me that 2 chickens would settle better with the older girls than 1 chicken.
Nellie is very happy and runs around with the gang as if she's always been there. Poor Pegs is being dreadfully bullied, not so much physically but emotionally, which I am assured is normal and all part of reorganising the pecking order. It should settle in a week or two. But she can't be too stressed as she, and Nellie, are laying daily already. So we're now back up to four eggs a day. Which frankly is a good thing. I was wondering how I was going to write an egg cookery book with only one or two eggs a day.

So life is back to normal on all fronts.

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