Meet the Girls

Meet my three beautiful girls – my little helpers in the garden and general ‘cheerer uppers’ as they never fail to make me laugh out loud at their everyday antics.

Whatever my mood the sight of the three of them hurtling down the garden in response to me shouting  ‘where’s my beautiful girls’ is a joy to behold. Three bodies of feather and fluff immediately forget what they are doing to come to me charging across grass and flower beds. They waddle from side to side, combs bobbing and bloomers fluffed out, hopping and skipping over any obstacle that might be in their path.

Alice is pure white (at the moment without any tail feathers) but always sports a permanent bib of soil or grass stains from her constant dust baths or digging.  She has a very deep voice, which she uses often, and is usually first out of the coup in the morning, trampling over anyone in her way and usually the last to bed at night, always insisting on a final stroll round the hen house or a nose round the food bowl before retiring.  

                                                          Alice enjoying a rest

                                               Alice and Audrey Joy checking for titbits

Elsie May is grey (or blue if using the official name) and is very girly and gentle. She has a very delicate voice and loves to be with you walking round the garden quietly chattering to herself. She enjoys being stroked, closing her eyes in pure bliss when you get to caress the skin round her neck through her feathers.  
                                                              Elsie May posing for the camera

Audrey Joy is the eldest of the girls, shiny jet black with petrol blue markings along her wings.  She is also the shyest and always the last one up in a morning and usually the first to bed at night, grabbing the best spot where she can snuggle down, spread out her bloomers and basically prevent anyone else getting a look in.

                                                                     Audrey Joy

Audrey Joy on a pole in the veg patch

All the three girls love to help with the gardening by digging or scratting and can often deplete the worm population in an afternoon. There have been many times when they nearly get decapitated as they dart in for a worm at the last second as the spade comes down. They are a great time waster too as I spend more time digging for their pleasure than getting things done.

Last year they discovered ten bags of leaves that had been gently rotting for two years ready to mulch the borders. I had heard the commotion; a very excited and prolonged frenzy of ‘ooooh, bop, bop’ and eventually went to investigate knowing it was something more exciting than a nest of woodlice. I was met with a sea of ripped black bin liners and a vast expanse of perfectly decomposed leaf mould scattered across the garden. They were obviously very pleased with themselves and had spent a very enjoyable hour or so scratting for bugs and other critters that had been eating their way through the leaves.

                                                     The girls helping with planting the potatoes

Usually, the girls are ‘all for one and one for all’ always walking together or sharing a dust bath, until they find a tasty treat then it is then each to her own. One of them will find a tasty morsel; usually a worm, and her great ‘whoop’ of delight gives the game away. There is then an ugly rush as the others try to steal it and she runs, darting here and there, in an attempt to lose the others. The worm, dangling from her beak then gets snatched from one beak to another until eventually it is swiftly sucked up into the winners beak.  I have to admit that I have had the misfortune to witness the outcome of an ill-fated worm caught between two hens that refuse to let go - not a pretty sight as each hen ends up with a little bit each…..

Still, the girls are my absolute delight and I would never want to be without them.