The joy of chooks

As part of our transition to country life our plan is to ease into livestock rearing by starting with the most user-friendly animals - chooks. We ordered a flat-pack hen house which came with not so much instructions, but numbered microscopic diagrams, the interpretation of which was in the eye of the beholder - rather like fine art, but way more frustrating. Anyway, once completed and in place, we were ready to pick up our chooks (I was instructed to order '4 young pullets on the lay' from a nearby poultry farm by a chook-rearing expert friend of ours). (Without these instructions I would have been quite lost.)

Once we had them for a day or two and able to observe their personalities, especially when let out of their house, we named them: Rosie (the most red), Pixie (the least red, the smallest and the cuddliest), Blossom (named by my son) and Xena (named by me for her adventurous and inquisitive attributes when let loose on our paddock - she was also first to invite herself into the house).

Of course, ever since they arrived, every hour or two was punctuated by our obsessive checking of the nesting box. Nope, no eggs. Nope, no eggs. Nope... no eggs.

But today, (five days in), my daughter came home and ... discovered to her delight ... an egg!