Cathy Kelly

In a mad flight of fantasy (after reading about someone’s hens), myself and the boys, Dylan and Murray, have been discussing getting chickens. This is never going to happen but it made for a fun talk. I spent all my holidays with my grandmother in the West of Ireland and she had hens, ducks and geese (not fond of geese, very snappy creatures). I was chief hen minder and I loved it. Hens can be very affectionate, although they think human eyes are lovely shiny things and they want to peck them experimentally, but apart from that, they’re lovely. They really will go to sleep if you put their heads under the wings. I trained one batch to jump for blackberries. They moved, foodwise, onto gooseberries, which was very annoying for my grandmother when she went gooseberry picking in order to make jam and the hens went with her and happily ate everything she picked. They had been trained to think that all berries were for them.

I can also speak hen – well, my hen impression is very good. This sort of makes up for the fact that I can speak only a teeny bit of other languages. It’s a shameful fact, I know. When I was in school, we weren’t taught to speak other languages – only to write and read in them, so despite learning French for many years, when an actual French person speaks to me, I blink and have to concentrate very, very hard. 

However, there is one major problem with hens and you only understand it if you’ve actually had them: chicken poop. If you ever want to get up close and personal with maggots (very useful for wounds, apparently), then clean out a hen house. Still, think of the free range eggs.