Tonight the lovely Sharon and I slipped on our wellies and stepped out into the moonlit night ready for a fight.  We were not quite in the mood for fighting between ourselves, but sometimes a certain amount of violence is unavoidable.  To help reduce the violence as much as possible we armed ourselves with a tub of baby powder.  Our head torches, a normal accessory to night time chores around the cottage, were turned off as we crept around in the dark with the ninja cats running about on the edges of our vision.

the eerie moon over the cottage

We stopped at the chicken shed where we slipped in and covered the four hens in a generous amount of talcum powder.  Then we left them to begin to ferry the chicks from their coop in the garden into the chicken shed.  We carried one each on every trip before perching them in the shed and powdering them with the baby powder.

Half way through the transfer the four old hens began to protest loudly.  We are not sure if it was the aliens or the choking white cloud of un-chickenly fragrance, but they were very upset.

When all the chicks were re-homed in the shed we left them to settle down for the night.  The darkness should settle them to sleep and the powder should confuse their territorial smells long enough to take some of the fight out of them in the morning.  That’s the theory anyway.  The old hens are big and strong and mean.  The chicks half the size of the hens and on unfamiliar ground, but they outnumber the old hens two to one.  We will have to wait and see what madness the morning will bring.