# Chickens Again

Back in 2020 when supply chains were disrupted by COVID and there
were often shortages of every day things, like eggs and toilet rolls,
we adopted 4 hens. 

This solved the egg shortage issue and gave 4 chickens a retirement
home. Unfortunately one by one they died and after the sadness of
burying them all, as they had all become family pets, I didn't really
want to get any more for a while.


## Inflation

The UK has been suffering from inflation of prices on all kinds of
every day things. Energy prices for gas, electricity and
petrol/diesel have all increased significantly as has everything
else.

The increases have been blamed on all kinds of things, Brexit, the
war in Ukraine, etc. but the big oil companies and supermarkets are 
all still making record profits... Ordinary people are suffering.


## Chickens

A combination of my niece's persistence, "Uncle, when are you going
to get some more chickens?" every time she saw me, supermarket price 
increases and desire to be more self sufficient, has resulted me
adopting another 3 chickens.

I fetched them from the BHWT[1] adoption point on Saturday after
being on their waiting list for a couple of months.

Two of them are brown, one of them is practically featherless, one
has almost all of its feathers. The other is white and has a
completely different temperament and can fly far too well for my
liking. It's not docile like the brown ones I've had before and has
so far proven too fast and nimble for me to catch hold of it to clip
its wings. It escaped twice on Sunday and again on Saturday resulting
in a 20 minute episode of catch the chicken, which ended in defeat,
for me, as I had to give up on the idea of catching it and instead
take down a section of the fence to herd it back in with the others.

It seems we have arrived at a truce. It hasn't tried to escape again
and I have not had to chase it around the garden. Maybe it didn't
like me chasing it and got tired as once it was back in the coop it
went into the chicken house and stayed there for a couple of hours of
quiet time...


[1](http://www.bhwt.org.uk)