Hens right at home after long road trip

Last summer, I received a phone call from a friend, wanting to know if I could take on her chickens. I was surprised. The chickens were a constant on her social media feeds and seemed to fit rather well with the lifestyle she portrayed.

You know, the homely, gardening, baking, organic-loving, candle-making, scarf-knitting, chicken-keeping, bare toes by the fire, Instagram lifestyle some of us aspire to.

She bought the birds in lockdown and, after less than a year, decided it was all a bit too much effort.

Having made no secret of the fact that I’d always wanted chickens, I was secretly delighted. My dearest husband (the sensible one) kindly pointed out to me that it was a terrible idea, as we’d just sold our house and would be relocating to Aberdeen (from London) as soon as the sale had gone through. So, naturally, we ended up with the chickens.

They came with a small coop and a run, which I had to pay my friend for – I thought that was awfully cheeky, but there you are. We were proud chicken parents.

Having spent a childhood living in rural South Africa, where we shared our home with all sorts of animals, back yard chickens couldn’t be that hard, right? But, swap the bush for a small Victorian end of terrace house with a garden the size of a postage stamp in a built-up area and things can get a tad…wild.

On day two, I was on the school run when I received a frantic call from a neighbour informing me that the chickens had escaped and were living their best lives in her flower bed. I calmly asked her to shoo them back.

I apologised profusely upon my return and shoved a large gin into her shaking hands. I then spent the next six weeks shouting at the kids and our spaniel to “stop chasing the chickens”. Expletives were 10 a penny in our back yard.

I also had to apologise to the people who’d just paid a gross amount of money for our tiny house because the garden was now ruined on account of a rather untimely chicken rehoming situation. The buyers actually asked if we were thinking about leaving them.

The haunted silhouette of my longsuffering husband perked up at this. Of course, I said no, they were coming with us no matter what, and they did.

After what seemed like an eternity, the sale of our house finally went through and we set off to start a new life in Scotland, right here in Aberdeen.

The kids and I were booked on to a flight and my husband packed our 20-year-old car with all the things which were too important to be sent with the removal guys: all of my 120-plus house plants, the three hens – Moody Margaret, Ginger and Florence – in the dog crate at the back, and Teddy, our spaniel, riding shotgun.

“Don’t forget to open the boot at the motorway services and play them Bob Dylan, they love that,” was the last thing I said before we headed north.

It’s been six months since the hens’ little road trip, and they’re thriving here in the Granite City.

Our hens will have a home with us until they move on to the next world. We made a commitment by making the decision to take them on.

My husband, the reluctant chicken daddy, now strokes each of them in turn as he closes their coop every evening, and I’m sure our new neighbours will get used to hearing the sweet trill of a freshly laid egg.

I apologised profusely upon my return