Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

I’ve been struggling lately. Maybe it’s SAD syndrome as the weather has been pretty crap – up until today which is glorious. But I have been driving M crazy as he hates my moods. He’s sympathetic at first but then becomes impatient and gets bad-tempered. I woke at 5am this morning and I think I’ve sorted out what’s playing on my mind – I just don’t know how to fix it – yet.

But today I’ve had a cry and that usually means that I’ve “peaked” and the long haul out of the black pit has begun. It was a natural cry as today M had to slaughter Lulu the chook.

Before we went away she had leg mites and I had treated her with Vaseline on her legs and that seemed to do the trick. But when we returned after a couple of weeks both her legs were badly affected and before long she became lame and stopped laying.

Lulu has always been the rebellious one, content with her own company and wandering off on her own (except when Ron the rooster picked her out for his special attention) and gave me beautiful dark brown eggs. But when she became lame it was heart-breaking watching her flap about in the chook house to get to the food and water. When she stopped trying to come out with the others – well, that decided me. It was time to go.

M watched “how to” films on the internet and today was the day. So he removed her from the chook shed and took her over to the willow tree and did the deed. The body is now cleaned and sitting in the fridge ready to be made into a beautiful stock. Ron looked for her, but once he realised that I was cleaning out the chook shed he became much more interested in that and the clean straw.

I’ll miss Lulu and her rebellious streak but I’m sure that when I replace her with another two chooks, their personalities will make up for the loss.

    Lulu is the one with the tail up at the front of the picture.

 

Jan