Fowl play

TO garden with hens successfully, one has to understand hens. Regardless of their breed and reputed egg-laying numbers, all chickens are ancestral woodland birds at heart, at their happiest when nestling in the leaf litter under a canopy of twigs and leaves where they feel safe.

- Arthur Parkinson

When ranging about a garden, they will view certain areas as places of sanctuary, most notably hedge bottoms and the shelter of large shrubs such as bays and boxes in particular.

My farmyard heroine, Debo, during her reign as the 11th Duchess of Devonshire, allowed Buff Cochins to range freely at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, but almost all her other breeds were cooped around the cottage garden or in the farmyard, where the current incumbents still breed a number of hens. The matronfaced, huge, pillow-like tangerine Cochins had feathered trousers that deterred them from vigorous scratching. With their calm and gentle demeanor, the Cochins bustled around under the gaze of Elisabeth Frink’s Walking Madonna on the lawn charming the visitors.

At Rousham in Oxfordshire, the flock of aptly named Mille Fleur Barbu d’Uccle bantams cackle their welcome as they range about like a moving flowerbed, usually close to the dense yew hedges. Here, they perform the poultry spacetime ritual that is the dust bath. This requires a hollow of dry soil that is then pecked until its tilth is as fine as a bag of sand, creating a dusty powder room. The earth trickles down into their feathers, helping to deter any mites.

Not all hens are suited to gardens, however, and many people demonise them. I often wonder if kind-hearted gardeners, new to hen-keeping, have any idea of the soil-flinging potential of ex-battery hens.