Meet the girls

This is Lucy.

We're down to seven chickens now. We have barred Plymouth Rock Lulubelle, buff Orphington Martha, Australorps Cocobelle and Gracie, Old English Game bird Lucy and her two little girls, Mary and Kylie, who give the most beautiful white shelled, golden yolked eggs. Lucy and her brood came to live with us when Shane and Sarndra moved from their rural homestead into the Gold Coast. Lucy had reared a batch of mismatched eggs and although she was smaller than most of her hatchlings, she bossed them around and generally had all the chooks doing exactly what she wanted. Lucy is the first on the feeder every morning. The other chooks know that, we know it too. We have one of those feeders that is closed most of the time and when the chook wants food, she stands and a little step, which drops down and opens the feeding hatch. We put a brick under the step at night to stop rats feeding in the dark. Lucy stands on the step while I remove the brick, she is lowered to the floor of the chook pen - it looks like she's on a stage - and she starts eating before I walk away. All the other chooks stand back and wait, although sometimes Lulubelle might poke her head in to the trough. When she does, Lucy will peck her.

Every Spring, like clockwork, Lucy goes broody, hides somewhere and lays a clutch of eggs.

We have deliberately chosen not to buy Isa Browns and the general run of the mill chooks on sale at produce stores. They're bred for the cage industry, they've had their broodiness bred out of them and generally they will lay eggs almost every day, deplete their systems and then drop dead when they're about seven or eight years old. I know there are a lot of people who don't think there is anything wrong with that. I am not one of them. I want my chooks to live healthy lives and to go broody as nature intended.  When chooks have that natural period of broodiness they stop laying eggs when they feel they have enough under them, and their body has a break from egg laying and replenishes calcium supplies. We have a few old girls now who lay only a few times a year and we're fine with that. We're not going to kill them just because they don't lay eggs. They still catch insects and produce valuable nitrogen droppings. And, like us, they have a right to life simple because they're alive.

Cocobelle, Gracie and Mary above, Lulubelle  and Gracie below.

We'll have to get a few new girls soon. My preference is for either Barnevelders or Wyandotts but whatever we end up with they will be one of the old breeds. Just about any chook would suit our climate and probably an egg laying breed as opposed to a meat breed would be good. But who knows, I have found that chickens have a way of finding their own way to you. I would never have thought that I would have had an Old English Game bird - originally bred for fighting, but we have Lucy and she is such a character, you can't help but love her.

Walking into the backyard and seeing the chickens free ranging over the grass is one of the absolute pleasures of living as we do. They're as much a part of the backyard as the garden is. They help us keep the garden going and the garden produces food to keep them going. The chooks entertain us and produce the best eggs and all we give back is food and a safe haven. I think that's a wonderful exchange.