≫≫≫ Best Rooster Rugs: A Chicken Ark - Providing the Ideal Home For Sybil, Manuela and Polly | Reviews | Prices

▷▷▷A Chicken Ark - Providing the Ideal Home For Sybil, Manuela and Polly

Our 'girls' are new to us this spring, and seem very happy so far. They like their transportable chicken ark that we built in less than a day from downloadable plans, and are enjoying their supervised forays colse to the garden. We move the chicken ark every day and the hens are clearing some rough patches with obvious enthusiasm.

When they're out ranging free, there's been a microscopic nibbling of plants, but nothing serious, and it's so entertaining, watching them scratch and peck freely and observing the developing relationships.

We're expecting our first eggs in a few weeks and in the meantime we're getting to know them. They're Orpingtons - well we live colse to in Kent, so it seemed a good choice and they grow to large, handsome hens.

Sybil is the boss - bigger, rather bossy and overbearing, with extraordinary developing plumage and forever preening.

Manuela is eager and pecks colse to busily, but seems a microscopic lost. We hope Sybil won't get too impatient with her, and start bullying, but Sybil obviously reckons Manuela is lower in the pecking order and treats her as if she's a bit dim. Polly is sensible and organised; good at looking grubs and insects. She just seems to get on with life, tolerating Sybil and organising Manuela, leading her colse to the garden to find new areas to explore.

If we had a rooster, I guess we'd have to call him Basil. I doubt if it would be as rude and bad tempered as his namesake though. You don't need a rooster, and they can be noisy and disrupting, so we won't be completing the cast.

Chickens do have distinct personalities; it's not just our imagination. They form a pecking order and ours do seem to have taken on the roles of the main characters in Fawlty Towers. We'll see how well the names fit as the girls grow up.

We were a microscopic wary about retention hens, but the chicken ark was easy and cheap to build. Sadly It doesn't have the appealing staircase of the original Fawlty Towers (do you remember it went up and down on the landing for no good reason?) - but it does have good roosting and nesting areas and safety from the local foxes. Perhaps some architectural quirks can be incorporated into Mark 2 to add some more character.

Sybil, Polly and Manuela look as though, like their namesakes, they'll furnish fullness of entertainment. Hopefully they'll also be good egg layers as well - and last more than the chicken equivalent of 12 episodes.