@Yorkshire Coop
Hi Kim
Thanks for the lovely comments about my photos/animals. Not sure how I got that photo of Tasha looking so spruce and white..... she must just have come out of her moult. Most of the time she is a scruffy off white mongrel with the tips of her beard/moustache stained with dirt and her comb all dry and shrivelled because she is broody..... I hardly recognised her when I found that photo, apart from that wild, quirky look in her eye and the fact she is the only white moustachioed hen that I have. In that photo of her on the roost, she actually has two rows of chicks underneath her and she is at full stretch to cover them all..... must be very tiring sleeping with your arms out like that all night!
The horses spend hours standing at the gate on the roadside waiting for passing pedestrians to stop and feed them mints/bread/carrots. They are standing at that gate in the photo watching me strip haylage off a big round bail and bag it up to carry inside the stable for them.....so it's extremely easy to get a shot of them standing together looking over a gate unless they are out at grass when nothing will get their attention!
It looks like that roaming chick may be back with it's mother, Daisy, again now. I'm not sure Portia really had much say about it, it's just cheeky and seems to have invited itself for a sleep over.... with a duvet like that, who could blame it!
Went to check my new broody nests this morning and there had been some nest swapping..... I think perhaps the cross had got off the nest for a break and another leghorn had jumped in to lay, so when she came back, she got onto Margo's nest whilst she went for a break. When I was up there checking, she was hovering nearby not really sure what to do with herself but I'm pretty sure she will have jumped back on one of them as soon as it was vacated. I will just have to remove additional eggs as they appear.
I climb the ladder every day to collect eggs, so I hardly even think of it as a ladder anymore. It goes up through a hole in the rotten floor boards above and their nests are literally at the top of the ladder, so I don't have to get off and back on most of the time. Once they hatch, I'll just go up with a bucket and drop the chicks and broody into the bucket and carry them down and put them in the sideboard, which by then, should have been vacated by Tasha and her chicks. It's going to be a bit crowded in there with 2 broodies and their chicks assuming both clutches hatch, but they'll manage for a few days at least.
& the thread! 
you don't have too many boys.
