Maggie/Magnus

As you know, when I collected Millie and Mollie and Maggie and May, the farmer's wife was pretty certain that they were all lady hens, but there was a hint of high rising intonation in her 'Yeeeesss...?' response to my question, 'Are you sure they are all hens?'

The hens came home and were duly named Millie and Mollie and Maggie and May after characters from my favourite childhood poem, which goes thus...

And as I got to know the hens over the ensuing two weeks or so, I started having my suspicions about Maggie. Maggie is the tall one in this photo, black-grey-white of colour...on the left...

There was something in the way she moved, as the song goes...something bold and strutty...something in the way she always put one clawed foot on the edge of the water bowl when she was drinking, like a bloke leaning an elbow on a bar in a pub as he supped his 'Old Peculiar' pint of whatever.

And this morning, as I was tending to their chickeny needs - layers pellets, bit of bread, filling up the water bowls, I happened to notice two teeny nubbins, one on each leg belonging to Maggie. Hmmmmm, thought I....surely not....spurs? (And I don't mean the Tottenham Hot variety.)

I pottered off up t'other end of garden to release Camilla, Nancy and Nellie from their house and serve breakfast, and then, behind me, a cock crowed.

Now, our next door neighbours have a bantam cockerel. But it didn't sound like their bantam cockerel. It sounded like the crow of a cockerel who has just found his crow. An adolescent, voice breaking crow. I scooted back down to the bantams. And there was Maggie, standing tall, standing aloof, chucking back her head and 'cock-a-doodle-dooing' with all the ferocity of a hen looking like she was about to throw up a massive fur ball. Or feather ball. Do hens have feather balls? Well, my friends, it turns out that Maggie the Hen does. 

Well, that's annoying. I don't want a cockerel. I don't want my hens being hassled. I don't hold with this notion that hens need a cockerel to keep them in order. But...

Baby chicks....awwww.....

No! No, stop it! Desist with these notions. You know what happens when you have grand ideas, Denise. You do not want these lovely little lady bantams being roughed up, because that is what will happen. Look at them, all beautiful of feather and form.

Ah, but hang on a minute. Maggie is a small bantam cockerel. Camilla, Nancy and Nellie are mahoosive standard hens. They could fend him off with a quick karate kick and, in Nancy's case, a withering stare. He'll never catch Nellie, for yea verily, I've never seen a hen run as fast as she. And Camilla is almost 6. Her eggs have left the building. She could squish him like a bug. 

It's a solution. Move him in with the Old Girl gang. And then there's the name. Of course, renaming Maggie has scuppered my pretentious literary allusion theme. Andy immediately began suggesting 'Maggie' style alternatives like Mr Magoo, Magwitch and Magnum which I immediately rejected as ridiculous. But then he said, 'What about Magnus?' 

I present you, then, with Magnus. The first Much Malarkey Manor cockerel. Heaven knows what Tango Pete will have to say about it all come the annual Christmas Story.