What’s in a name?

If you’ve read my earlier blog you’ll already know that after the last BHWT rehoming day I came home with three new girls. Apart from ‘the hen who’s not being called Stevie’, the other two don’t have names yet.

I confess that maybe I’d thought of a few names before we went (just in case of course) but the names I had in mind just didn’t fit the hens we brought home. Just to be clear, I don’t think ‘the hen who’s not being called Stevie’ even looks like a ‘Stevie’ but then again what hen would?! At the moment, the two nameless girls are being lovingly called ‘hen in the house’ (she’s a poorly girl) and ‘the other hen’.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had hens and not been able to decide what to call them. There were a group of five that I got from the BHWT in October 2013 and with the exception of one, for a week or so, they were all referred to according to their physical attributes i.e. ‘floppy comb limpy leg’, ‘bald face angel wings’, ‘bumpy eye floppy comb’ – you get the picture. The lucky girl who did have a name was Heidi – easily named as all she did for the first week or so was hide. Sometimes the names just choose themselves.

Before I got my very first girls in 2011, I started thinking about what I would call them and ended up with an A4 sheet of paper full of names I really liked. The problem was, I was only getting four hens. After eliminating all but my favourite names, I finally chose the perfect names for the girls I didn’t even have. This is where I should have learnt my lesson the first time – the names I’d chosen didn’t suit the hens at all! It was back to the drawing board (or the A4 piece of paper!) and after a few days of getting to know my new girls, the decision was made – Ruby Tuesday, Poppet, Dixie and Bluebell were officially named.

I’ve still got Ruby Tuesday and since she arrived she’s had lots of friends passing through. Some of these girls were with me for years, and some for less than a day but they’ve all had names chosen especially for them, even if sometimes it did take me a while to pick them!

Each girl has her own story and I’ll share some of these with you another time. For now, here are the names of the girls I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and loving –

Ruby Tuesday, Bluebell, Dixie, Poppet, Heidi, Rosie, Lily, Blossom, Lucy, Hope, Faith, Sprout, Daisy, Ellie, Little Pea, Camilla, Nora, Stevie, Annie and Gracie Mouse.

I know when I started this post yesterday two of my new girls didn’t have names and I’ve been feeling guilty about this. I got out my A4 piece of paper (yes, I still have it!) and I read a few names out to ‘hen in the house’. When I got to ‘Annie’ she made a ‘peeping’ noise as if she approved and who am I to argue?! I tried the same process with ‘other hen’ but she was far less helpful. I sat on my tub in the garden for a while as the girls all pottered about and I finally decided that ‘other hen’ looked like a Gracie – pretty and ladylike! I told her there and then that she had a name. Gracie had been very shy and nervous since we got her and the following day, as I was reading George’s Marvellous Medicine with my best friend’s daughter, I saw a mouse on the page. ‘Mouse’ would be a perfect name for Gracie if she wasn’t already called Gracie! I couldn’t change her name now, especially not after I’d told her what she was called so I decided to extend it to Gracie Mouse.

I’m sure that there’ll be a few more names on and off my list that perfectly suit some gorgeous ex-batts and I look forward to meeting them and bringing them home!

I’d love to hear the names you’ve chosen for your hens so why not tell me in the comments box below? You can drop me an email at hello@mychickens.co.uk or find me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Hope to hear from you soon, Sam x