Princess Layer looks like the wrath of God and has a bit of an attitude

Like the thousands of ex-farm birds that pass through the BHWT’s hands, Princess Layer is a brown hybrid rescue chicken. Unlike them, she was never a working farm animal.

Princess Layer shared a rural Kentish garden with another hybrid hen and a greedy Campbell duck. In a world before lockdown her owners who worked in the hospitality industry found the long and often-antisocial hours meant that they weren’t always around to feed and put the birds to bed.

Fearing the attentions of local foxes they asked a mutual friend if he knew anyone who might take them on. Soon afterwards our flock of ducks and chickens had expanded by three.

Princess Layer is the first chicken to have come to us ready named, thanks to her previous owners’ teenaged daughter, and the name rather suits her because she acts like royalty and lays a great many eggs. We called the other hen Darth and began referring to the nameless duck as Anonymous. This voracious, vocal, in-your-face animal is anything but anonymous. However, the name has stuck.

Their arrival was not without drama. We put the hens into our spare chicken ark and the duck in a holding pen next to the pond so Razor and Cloud, our Indian Runners, could get to know her from a distance. Anonymous seemed distressed, pacing up and down, so I extracted Princess Layer who was remarkably tame and put her in with her duck chum. Order, up to a point, returned.

It was getting dark when I went to check on them only to find they’d both escaped. Anonymous was swimming round with the Indian runners as if they’d known each other for years, and everyone trooped off to bed without rancour. There was no sign of Princess Layer.

The moon was rising and we knew searching the garden would be hopeless but we did anyway. Feeling guilty that our newest chicken would spend her first night with us out in the open and potentially in harm’s way. We were about to head indoors when we heard very determined clucking coming from a bush. It was Princess Layer making her presence felt. We scooped her up and put her back with Darth. They’ve been inseparable ever since.

After a couple of week’s quarantine they joined our main chicken flock and were soon patrolling the garden for edible treats. Whenever I appear some of our chickens back off but these two – and Princess Layer in particular - give me the eye and get under my feet. If I’m bringing food they want it first.

“After cleaning the duck house I’ve learned through bitter experience to shut the door. If I don’t Princess Layer briskly kicks all the new bedding into the pond.”

Princess Layer will keep me under observation when I’m gardening or cleaning out the birdhouses. If I’m weeding she will join in, scratching about where I’ve been working and chattering to me as she swipes the ground with determined claws. If I’m digging a hole I have to be careful lest she jumps into it in search of worms. After cleaning the duck house I’ve learned through bitter experience to shut the door. If I don’t Princess Layer briskly kicks all the new bedding into the pond.

I don’t know where this increasingly scruffy bird is in the pecking order, but it’s certainly not the bottom, and she now considers the garden her domain. At feeding time Anonymous will sometimes mount a raid on the chicken’s grub causing an outraged Princess Layer to chase off her former co-habitee. They are no longer pals.

I’ve started a monthly podcast called Beyond A Yolk (interviewing Jane for the second one). We put a microphone in the garden and food near the microphone, and get a lot of avian noises. They almost always involve Princess Layer and it’s too easy to talk about her and nobody else. But then she’s a small bird with a big personality. -

Martin Gurdon is an author and journalist, writing for the Sunday Telegraph, Evening Standard and Octane magazine. You can hear Princess Layer and Jane on Martin’s ‘Beyond A Yolk’ podcast. He keeps chickens and ducks and wrote ‘Hen & The Art of Chicken Maintenance.’