Our last large French maran lady passed away recently. Mabel was her name and she was one of our much loved hens. Mabel’s passions apart from dozing, was food. She used to park herself by the garage door in case treats were on offer, being first in the queue gave her a head start, that and her weight!
Mabel keeping an eye on things
She had an endearing habit of laying her eggs in the goose coop, in complete privacy. As the goose coop is vacant for much of the day it didn’t really matter. She would try to catch my eye when I was passing the maran coop and run by pacing up and down by the gate, I would then let her out and she would gallop down the hill to the goose coop. There she would patiently wait until I got there. Once inside, she made lots of hight pitched ‘I’m about to lay an egg’ chuckles. Often it would be several hours later that I remembered she was still locked in the goose coop. She was a very friendly girl and we are looking forward to our new large maran youngsters being just as friendly and entertaining as she was.
