This is Jack. She’s a girl (of course) but we didn’t think she’d be too worried about being called Jack. She’s got a brain the size of a pea you see so we thought that objection to a name would probably be beyond her comprehension.

It’s true to say she probably doesn’t even know her name is Jack. They don’t ever show any recognition that they know their own name. If you listen to them talking to each other, their chatting is a bit like the sound of a drill bit meeting resistance if you know what I mean. Kind of a high-pitched whir. That’s their normal “oh look girls, I’ve found a grub” or “that’s my snail – back off” kind of talk.

They holler and shout at the tops of their heads when one of their number lays an egg, so at them moment, we’re getting four or five “BOK BOK BOK”s a day. That’s right, our girls are laying like billy-oh and we’re giving boxes of eggs away every week at the moment.

Jack is a “Super Black”, which I’m sort-of ashamed to admit is a hybrid laying hen, which I swore we’d never choose, but we wanted a couple of new chooks at the tail end of last year when all there was left choice-wise were hybrids. We’ve got two Super Blacks, Jack is distinct from Hill because she’s got a really tiny comb, whereas Hill’s is much bigger.

They found themselves with the names Jack and Hill because their feathers have the most amazing petrol sheen, so they got called “the petrol heads” when they arrived. We decided, therefore, to commemorate two famous racing drivers and Jack is named after Jackie Stewart, while Hill is named after Graham Hill.

Anyway, Jack and Hill are a pair of mischief makers and can always be counted on to be leading the naughtiness. They’ve been rounded up from the road a couple of times now so we had to spy on them to work out how they were getting out then DM had to find a way of restraining them. They were regularly to be found in the veggie patch or the herb garden, until we found a nifty way of keeping them at bay……but only after my herb garden had been trashed completely twice.

If I accidentally leave open the greenhouse door, they’re in there like a shot, making themselves comfortable in the dry, warm dirt. In short, they’re completely pesky but equally gorgeous.