CHICKEN-KEEPING is the new rock 'n' roll. A designer 'eglu' has been invented and suddenly it is chic to keep chickens in suburbia.

There has been a 15 per cent increase in chicken-keeping in a year, and now 200,000 British households have poultry.

We've got three chickens at the bottom of our small garden. They're Buff Orpingtons and look like big, fluffy ginger cushions.

Our first batch of Buffs came from a lovely chap near Thirsk who was the Queen Mother's Official Keeper of Buff Orpingtons. Apparently, whenever Her Majesty had a garden party he would herd his Buffs into a large box, put them on a train to London and then scatter them ornamentally around the grounds of Clarence House.

The guests would show up, say "wonderful Buffs, ma'am", and then go home. HM's Official Keeper of Buffs would round the birds up, put them on a train and take them back to Thirsk.

We've had to restock recently due to natural wastage - our little lawn has a number of strange bumps because chickens are surprising large and awkward to bury when rigor mortis sets in.

Hermione Hen and Rebecca the Pecker have joined old Jenny Hen in the coop.

Rebecca is argumentative. Every morning there's something new not quite right. She raises the feathers on the back of her neck and argues with the blossom falling off the apple tree, the grass that's grown overnight, the laces in my shoes. One morning she flew into a tremendous rage at the snow which had dared to fall outside her house.

Hermione, though, is a different kettle of chicken. She is, literally, chicken. Their coop is down a drop of about a metre. There are steps but, chickens being chickens, they prefer to jump - or, in the case of the plump Jenny Buff, plummet.

But not Hermione. She was too scared to take the plunge.

Rather than jump and put herself to bed in her nice, warm, comfy coop, she'd ram herself into the spider-infested overgrowth between the garage and the fence. She was a sitting chicken for any passing fox.

So every night by torchlight, with spiders' webs tickling our faces, we'd fish the stupid bird out.

To help her down, I built a long wooden ramp, but even when she was placed in the middle of it she just turned round and walked back up.

After a fruitless fortnight, we removed the ramp and tried to provide her with a role model. When she was watching, we'd run down the lawn and flap theatrically off the low wall.

You can, though, lead a chicken to a wall but you can't make it jump. She just rammed herself ever deeper down the side of the garage.

In the end we were forced to take the chicken into our own hands - and, ever so gently, lob her off. And, after a couple of weeks of lobbing, she started toppling beakfirst of her own volition. Progress!

Until last week. She went broody. Now she sits in her coop, staring at a corner, purring like a cat, refusing to move or to eat.

Apparently, the only cure for broodiness is to drop the bird in a dark dustbin and put the lid on. After a week of tedium she will see the error of her ways and ask to be let out.

This, though, sounds cruel and so, every morning, noon and night, we give Hermione Hen an airing and some food whether she likes it or not.

This means we carry her up the steps that only a few weeks ago we were throwing her down. As Shakespeare would have said if he'd kept hens: "Contrary, thy name is chicken!"