Archive for July, 2010

Chatting with F this afternoon, he mentioned he was confused by all the people in the room.

“You have trouble recognising their faces” ?

“Yes it is hard”

“You seem to recognise me “

He smiles.

“Polished mahogany” he says with a big smile (Too much allotment gardening has given me a good tan!)

Our very excellent activities coordinator Alice has magic’d a ’70s organ, complete with big chunky buttons which are more easy to recognise and use by people with dementia than the more recent computer based models.

Today it got it’s first performance, with one of our residents playing to his family. Perfect

Archie makes himself comfortable

He is only 3 years old which I have to admit is a little young for Rose Lodge. Still, after a couple of days he is beginning to feel quite at home. He has even been outside and came face to face with the hens. They did not seem to be too alarmed and Archie seemed to realise he would not have a chance against the three of them.

Most of the residents seem to enjoy having him around the lounge. Luckily he is quite sociable and loves all the attention he is getting.

tucked in for the night......

It wasn’t quite clear what was happening but by the time it was dark they had escaped from their run and were nowhere to be found.

So I spent a couple of hours observing their behaviour this evening. After tempting them into their run with some grain and locking them in, I sat down with a cup of tea and watched. This is what they do:

One or two have a look into the hen house and decide they dont like it (why ?). They ‘fly’ onto the hen house (we haven’t clipped their wings – they are birds so they should fly!) and from there they fly onto the chicken run (it’s about 6 feet high and doesn’t have a roof). Next they hop onto the roof where they spend some time picking at the moss. The next stop is the trailing ash tree which is a short flight from the roof, and then down to ground-level. Finally they make their way into one of the trees where they then roost.

 Help! Any ideas on how to tempt them into their hen house at night ? I don’t mind them sleeping rough but I am concerned that wen they start laying (perhaps they already have!) it will attract undesirables. Foxes have been spotted near Rose Lodge..

What does all of this have to do with dementia care you may wonder ? Well many of our residents kept chickens themselves, and stories like this not only provide interesting and relevant topics of conversation, but they also give our residents an opportunity to recall memories and share their own expertise. Yes looking after hens gives us some more work but it also provides our residents with a much more interesting and stimulating environment to live their lives in.