Carol's Chickens

We have a real problem with cats doing their business in our garden and every winter we have to do something to protect the vegetable plot or it will become a giant toilet.

We try to keep the rest of the garden as full as possible to leave no space for the cats but even this doesn’t always stop them. Sometimes they actually do their business on top of a low laying shrub which is horrible to clear up.

We have in the past put net or chicken wire over the veg plot in winter but it looks unsightly and sometimes the cats poop on top of it which is even worse to clean up. They are very determined.

We have tried all deterrents to no avail.

What we did notice during the summer was that the pea twigs stopped them. Maybe it inhibits them being able to squat. This gave us an idea. We could fill the veg plot with twigs over winter. We didn’t mind the look of it and if it would keep it cat poop free we would be happy with that.

We went in to the woods and gathered a bundle of twigs.

We collected a pile of twigs

One side of the veg plot has twigs planted

At this point we got rained off so had to leave the job to finish another day.

The next thing we did was empty the last two potato bags and put the compost in the chicken run. I have now bought the soil level in the chicken run back to what it used to be.

I emptied the two terracotta tomato pots back into the holes that they came out of and cleared this side of the plot of all but the leeks.

The first side is completed now that the potato bags have gone

The other side planted with just the leeks remaining

The finished plot

As I take out the leeks I will fill the space with more twigs until the entire plot is covered with twigs. We have found some cat poop in the bigger gaps between the twigs so today I have filled in the gaps with small twigs. I will keep going until it stops the cats completely. I am hoping this will now solve the problem.

We now have a winter veg plot full of twigs. I think it looks okay.

We have had a really busy couple of days business wise and I haven’t had time to write a blog post. I intended to do a post to show the little girls on all the smaller perches that we put in for in them. I took a couple of photos of them on one of the new perches then got too busy to follow up so I thought would just put these out for now as they are so cute.

Three little girls perching together

Catching a few rays of sunshine

We put in four lower and smaller perches for the little girls plus the recent one on the patio area. They like this one and the two that are near both the metal and the wooden table but the other one is behind the other ladder and I have never seen any girl on that one.

I think because it is behind the ladder, rather than beside the ladder like this one, it doesn’t appeal to them. They also like to perch on the ladders and the high perches above the ladders but I have never seen them on the high perch outside the hatch or on the metal table or the perch above that table.

They spend a lot of time on the wooden table though. I think it’s because they like perching high up but they need a step up to get there. Before we had the little girls the wooden table was rarely used but now it has become the little girl’s domain and gets a lot of use.

It is good that both sets of girls have their own favourite areas as well their shared areas. The little girls like to perch up a lot of the time. I have yet to see the little girls perch on the same perch as the bigger girls though.

Toffee stopped laying at the end of March and Emerald at the end of April. They were the first to moult but do it slowly and Emerald is still dropping the odd feather and still has some pins under her tail.

Peaches is at the opposite end of the scale and went on laying until the end of September. She had a fast and furious moult.

Whereas Barley lost her tail feathers one by one Peaches lost her entire tail in one go.

Peaches with no tail

A scruffy looking Peaches

Peaches is full of pins

Peaches feathers are opening

Peaches feathers are nearly there

Peaches just has one small patch of grey under feathers showing

Her tail is now fully grown

Her feathers have all filled in

In just under two months she has gone from looking a mess to being completely back to normal. It has been amazing to see how fast she has moulted and grown her feathers back again and all done in time for winter.

I have often noticed that chickens like to sit up against something or even better in a corner. I think it makes them feel safe and secure. Today I was digging the run over when I noticed the three little girls sitting in the corner behind one of the gates.

Three little girls in a corner

Preening together

They were sitting in here for a while and were preening together. I couldn’t get a photo of all three girls facing the camera but these two photos give the gist of them in their corner.

They do make me smile.

Just when I thought we had cracked the bedtime routine Pebbles has started to slip again. For a few weeks all the little girls went in and settled on their little perch each night. For the last three nights Pebbles has settled here.

Pebbles has perched here for the last few nights

I don’t understand why she has suddenly started doing this. I put her through the pop hole then opened the main door to watch her and let in a bit of light. Pebbles always perches nearest the door. She looked agitated because there wasn’t enough space on the perch nearest the door for her to jump up. She went to the other side of the perch and got ready to jump up.

Pebbles gets ready to jump up.

She jumped into the space on the perch and I closed the door. I heard a thud and opened the door again to find she had jumped back down. She looked like she was going to jump up to  the side nearest the door.

Pebbles wants to jump up this side but there isn’t enough space

She gave up and jumped up on the other side again. Once more I heard a thud once I had shut the door and she had jumped down again. On the previous two nights I had just picked her from the outside perch and placed her in her spot near the door where she settled. Tonight I thought I should try to let her jump to the perch herself and that seems to be where the problem lies.

I moved Rusty and Freckles along a little bit and placed Pebbles in her favourite position near the door. I closed the door and she stayed put. I swept the patio and checked back again and she was still settled. The automatic door closed and I retreated.

I put Pebbles on the perch in the position she wanted she be in

Pebbles has always perched in this position nearest the door and I have never seen her perched in any other position. Could it really be that she won’t go in if she can’t get her favoured position! It seems ridiculous that she would rather perch outside than take a different position on the perch.

If she is so determined to get this position I don’t understand why she doesn’t go in first but she has always been in the habit of going in last. Tomorrow I will go up sooner and try to encourage her to go in earlier.

I feel a bit frustrated that every time I think the bedtime routine is sorted something seems to upset it again. It always seems to be Pebbles that doesn’t always go in. I will try to retrain her over the next few nights.

Every morning when I poop pick the chicken shed the three little girls keep me company. They spend the time that I am in there scratching and pecking at the shavings. I have to be very careful where I put my feet and if they scratch shavings on to my boots they peck at my boots.

As soon as I have finished and leave the shed they follow me out and go about their day.

The little girls always keep me company in the mornings

You can see my pot and disposable glove in the background, I had just finished picking up when I stopped to take a few photos.

I don’t know why they like scratching in the shavings

There was some mash left from the day before so I put it in the store cabinet overnight and put it back on the patio when I had finished picking up in the shed.

Brave little girls to eat from the dish at the same time as Peaches

Rusty and Freckles share the mash with Peaches

I was surprised to see Peaches and the two little girls sharing the mash. They usually have to wait their turn when the bigger girls have moved away and this is the first time I have seen both sized girls at the same dish. Progress! The flock do seem more united these days which good to see.

This morning was the first hard frost this winter. It was -2 degrees which isn’t extreme by any means but cold enough to freeze the water in the bird bath. The chicken’s water dishes are sheltered so only freeze when the temperature gets quite a bit lower than this.

The chicken’s water bottles had frozen though and I think that I may take them away and ween the little girls off of them. They do drink from the water dishes too so should soon get used to just having those. I think this will be better in winter when the bottles will freeze much more easily.

Frozen bird bath

Frozen water bottle but not the water dish

The garden looked pretty in the frost.

The cabin roof and the rose

Shrubs

Frosty umbrella in the sunshine

rosemary

Fern

Tall grass against a blue sky

Sedum

I thought the sedums were the prettiest of all as every individual petal was outlined in white frost.

The same sedum later in the day

The girls all perch up when the ground is cold.

Little girls perching together and all fluffed up

Bigger girls perching together just before Emerald joined them

Emerald was busy in a dust bath but joined them a few minutes later.

Little girls

All the girls perching

Bigger girls above and little girls below

I love how the flock are together even though they are on two levels. They are together but still in their two groups. I like that even though they choose to be in two groups they do all gather together. They are a proper little flock.

We think that the little girls can probably be trusted to take shelter on the patio area if the weather is really cold so we decided it would be a good idea to reinstate a perch on the patio area.

At the moment the little girls sit on the little coop roof and we thought it would be better if they had a perch. The previous perch got moved when we needed another perch in the chicken shed.

We still had some spare brackets in the shed and we collected some twigs from the woods for another project (a future post) so I picked a suitable sized branch to make them a perch.

I tried Rusty on the new perch

I added freckles to the new perch

I showed Pebbles the new perch

The bigger girls inspected the new perch

If there is one thing you can say about chickens, it is that they are nosy. My husband had an audience of the bigger girls while he was putting the perch up. They just have to know what is going on and they must inspect anything new.

I think if the weather was really cold I could hook open the chicken shed door and the little girls could take shelter on the patio area or in the shed. If the door was hooked open and it was light in there they may go in although I wouldn’t hold my breath on that but if they get used to the perch on the patio area it is, sheltered, covered and dry.

I think that this may be all that is needed to keep them comfortable and happy in the winter. I will be watching over them when the cold weather comes.

Having researched seramas before I got them there are mixed messages about keeping them warm in winter. Some people say they keep them inside (chicken shed or barn not in your house, of course) over winter, or at least during cold spells and some people say they are fine to be kept outside if that’s what they have been used to.

They originate from Malaysia and have only been bred in this country for about ten years so some people say they need a little help in winter. My research says that you will know if they need a bit of help because they will be huddled and miserable looking if they are cold and you will then need to give them some protection.

I had the idea that if we could rig up some sort of screen we could keep them contained to the patio area during cold weather. I could hook the chicken shed door open and put a washing up bowl of dry soil in for dust bathing, not that I have seen them dust bathing very often.

A catalogue dropped through our door, one of those that is full of things that you don’t really need, but they try to persuade you that you do! I saw an inexpensive, mobile, door or gate divider. It concertinaed closed for easy storage and pulled out to fit the gap you needed to block.

I thought this might do the job. We could keep it in the shed and pull it out when needed and simply open it across the patio area keeping the little girls contained where it is sheltered on all sides and has a solid roof, is free from drafts and they would stay warm. Perfect.

You are probably sensing a catch here. When these things finally arrive (after more than three weeks in this case) they never turn out to look like they did in the catalogue. I could soon see that this divider was not going contain my little girls. There was a gap underneath (I thought from the picture it went to the ground) that they could simply stroll under, the diamond shaped holes, when stretched out, were big enough for my little girls to get through, that is if they didn’t already take the easy option of walking underneath and lastly it wasn’t high enough to stop them flying over as a last, unnecessary resort.

I thought it would be fun to try it out and demonstrate this.

The divider

You can probably already see that this isn’t going to work.

Not only Freckles and Rusty went under it but Peaches and Speckles squeezed under it too

Rusty can simply walk underneath it

This isn’t going to stop Rusty

Okay, got to admit, this idea is rubbish. I did think we could clad it with chicken net, going to ground level, but my husband said it wouldn’t fold up then. I did wonder if we could fix something to the wooden outside posts to extend some chicken net higher up. I thought we could modify it but now I am not so sure.

Yesterday it rained all day and the three little girls spent a lot of time on the patio and were often sat together on the little coop roof. Maybe they can be trusted to seek shelter when it’s cold and don’t have to be contained after all.

I think we will play it by ear and see what happens. Perhaps they know best after all and will just do what is best for them. If we see them looking miserable we will come up with a plan but maybe they will just do what is right for them without our help.

They have sussed going to bed without my help and It turned out I was just distracting them. Today we got home from a day out, after dark, and the three little girls were on their perch. They might just have more sense than we are crediting them with. I think we will just and wait and see how it goes.

I decided to take some close up photos of the little girls to show their combs. Pebbles is over a year old and fully mature but hasn’t laid any eggs since we have had her. She seems to have been moulting quite a bit since she has been with us and has a head full of white quills that seem to have been taking ages to open.

Rusty and Freckles are now about five months old but silky feathered girls mature slower and whereas freckles has quite a mature comb Rusty’s comb is still tiny. The funny thing about Rusty’s comb is that it is the same ginger colour as her feathers instead of red like Pebbles and Freckles.

This makes it quite hard to see it but I think it’s quite cute. I wonder if it will stay this orange colour or if it will change to red as she matures. I like to think it might stay this cute orange colour.

This morning was a little bit frosty and the three little girls were gathered together on the wooden table giving me the ideal opportunity to photograph them. The bigger girls were all on the wooden perches. All the girls prefer to perch on wood when it’s cold as it is warmer than either the ground or the metal table which is popular on warmer days.

Three little girls on the wooden table

Cute little Rusty

Rusty is so curious about everything including my camera and has no fear or shyness at all. I thought this was cute and comical.

Freckles has a red comb

Pebbles has a red comb

What look like white feathers on pebbles head are white spiky quills which haven’t yet opened.

Rusty’s close up

Rusty is a beautiful little girl.

Rusty has a little ginger comb

Her little ginger comb barely shows up but it is just there.

They make a cute little trio

I find it hard to imagine these little girls laying eggs but I guess they will eventually.

As Rusty has started to mature she has had some spats with Freckles. She has chased her in the mornings when I am cleaning the shed and the first morning this happened I was quite shocked. They are so inseparable and yet Rusty was chasing Freckles and they were raising their ruffs at each other. At one point Rusty chased Freckles and forced her to run through the water dish. They were really going at each other.

I picked Rusty up and held her for a moment but as soon as I put her down they went at it again. I picked Freckles up for a moment and again they continued when I put her down. The next moment they were side by side at the water dish drinking together as if nothing had happened.

It seems that as they mature they must establish their pecking order even when they are a tight pair. I remember being surprised to see Amber and Honey do this and also to see Peaches and Barley do it too.

I think it surprised me even more with these two as Rusty often behaves as if she is Freckles chick. It was obvious that Rusty is top of these two and she was doing all the chasing, yet she she will still flutter under Freckles when they perch together and still touches her beak against Freckles beak like a chick at times.

This happened for three or four mornings then I haven’t seen it since. It is quite clear that Rusty is top of these two. Rusty is the more immature yet she is a feisty little girl. When Freckles and Rusty get chased from the treats by the bigger girls Freckles will retreat but Rusty will bounce around them and go back to where she was.  Rusty is quite a character and is friendly, fearless and constantly chattering away.

The chatter, or more aptly twittering, is also a sign that they haven’t reached maturity yet. Pebbles doesn’t make a sound unless she squeaks if she is chased by one of the bigger girls but Freckles and Rusty and more so Rusty twitter away all the time. I will miss this if they mature into quiet girls like Pebbles.

I am loving watching these little girls develop. There is so much that is so cute about seramas and I can’t wait to see what their little eggs are like but I just love the sweetness of them right now while they are still so chick like. I am in no hurry to have to have them grow up as they are so entertaining just as they are.