Carol's Chickens

Speckles has been hanging on to her last tail feather for the past week. This afternoon it fell out and now she has no tail.

Speckles has lost her tail

No tail

Speckles has a new shape

She looks so sweet

And she’s off

She looks such a sweetie with no tail and she is so shy at the moment. This takes me back to last year when she first came to us. I look forward to her growing her tail back and with it her confidence. I am sure that she will return to the changed Speckles that grew in confidence last year once she got her feathers back.

At the risk of getting boring and repetitive I really do think Butterscotch’s head feathers are nearly back to normal.

Butterscotch

Since she first lost her head feathers six months ago this is the best she has looked. Her head feathers are opening up at last. Hurrah!

Our hanging baskets give a splash of colour but it’s funny how when we bought them they were both the same round shape. The basket at the front has kept its round shape and looks the perfect basket with a bright splash of colour to welcome you.

Front hanging basket

The back basket is completely different and has opened up into a weird shape.

Back hanging basket

At the top of the garden beside the chickens is a hibiscus that is one of the few shrubs that was already here when we moved in nine years ago. In that time it has doubled in size and also gives a splash of colour at this time of the year.

Hibiscus

Hibiscus

We prune it back after it has finished flowering but it goes on getting bigger and bigger each year.

I stepped back to show the size of this shrub/tree

Notice the girls chilling in the background.

The blooms close up

Hibiscus are like day lilies, as one bloom opens another bloom passes over. This plant is amazing with it’s giant size and many blooms.

Of my flock of six there are three girls laying at the moment which is quite surprising. Peaches and Barley are still laying although it’s a little less often than earlier in the year and Butterscotch is back to laying every day until she lays late afternoon then she misses a day then lays at first light again just as she has always done.

Emerald appears to have finished her moult but Toffee’s moult has been slower and she is still losing an occasional feather.

Speckles moult was fast with handfuls of feathers in the run and she has completely lost her confidence with it. She used to jump to the gate and then my shoulder or back every morning before the corn and every evening before the seeds. When Butterscotch was broody Speckles would remain on my back while I lifted Butterscotch from the nest box.

Since she started heavily losing feathers she stopped doing this and hangs back behind the others. Sometimes I go in with the seeds in the evening and the girls come running but she is still at the other end of the run until I call her. She joins at the back of the group then while they scratch afterwards she will retreat under the table.

It’s odd how some of the girls massively lose confidence when they moult. Emerald was just the same but it’s more noticeable with Speckles because she no longer jumps on me. I wonder if she will start doing it again when she is through the moult. I used to drape a cardigan over my shoulders while it’s been hot to protect my bare back from her claws and now I don’t need to do this any more. I miss her closeness though.

Meanwhile Butterscotch is looking the most back to normal that she has in six months. I have been dreading having no eggs this winter but David (fellow chicken keeper and regular comenter) raised the interesting fact that as she has mini moults and constantly lays then takes breaks to go broody that there is a possibility that she could continue to lay over winter as do some of his silkies.

This would be amazing because this would otherwise be our first winter with no eggs at all. Year one our first girls had just started laying, that was Treacle, Bluebell and Pepper. Year two Bluebell and Dotty (who didn’t start until four months behind the other girls) still laid through the winter. Year three Peaches and Barley had just started laying. Year four Butterscotch laid through what was her first winter. So now year five it’s a case of having to wait and see. It’s an interesting thought though, thank you David.

So now for the latest photos of the girls.

Speckles has a white patch on her head where she has lost the black tipped feathers

Apart from having only a single tail feather she doesn’t look too bad

Toffee

Toffee is looking good despite still losing a few feathers

Emerald

Emerald is looking good

Butterscotch is getting her crest back

Our twinnies are still looking good

Barley is trying to get her egg laid

Peaches is looking for Barley

So that is the state of play with the flock at the moment. I am just enjoying the eggs while they are still coming and it is good to have the moult a few at a time rather than all at once.

It will be interesting to see what happens with Butterscotch over the winter.

A few weeks back I started digging out the rotten wood from besides the chicken run and replacing it with bricks. It was too hot at the time to continue.

Yesterday afternoon it was cooler, in fact it was drizzling, and I had a free afternoon so I decided to continue the job. I managed to get the job completed. I chiseled out the rotten wood and hammered bricks in its place. I jammed stones in any gaps between the remaining wood and the bricks. I hammered the bricks in really tightly so that it would be very difficult for anything to remove them or dig under them.

I have put slates vertical to the weld mesh and then horizontal under the soil on the inside of the run but I like to protect the run both inside and out to stop anything digging in.

Bricks at the side of the chicken run

Further up the run

Looking back the other way

I am quite pleased with my work as I feel that the run is safer. I think it is good to keep a check on the condition of the run and keep securing any parts that may be weak. I am happy that I have made it as difficult as possible for anything to try to dig in.

We got Butterscotch and Speckles at the end of July last year so they have just completed their first year with us.

Speckles was moulting when we got her, started laying in March and started moulting again at the end of July just like last year.

Butterscotch is the most different girl I have ever come across. She has gone broody as regular as clockwork every month but has moulted every month too. She lays for two weeks then goes broody and moults for two weeks (usually broody for the first week and recovering for the next week before starting to lay again) then lays for two weeks and the cycle just keeps repeating.

At the moment she nearly has her head and neck feathers back in and she is laying once more.

Butterscotch’s head and neck feathers are nearly back in

Once more her crest looks like it’s coming back

The feathers on the back of her neck are beginning to open

These photos of her are almost identical to the photos I put out a month ago. She has been losing her head feathers every month when she goes broody for the last six months. Every month she loses her head feathers then while laying her eggs for two weeks she grows them back in again then goes broody and loses them again.

We got her at the end of July last year and she started laying in August. At the end of August and the beginning of September she went broody for the first time with us and then had a big moult. She looked like a feather duster and I assumed she wouldn’t lay again that year.

To my surprise she started laying again through September then went broody again in October. The pattern continued with her broody again in October and November. She laid throughout December going broody again at the end of December and beginning of January when she lost her tail feathers.

In February she went broody again and this was when she first lost her head feathers. She laid again and grew her head feathers back in but went broody in March and lost them again. In April her head feathers were back in but she went broody again at the end of the month and lost them again.

In May her head feathers were almost back and her photo was almost identical to the one of her now. In June she went broody again and lost her head feathers once more. By the end of June the pins on her head were opening again.

In July she went broody again and once more lost her head feathers. She also had a bigger moult this time and again dropped her tail feathers. Once again I thought that she may not start laying again but by the end of July she was laying again and her head feathers were opening up again.

It’s not the fact that she goes broody every month that surprises me but the fact that for a year now she has moulted every month too. If she moulted a different part of her feathers each month I could understand it but what really puzzles me is that for six months now she has moulted her head and neck feathers over and again. I am surprised that they keep growing back.

I wonder how long this will continue. I am assuming that she will stop laying and going broody over winter and will get all her feathers back in but I wonder if she will repeat this same pattern next year. Is she destined to have an almost bare head for half the year?

I guess we will have to wait and see. It will be interesting to see what winter brings and how she will be next year. Despite all this she is still our best layer when she is laying and I will be interested to see how the end of year egg tally stacks up. I will be surprised if Butterscotch doesn’t have the largest total of eggs over the year.

I will miss the eggs during the winter but it would be great to see Butterscotch with a full head of feathers again.

While buying the plants for behind our back fence I couldn’t resist these, sort of, thistles. I can’t remember now what they are but they were on sale for three pounds and it said that they are really hardy and drought resistant.

I thought they would add a bit of height and colour to the driest parts of the garden.

A lovely pastel mauve colour

They add a bit of height and colour

I added four of them to the garden but the first is just slightly behind where I stood to take the photo. We have lost a few plants that got too dry so maybe these will be able to withstand our lack of watering.

A year ago we had new sheds and a new back fence. Behind our back fence is a strip of woodland with a public path running through it parallel to our fence and beyond that a golf course.

We were a bit worried that with the land higher behind the fence than the garden level on our side of the fence it would be quite easy for someone to climb over on to our property. We had concrete gravel boards put in at the bottom of the fence to stop the fence rotting and put some barbed wire over the top of the fence to try to put people off getting over.

We stored our compost bins and log store behind the sheds but in front of the fence and hung our dog crate (useful for transporting chickens) from the fence.

One day I saw that the dog crate had been lifted off the hooks and put on top of the compost bin. I asked my husband if he had moved it and he hadn’t. We thought maybe someone was clearing the way to climb over at night.

We immediately moved the dog crate to the inside of the shed and the compost bins and log store to the patio area in front of the sheds.

After this we stood on a garden chair and looked over the back fence from time to time and a few days ago my husband saw that someone had dumped a garden bench behind our fence. We felt this could easily be used to stand on and try to get over our fence. We went round the back and moved the bench further into the woodland.

As well as being outraged that people would just dump things like this over the back we started to think that we needed to make our back fence more secure. I worry that my chicken shed is just inside this fence and I need to keep my girls safe.

I decided to clear the rubble from against our fence and plant the area with something to make it difficult for people to get close to the fence.

A few days ago I had a day with no lunches to deliver so I went round the back and spent an hour moving the rubble back from the fence. I was then able to scrabble some soil down the bank and into the space behind the gravel boards.

I then took a trip to a garden centre to find some prickly bushes to plant. They had a sale on but not many suitable plants. I was looking for blackberry bushes but it was probably to late in the season. I settled for a holly and a cotoneaster which although not prickly was a big plant.

On my return my husband was back home and came with me to help. While I started planting he dug up a few brambles to add something more prickly. I planted from right to left, a bramble, the cotoneaster, more bramble, the holly then more bramble.

The back of our fence a year ago

The rubble cleared and the ground planted

The fence after we had planted behind it

Not only are we creating a barrier of prickly plants but I have lowered the level behind the fence, by removing the layer of rubble, which makes the fence higher to climb over.

Beyond the bit I have planted

To the left of the bit that I have planted the rubble was too compacted for me to be able to move but it has stinging nettles growing there so it is already protected.

The rubble I have moved back

By moving the rubble back it has created a bit of a barrier leading on to what I hope will be a future patch of impregnable brambles and holly.

The patch beyond the bit I have planted

This is behind the patch where I couldn’t move the rubble. It has already got it’s own barrier of stinging nettles so this bit wasn’t a worry.

Behind my planted strip

This is looking from behind the rubble onto my newly planted strip. I hope that as this gets established it will create a barrier that will put people off getting through.

I have been putting a step ladder against our side of the fence and watering my newly planted strip over the fence each day until it settles in.

I will photograph it again once it has grown and established what I hope will be a thick barrier of plants that will put off anyone getting close to our boundary fence. It will add to what is already a wild woodland strip and I hope it will eventually grow over the rubble and swamp it with dense woodland brambles and nettles.

It is a shame that people use this space to dump on but the more overgrown it gets the more it gets back to a natural wild environment and the safer the properties behind it become. It is also a haven for wildlife. It seems crazy but I actually feel quite pleased that I have created a strip of natural planting behind our fence which I feel is not only safer for our property but will look better and more natural once established.

I am picking up a hand full of feathers from Speckles every time I go in the run.

Speckles is beginning to look a bit scruffy

She is dropping her tail feathers

She has some loose feathers sticking out

Later in the day she has even less tail feathers

Her comb and wattles are pale and her comb is smaller than it was. This time last year she lost her tail and it looks like it won’t be long before she loses it again this year.

Only Peaches and Barley are yet to moult and their egg laying has slowed down to one or two eggs each a week.

The good news is that Butterscotch laid this morning. This will boost our egg total a bit as she lays most days once she starts again. Every time she goes broody she seems to moult a bit more than the time before and I am convinced that she won’t lay again but each time she does lay again. It will be interesting to see how long she goes on before stopping completely.

This time if she goes broody again I will close up the nest boxes as by then I don’t expect much egg laying from the remaining two girls. This will break her of being broody in a couple of days and I hope this will mean she will keep her head and neck feathers.

Meanwhile I am just glad to have the prospect of a couple of weeks of regular eggs from Butterscotch and I intend to make the most of them before egg production ceases completely.

We are still feeling so pleased with our path. It hadn’t rained since the path was done until this morning. The rain really brings out the colours of the Indian stone.

The path after a shower

The rain really brings out the colour of the stone and the garden is looking lush

The chicken’s strip is filling in

From the other direction

Just loving the path and the garden at the moment and the rain was very much needed.