Carol's Chickens

At the moment we have just the little girls laying. They are all laying approximately every other day. Below are the last six day’s eggs.

A full egg ramp of serama eggs

Rusty’s and Freckles eggs are round and beige. Cinnamon’s are oval and beige. Dandelion and Apricot’s are oval and white.

Above the ramp is Apricot’s egg on the left and Rusty’s egg on the right

Rusty lays the biggest eggs and Apricot lays the smallest eggs. I love that even with these little girls the eggs are all different.

We just love our little girl’s eggs.

Emerald is dropping feathers all around the run. There are lots of feathers under her roost spot each morning.

Emerald’s feathers under her roost spot

Emerald’s feathers

Her under feathers, the one on the left, now have a lot of white on them. Her outer feathers, the one in the middle and on the right, are black with an emerald (hence her name) and purple sheen.

As she is getting older her under feathers are more streaked with white. I think it is like us getting grey hair as we age. Emerald has more white streaks on her feathers each year. I find this quite interesting.

Emerald is starting to look a bit tatty

Emerald

She is still a beautiful girl.

Yesterday was the hottest day this summer so far and this time Rusty, and, Dandelion and Cinnamon were in the sun with their beaks open. This is my first summer of having seramas and I am beginning to think that they like the sun so much that they are willing to get hot in the sun while at the same time cooling themselves through their beaks.

I know that chickens cool themselves through their open beaks in the same way that dogs pant when they are hot. My past experience with chickens has been of them doing this when overheating despite finding some shade. Seramas choose to sit in the sun and do this.

I did a bit of research on this and it concluded that some birds will seek shade while others will choose to sit in the sun. It said that some birds simply like it hot. I think that probably sums up seramas.

Rusty, open beaked in the sun, again

Dandelion and Cinnamon doing the same

Seeing them with eyes glazed and beaks open does unsettle me but they choose to do this while the rest of the flock sit in the shade.

I decided to try giving them some peas once more. I guess I will have to let them choose if they want to bake in the sun, after all I do the same myself sometimes, but I thought that a distraction wouldn’t go amiss.

I tipped the peas onto the patio and there was no hesitation this time.

The girls come to investigate

There is no hesitation in eating the peas this time

All the girls join in eating the peas

I think that they have decided that they do like peas

They have got over their distrust of the peas and have decided that they do like them. I think they would take them from the dish now as a few girls were looking in the dish that I had emptied on to the patio.

I think I will have to get used to trusting that the seramas are okay in the sun, even though they look hot, with their beaks open. The seramas are all laying eggs every other day so are obviously happy. Even after six years of chicken keeping I am still finding out new things and each breed is quite different.

I love the harmony in the flock as it is now. When I throw out some sunflower hearts the girls happily peck at them together.

The flock are all together

Finding the sunflower hearts

I love to see them sharing like this without any chasing. They are such a lovely flock.

We are going through a bit of a heat wave at the moment and yesterday was particularly hot and sunny all day.

A few times I checked on the girls and found Rusty like this.

Rusty in the sun

It would be easy to be quite alarmed because that open beak would usually be a sign that they are overheating and trying to cool themselves through their beak but the thing with Rusty is that every time I moved her to the shade she would spring back to a patch of sun and do this again. She is spreading her wings to the sun. There is plenty of shade in the run but she is choosing to sit in a patch of sun.

I have to remind myself that seramas originate from Malaysia where their breed were used to heat and surely she would know if she was getting too hot. However I decided to distract her and cool all the girls down by offering them a dish of peas.

I put frozen peas in a dish of water so that they were defrosted but the peas and the water were still cold. I have done this in the past to cool the girls in hot weather. They get cold peas and some cold water with them.

This is the first time I have done this since I have had the little girls though and new things can be a bit scary.

Rusty stretched her neck to examine the peas

She was plucking up the courage to try one

She takes one I put on the patio

Speckles also takes one from the patio

Only Emerald took the peas from the dish

Emerald was happy to take the peas from the dish

Freckles takes a look but was also only happy to take them from the patio

Apricot takes them from the patio too

Apricot taking peas from the patio

Dandelion and Cinnamon take peas from the patio too

My previous girls were happy to take the peas from a dish of water but it seems not these girls. As only Emerald was happy with this I wonder if it is because she remembers this from before.

I emptied out the water from the dish but the little girls still didn’t want to take the peas from the dish. I gave in and tipped the peas on to the patio and gradually they all got eaten.

These girls are so funny about how they like things. In future I will just sprinkle the peas on the patio. I think it helped cool them down a bit though.

We cut down the apple tree in the chicken run a few years ago. It had got much too big for the run. Since then it has sprouted and then been nibbled away again. The sprouting leaves have never had a chance to grow before being pecked at.

This year however it is sprouting and surviving. I am amazed! I don’t know why it hasn’t been pecked.

Sprouting apple tree

It would be quite nice to retain a little green in the run at a lower level. I just can’t work out why it is surviving though. The only difference is that Peaches and Barley are no longer with the flock. I would find it surprising if they had been the only ones pecking at it though.

Emerald will go to any length to reach any of the leaves on all the other shrubs in the run. As you can see in this photo she is taking no notice of it at all. I will watch with interest to see how big it grows and will report back.

Speckles and Emerald stick together whether it’s perching together, dust bathing together or sitting, either in the sun or the shade, together.

These two like to stick together

Emerald and Speckles perching together with Emerald in her usual standing position

These two also like to stick together

They peck at apple together

They go to the pellets together

When I check on the nest box these two like to check it together

Rusty has a dust bath

She does her dead chicken impression

Freckles usually joins Rusty in a dust bath but she was busy in the nest box.

They like to hang out together

Apricot does her own thing

Apricot is happy to hang out with the other two amigos but she is also happy to hang out with any of the other girls as well or she will just do her own thing. Apricot isn’t part of a pair but she is friendly with all the girls and is super friendly with me.

It is lovely to see these little friends hanging out together.

Yesterday there were just two eggs in the nest box. They were Speckles and Apricot’s eggs, so the biggest and the smallest.

The big and the small

I wasn’t sure that Speckles was going to continue laying after her last whopper. That was just over a week ago. She is still continuing to grow her feathers so that is obviously having an effect on her egg laying.

The pins on Speckles neck are opening

Her head feathers have taken ages to come in properly and now her neck feathers are nearly completely open.

She usually only lays about three eggs a week, she isn’t a prolific layer, but she does lay the biggest eggs. I would say her eggs are larger than a standard girl’s egg.

Emerald hasn’t laid for just over a week so I think she is finished for this year. She lays five or six eggs a week so is a really good layer while she is laying. She has laid for longer than usual this year so I expected her to take a break.

Speckles usually stops laying at the end of next month so it will soon be up to the little girls to keep egg production going. As we need three little eggs to make up one standard egg we have been able to eat all our eggs ourselves rather than giving some away.

This does mean we can’t “gift” them but it is quite nice to be able to eat them all and really appreciate them. Thank you girls.

Rusty and Freckles seem to be taking turns at going broody. So far I have only had one broody at a time. Rusty has laid seven eggs in fourteen days and laid yesterday.

Today she kept going to the nest box and because she lays every other day I knew that she didn’t need to lay. I kept taking her out. Once I take her out she stays out for a few hours before returning again. She isn’t properly broody yet but she is on her way.

When I take Rusty out she puffs herself up and her tail is pointing straight up

Tail up in the nest box

Tail up out of the nest box

Now that I am more experienced with seramas I know that this tail up pose means they are are going broody. Luckily both Rusty and Freckles are completely docile broodies and they let me pick them up without any protest.

I have found that if I remove them from the nest box every time I go in they will come out of it in three days. It will then be about two weeks before they start laying again.

After a few moments Rusty is off and running and she will go into the run and scratch and dust bath.

Compared to past broodies I have had these girls are really easy to manage and I am now used to this little routine. Seramas are such easy girls to handle and I totally love this breed.

When I took some photos of my jellyfish for the novelty fruit and veg competition I thought it would be the ideal time to compare my new camera to my old one. I took a couple of photos with my new camera and then a couple of photos with my old camera.

I was amazed at how different they were. The new camera shows the detail a little better but more than it has a much brighter and truer colour. With the new camera the satsumas look  a bright orange whereas with the old camera they look dull and faded. See below.

Jellyfish taken with my new camera

Jellyfish taken with my old camera

While using my old camera I was reasonably happy with the quality, it was the speed that annoyed me. Now I can see how the quality has improved as well as the speed. I am really happy with my new camera.