Carol's Chickens

Mid morning when I paid the girls a visit they were in almost exactly the same positions as yesterday. Once again Topaz was the only one busy scratching.

Topaz was busy scratching and pecking

Emerald and Amber were together on their favourite little perch but the other way round from yesterday.

Emerald and Amber together as usual

The rest of the girls were on the other favourite perch in exactly the same order as yesterday but when I went to take a photograph Toffee jumped down.

The line up was the same as yesterday

You can see the space where Toffee had been and once again Emerald and Amber are in the background.

Toffee moved on to the table

I took the girls a dish of warm mash as it was a frosty day but when I returned later Emerald and Amber were back together on their little perch. They do seem to be good friends and they are all definitely creatures of habit.

This post is dedicated to Ian, Jackie’s dear beloved husband, of forty years who sadly died suddenly yesterday. This has been a huge shock and our thoughts are with Jackie and her family at this sad and difficult time.

Ian loved their chickens and Clover their oldest hen and top girl was his favourite. He also shared my husband’s interest in model railways. He visited our flock and took a look at my husband’s set up before Christmas.

Ian and Jackie had a lovely Christmas holiday together in Spain and Jackie I know will take some comfort from that and the fact that as it was so sudden Ian didn’t suffer.

Since I met Jackie through our shared love of chickens, we have become really good friends and I love her dearly. I have found that we have a lot in common and often have the same opinions on many subjects. We like reading the same books and of course we chat about chickens just a little!

I have been quite intrigued by the friendships in my flock too. Topaz is top girl and the only one in the flock with a grumpy nature. When she went broody last summer she was an angry broody, shouting and pecking at anyone who came near her, be that me or the rest of the flock.

Topaz doesn’t tolerate any of the girls getting in her way and anyone to get too close to her will get a swift peck. None of the girls are bothered at all by this. They know she is top girl and they move aside for her but soon bounce back seemingly not offended by her behaviour.

Today I went out to take some photos to illustrate this and as usual Topaz was scratching about and doing her own thing.

Topaz is looking great

Topaz has a lovely red comb and wattles and is the only one to start laying again since her moult.

The most interesting friendship to me is Amber and Emerald. Peaches and Barley are the closest of friends and are inseparable. This makes perfect sense to me though because they have been together since they hatched and together in my flock from six weeks old. They always perch together, dust bath together and perch next to each other at bedtime.

Amber and Emerald though have just become friends over time. They are often sat together during the day and nearly always perch together at bedtime. Often when they sit together they are a little apart from the rest of the flock and at bedtime they often choose the lowest right hand perch which has just enough space for the two of them.

Amber and Emerald always sit together

This little perch also only has room for two and seems to be their favourite. Amber is number four in the pecking order and bottom of her pair (Honey and Amber) and Emerald is number six in the pecking order and also bottom of her pair (Toffee and Emerald). Honey and Amber are friendly but Amber does seem to seek out Emerald to sit with and Honey and Amber rarely perch together at bedtime.

Toffee and Emerald who joined the flock together have nothing at all to do with each other and Toffee will chase Emerald away. Toffee is a loner and doesn’t seek out anyone to sit with but will randomly perch where ever she can fit in.

This is the favourite daytime perch

This perch is the one most used and as usual Peaches and Barley are next to each other. Honey is on the left, then Peaches, then Barley, then Toffee and Sparkle on the right. You can see Amber and Emerald in the background on the other side of the weld mesh.

I love seeing these friendships in the flock and love that all the girls have such different characters. They are often grouped together and are very much a flock despite Topaz being rather grumpy and Toffee being a bit of a loner.

Ian also got to see Jackie’s new girls and I know Jackie’s flock will help her by giving her something to focus on and take some comfort from. This has been a difficult post to write but I wanted to honour Ian and his love of chickens too. My heart goes out to Jackie and she knows that I will be there for her if she needs me.

Topaz was the first girl to start her moult after her broody spell. She is the first to get her red comb back and for the last few weeks she has been practising laying. She goes into a nest box, swirls around, sits for anything up to an hour then comes out shouting.

Every time I check there is no egg. Topaz has always done a lot of practise laying. Peaches and Barley both laid an egg six days ago and none since. They have slowed down from every other day to an egg each once a week.

On Sunday Topaz was in the right hand little coop but we didn’t hear her shouting as usual. When I checked the little coop there was an egg and it looked a little larger than Peaches or Barley’s egg but as we had eaten their eggs for breakfast that morning I didn’t have one to compare it with. I decided to wait until we got another egg before I jumped to conclusions.

Today Topaz was in the right hand little coop again and this time she did come out shouting. There was another egg in the right hand little coop the same size as the one on Sunday. Hurrah, Topaz is laying again.

A shop bought medium sized egg on the left and Topaz’s two eggs on the right

Maybe Topaz is going to lay properly this year. Well done Topaz!

Jackie has been trying to make up her mind for ages if the time is right for getting new girls. Finally she had made up her mind and we arranged to go and collect them this morning.

We set off on our adventure with my dog crate and our cameras to Willow Court Farm where Jackie got her new girls at this time last year. Jackie was thinking of getting a ginger and a bluebell but when we arrived the farmer said the only hybrids ready for sale at the moment were the ginger girls. They are warrens crossed with columbian blacktails.

As ginger girls have always been a favourite of Jackie’s she was happy to take two of them.

Ginger Chickens

Jackie with the first ginger girl to be caught

Two ginger girls ready for the journey home

The farm has a variety of animals as well as poultry.

The pigs

A young goat

Some very friendly goats

A Peacocks and hen just out of the photo

Holiday homes for chickens

The farm also a offers a holiday service. They will look after your hens in these holiday homes while you are away and they worm them during their stay here.

The new girls in their new home

The girls went into their new home happily and soon found the food bowl and the water. Jackie had already picked out names for them. She is calling one Ruby as it is her ruby wedding anniversary this year and the other April a it is her birthday in April. I thought these were pretty names. One of the girls is darker than the other so Jackie decided the darker one will be Ruby and the lighter one will be April.

Ruby and April

I stayed a while and the other girls were chatting about the new girls but not shouting. It all seemed to go very well.

Jackie e-mailed me this evening and said that they were noisy for a while this afternoon but it calmed down again and once the old girls went to bed Jackie put the new girls in their temporary coop. As Jackie said tomorrow is another day and she will keep me posted.

Due to my total frustration with the extended part of the run being constantly wet we bought the only tarpaulin we could find locally which was blue and put it over the run extension.

That was eight days ago and until then Peaches and Barley had laid an egg every other day like clockwork. During the last eight days that the blue tarpaulin has been over the run laying had ceased with just one egg from Peaches half way through the eight day period.

I hated the lack of light in the run, the girls spent a lot less time in the newer part and egg laying had ceased. Time to go on line (Steve, I know what you are thinking!).

Yesterday the clear tarpaulin that I had ordered arrived and at lunch time today we changed the blue tarpaulin for the clear tarpaulin.

The run looks so much better with the clear tarpaulin over the top

The view from the original part of the run

The view from the extended part of the run

The run is a lot lighter and when I returned an hour later I found Barley missing on parade. I checked in the nest boxes just as she was standing over her warm egg.

Barley has just laid her egg

The light level makes such a difference as this is Barley’s first egg in eight days. An hour later I checked the nest boxes again and there was an egg from Peaches.

I am amazed at how much difference the light makes and I am so much happier now that we have changed the tarpaulin. Lesson learned and I will never use anything but clear in future.

On another note Topaz, who moulted first after her broody spell, has a lovely red comb and wattles and has been having a practice at laying for the last week. She goes into the nest box, twirls around, sits a while, then comes out shouting but there is no egg. She always did like to practice a lot. I think she really might start laying soon!

Maybe with more light in the run now Topaz may finally get started with laying some eggs. Watch this space!

Today was a good day because I got an update on all three of my re-homed girls on the same day.

My husband went to the farm where Pepper and Dotty now live, to collect our disposables for our catering business, but also to look in on Pepper and Dotty.

Last time we saw them they were going through the moult but today they looked great. They had all their feathers back in including Dotty’s head feathers and Pepper’s fluffy bottom. My husband said Pepper was still looking fatter than Dotty, just like she always did, so she is obviously doing well.

He said next time he goes for disposables he will take our camera and get some photos of them but I am happy that he saw them looking good and looking happy.

Jackie and I also had our first catch up since the Christmas holiday and Blossom, formerly Bluebell, is looking beautiful with all her feathers back in and her little head crest returned to its former glory.

Blossom takes some corn from Jackie

Blossom is looking good

She has her full head crest

Blossom is looking fabulous

Four fluffy bottoms

Four beautiful girls

Jackie and I are so pleased with how beautiful our flocks are looking and we once again agreed that the moment when Jackie said she would adopt Bluebell, now Blossom, was a real turning point for my flocks development. I wondered what would have happened had I not met Jackie when I did and she very wisely said that we all have these cross roads in our lives that set us on a different path.

I am just happy that everything has turned out so well and we both have a lovely flock and a lovely friendship too.

This morning was cold and frosty so I decided to give the girls a treat of a dish of warm mash. This is just their regular pellets made into a mush with warm water. It’s great because they are eating their normal food but it’s a treat to them as it has a different texture which they seem to love.

I used to use several small dishes to allow them all to get some but I now find that one large dish of mash works well. Toffee and Emerald are the most shy about pushing in to get some but as soon as the other girls have had some and move away from the dish Toffee and Emerald move in.

The girls keep coming back to the dish throughout the morning and by lunch time it’s all gone.

Warm mash on a frosty morning

The girls love the mash

This is good

Yummy

The reason Emerald isn’t in the last two photos is because I was standing next to the store cupboard to take the photos. Emerald was soon on top of the store cupboard just in case there were going to be other treats on offer.

They never miss a trick where the treats are concerned.

Last year Honey and Amber started laying again in February. This has got me thinking about Amber’s egg lay problem.

This is pure theory but Amber has always been smaller and lighter than Honey and I often think of her in terms of being the runt of the litter. Amber has also always been a different shape to Honey. She has a little bump on her back which I wonder if this is a slight deformity of her spine. Don’t get me wrong, I have always thought her small size and different shape make her unique and makes her look cute. I have always thought she was prettier than Honey.

I wonder though if this has any bearing on her difficulty laying eggs. I did some research and when I found a diagram showing both the skeleton of a chicken and the internal organs of a chicken I found that directly below Amber’s little bump are her ovaries.

I wonder if this has some bearing on her difficulty with her eggs as she always begins to look unwell the day before she lays her egg and as an egg takes approximately twenty five hours from the start of it’s journey to being laid she may feel unwell at the start of the eggs journey. Maybe if the egg is slow getting started on it’s journey this may be why the shell is often not properly formed.

This is all speculation on my part and we will never know for sure but we have always thought that there is something not quite right with her egg laying machinery and I do wonder if the bump on her back is connected to this.

It’s difficult to show in a photograph but the photo below is the best I could get to try to show this. The bump is where her collection of speckles are on her back.

Amber’s little bump

Honey’s smoother shape

When I have looked at photos of vorwerks Honey is the recognised shape. None of this theorising changes anything for her but I do wonder if it could explain it.

Honey and Amber are looking so good with their new feathers and both have developed speckles on their breasts where before there were none.

Honey’s speckled breast

Amber’s speckled breast

I am hoping that Amber may struggle less this year because she has no stress now. She isn’t bullied and isn’t having her feathers pulled. She is also in the middle of the pecking order being number four of eight so is in a good place now. I hope this might help her.

Another interesting thing is looking back at the the egg records. In 2013 Honey and Amber started to lay in May. Honey laid 52 eggs and Amber laid 31.

In 2014 they started to lay in February. Honey laid 97 and Amber 35.

If you take into consideration the extra three months laying in their second year it means Honey has been pretty consistent over the two years whereas Amber’s egg laying is still very low.

Again don’t get me wrong I don’t want Amber laying more eggs. As far as I am concerned the less the better and I would be happy if she never laid eggs again but it interesting to look at all the facts.

Amber is so well over the winter, while not laying, that I dread her starting to lay again. We have thought we were going to lose Amber so many times right from when we first had her and she first started laying but she is feisty and keeps bouncing back.

I just hope she will continue to bounce back and maybe she will surprise us and live a long life. I know that I will be making the most of having her in the flock for as long as possible. Only time will tell but she is a sweet little girl with a big character.

We extended the girl’s run in the spring and fitted panels over the top so that they could be closed against rain but opened to allow the sun in. During the summer when it rained the panels leaked between the joins and rain blew in through the sides but it dried out again during the better weather so stayed dry most of the time.

We have been disappointed to find that during this winter the new part of the run has become completely wet and it no longer dries out between wet days. During heavy rain it has puddles and although I dig the run over at least once a week the soil is claggy and heavy and the girls constantly have muddy feet.

I had hoped that extending the run would give the girls more dry area during the winter but that has proved not to be the case and I have been getting fed up of all the mud.

Today we decided to put a tarpaulin over the top of the entire extended area to see if it keeps most of the area dry. It was inexpensive and we will take it off for the summer. My only concern was that as it’s not available in clear, it will make the run a little dark. We decided to try it for a few weeks and see how it goes.

I know that the run will take some time to dry out but I am hoping that this will help and although rain will still blow in I hope the middle area will stay dry.

Tarpaulin over the extended part of the run

It doesn’t look attractive but will only be there for a few months.

View of tarpaulin from the original part of the run

Tarpaulin from inside the extended part of the run

It was a dull and foggy day so I think it will be better during brighter days. The girls didn’t seem to mind the new look and spent as much time in this part of the run as usual.

We also made another change to the bedtime perches. Since we had put up a new bedtime perch, this had become a success, with the girls using the new perch each night. Honey likes the left hand side of the new perch and Emerald likes the right hand side of the new perch.

What I did find though was that the big perch was no longer used at all. I think that now there is more choice of perch space the girls favour the slimmer perches as they are easier for them grip (as bantam girls have little feet) and the big perch is now redundant.

We decided to replace the big perch with a slimmer one to match the rest.

A new slimmer perch on the left

This worked a treat and tonight three girls used the newest perch.

Bedtime line up

Amber is on the chair. Honey is almost hidden but is behind Peaches and Barley on the left hand side of the previous new perch. Peaches, Barley and Sparkle are on the newest perch (replacing the big perch). Topaz and Toffee are on the right hand perch and Emerald is on the right hand side of the previous new perch.

Closer shot of seven girls

To get Emerald in shot I couldn’t get too close so this shows the other seven in their positions.

It’s amazing how a simple change in the perches has made the bedtime routine so much easier. The girls all now find their spots on the perches quickly and easily without any hassle.

I think keeping the extended run area dry may be a trickier matter but only time will tell. At least the old part of the run is dry and gives them a good dust bath area but it would be great to have the girls with dry feet too.

It will be interesting to see how many eggs we get this year. I know that Honey is quite a good layer (97 eggs last year) and that Amber has always had a problem laying her eggs (35 eggs last year) and even when she does lay an egg it is usually broken and not able to be eaten by us.

I know that Sparkle is a really good layer (109 eggs since her arrival on 5th April) but Topaz is an unknown quantity (6 eggs from her arrival on 5th April). She was broody for three weeks and after laying one egg she started her moult so I don’t know if she will be prone to going broody or if she will hit her stride next year and start laying properly. That was a huge difference between these two girls.

I have no idea if the game girls will be good layers or constantly broody. They came to me  (on 11th June) after being broody for the farmer (he keeps them because they make good broodies for hatching eggs for the farm) and Emerald laid 1 egg and Toffee laid 6 eggs before they both started their moult.

The farmer needed them to go broody whereas I would try to discourage it but as I know from Topaz this year it isn’t always possible. So it will be a total surprise this year to see if they go broody a lot or if they lay well. I know that bantam game birds are not known for being good layers so we will see.

Peaches and Barley started laying in November at six months old and are quite good layers and may even improve in spring. In two months Peaches has laid 15 eggs and Barley has laid 18 eggs.

Altogether we had 286 eggs from the bantams last year but two girls came to me in April and four girls came to me in June so I would expect a higher number this year. It will be our first year with eight bantams from the start of the year it so will be interesting to see how they all do.

I am looking forward to seeing how the girls progress and to having more lovely eggs to eat. The only down side is that I dread Amber returning to egg laying again. You can never tell how things will go though as we had thought we were about to lose Amber so many times but she kept bouncing back. Every year I hope the next year will be easier on her. On the upside she isn’t being bullied and she does have all her feathers. She is now looking better than she has since we first had her.

Here’s to 2015 with happy chickens and lovely eggs and happy chicken keepers. Happy 2015 to every one.