Yesterday was exceptionally hot. It was 29 degrees C which is 85 degrees F. The girls were all sun bathing in turn until it got too hot for them.
Emerald sun bathing
Emerald is looking very shabby as she is moulting. As she has aged she has more and more white on her underneath feathers.
A ragged Emerald sitting with Freckles
Emerald is moulting much more quickly than Speckles. She does have pin feathers coming in though and perhaps it’s best to get it over and done with quickly.
Cinnamon has gone broody
Cinnamon last laid five days ago and it took me a while to realise that she had gone broody. She isn’t very committed and just sits in her corner a few times a day and at bedtime. It was when she raised her tail over her back as I lifted her that I realised she was broody.
I am now lifting her to the perch at bedtime and closing the chicken shed door during the day as none of the other girls are laying. I am back to buying eggs at the moment.
Dandelion has the most red face and comb
Dandelion also has a bit of a bare bottom where she pulled out her mucky feathers when she prolapsed. She does have pins growing back again though.
Please don’t be thinking of laying again!
Dandelion had a look in the nest box and then came out again. It has been two weeks since she last laid and prolapsed. I would really like her to take a longer break but there isn’t anything I can do about that. I have to just hope for the best.
Cinnamon is sun bathing
Speckles is sun bathing
Emerald is snoozing in the shade
Emerald is really showing her age these days. She spends a lot of the day snoozing. A little later Emerald was panting with her beak open. I felt she was struggling with the heat. My husband reminded me that I used to give the girls frozen peas when it was really hot.
If you put the peas in a dish with a little water it really helps cool the girls as they take ice cold water with the peas and it stops the peas from drying out in the heat.
Emerald leads the way with the frozen peas
This helped cool the girls down
Emerald was the first to get stuck into the peas and eventually all the girls had some. The girls instantly looked much cooler.
I put a tapas dish with a few peas in for the chicks. They couldn’t quite summon up enough courage to try them. Blue is the bravest and she would stand perfectly still with her neck stretched out towards them. You could almost read her wondering if they were killer peas. Would they explode? Would they jump out of the dish and bite her? She decided that they were too dangerous to try. Sigh!
I decided to try integrating the chicks but as it was so hot I waited until five o’clock when the run is in shade and the heat has gone from the day. I am going to leave that for my next post. Watch this space!
Click here to see the history of my flock.
Looking forward to see how it all goes.How the time has flown, It seems no time that you got the new little girls.
It’s been five and a half weeks and they are so different from when we first bought them home. I may put out a comparison photo soon. Three tiny yellow heads that are yellow no more. They have come a long way in five weeks.
Your girls are so pretty. Mine too are starting to molt. Which is early for us. But I’m hoping that they get over it before the cool fall days and hopefully come back into lay and lay through the winter. We’ll see.
I too hope they get feathered up again before winter. My two bigger girls won’t lay over winter but the little girls laid last year until December when it got too cold.
Funny that, As soon as I read thee first couple of sentences of this post, my mind went immediately to the frozen peas you give your girls in very hot weather. I must give that a try myself.
It’s odd that I was thinking of past ideas of water baths etc and said that Emerald is too old for such things now and then Richard reminded me of the simple frozen peas. Works beautifully. They all went from open beak panting to back to normal in minutes.