Carol's Chickens

I know I put moulting photos out yesterday but I am sure Peaches has never looked this bad before. Laying eggs for a month later in the year, this year, has made her moult really quick and messy.

Poor Peaches has never looked this bad before

What a state!

Peaches, What do you look like!

The three little girls have some dandelion leaves

The three little girls have got really good at sneaking up to the patio for treats when the other girls are not looking.

Over the last few nights I have been trying to get the little girls to go to bed on their own. Last night I went out at six o’clock, once the bigger girls were all settled as I wondered if going out earlier was just causing more of a distraction.

As soon as I go up the path the three little girls run to me as if expecting me to put them to bed. On the positive side at least they run to me for help rather than running away or trying to perch elsewhere in the run.

I put them through the pop hole and they run back out. I put Pebbles on the perch and she stays put. Rusty managed to jump to the perch but Freckles goes too high and drops back down again. I relented and put her on the perch. Once all three are on the perch they stay there.

Tonight I went out again at six o’clock and the bigger girls were already settled. Once more the three little girls ran to me. Pebbles used to be fine at going in at night but it seems that now, instead of the newer two following her lead, she has decided to follow them and stay out.

I put them through the pop hole and put the chicken doorstop in front to keep them in. No chance, the little girls squeezed around it and out again. I put Pebbles on the perch and closed the pop hole and then put the other two in. Again Rusty managed to jump to the perch but Freckles kept going too high and dropping back down. My husband who was watching said he thought it had got too dark for Freckles to judge the perch because he had seen her during the day jump to the outside perches with ease.

I put Freckles on the perch and all was settled. Tomorrow I will change tactic and go up earlier and see if I can get them to go in earlier while it is lighter. It’s all trial and error at the moment. I could easily put them on the perch each night and it’s something I used to do in the past but I really want them to learn to do it themselves.

The little girls are finally settled

All the girls are settled for the night

I am sure we will get there in the end. I just need to get the timing right so that they are able to sort it out for themselves. We are nearly there and I am sure it is just a matter of time before they get the hang of it.

I am still picking up lots of feathers. As well as Peaches and Barley’s feathers I am also picking up little girl’s feathers. Pebbles is moulting and I am picking up her fluffy grey feathers. She doesn’t look any different though apart from her head. Her head is a mass of pins and she reminds me of a porcupine.

Freckles is losing her baby feathers and growing in her adult feathers. I am picking up her white feathers but she doesn’t look any different. Rusty isn’t losing feathers yet as she is still growing some of her baby feathers. Her head feathers have filled in since we have had her.

Pebbles quills being white don’t really show up on a photograph but what look like white feathers on her head are actually white pins, she has a spiky head at the moment.

Pebbles has pins on her head

I got distracted from my, moulting, photos by the cuteness of the three little girls.

Three headless little girls

Pebbles has a habit of standing in the food bowl

This is typical of Pebbles.

Peaches has no tail and loads of pins

Barley

Peaches

Barley

Speckles in the background is looking really good.

Peaches

Barley and Peaches

The good thing is that despite looking a mess right now, all these pins mean they will soon be feathered up again. They will soon have lovely feathers to keep them warm in the winter and be back to looking beautiful again.

We decided to reinstate the extra perch across the right hand corner of the shed. Speckles often used to perch here when she was pushed off the main perch and I struggled to remember why we had taken it out. My husband reminded me that I thought it was causing the little girls to have to run the gauntlet of passing underneath it to get in at night, while often Speckles was perched there intimidating them.

We have now decided this is the lesser of two evils and will see if this improves the bedtime situation.

We have reinstated the perch across the right hand side of the shed

This perch is just above the pop hole which is why we removed it. Putting it back has got to be worth a try.

I gave the girls some yogurt this afternoon. It’s the first time the two newer girls have tried yogurt. You might wonder from the photos where the bigger girls are. For some reason completely unknown to me, they were all five of them, scratching in the shavings in the chicken shed. I have no idea what the attraction is in there but it was a good opportunity for the little girls to have four dished to themselves.

At first Rusty and Freckles were reluctant to take the yogurt from the dishes. Instead they pecked at the splashes of yogurt on the patio.

They peck at specks of yogurt on the patio

Rusty and Freckles are unsure about the yogurt from the dishes

Rusty plucks up the courage to try it

Pebbles already knows that she likes yogurt

Rusty gets the hang of it

Freckles pecks yogurt from Rusty’s beak

They decided that they do like yogurt.

And now, back to bedtime. The extra perch did help a bit to give Speckles somewhere to go during the usual jostling for position.

Speckles uses the new perch for a short time

Meanwhile the three little girls were on their perch

After I had taken these photos there was a lot more jostling for position with the bigger girls jumping up and down from the perches and the little girls all back out again during the disturbance.

Sometimes the little girls took their place again and sometimes they came back out again, with me ending up putting them back on their perch once the bigger girls were in place.

A little later Speckles had returned to the back perch

They are all finally settled

It is still a work in progress with me having to help things along. Pebbles sticks it out most of the time so I hope that eventually the other two little girls will stick it out too. With so much jostling for position it’s not surprising that it makes the little girls run back out again.

I need to end up with all the girls sleeping in the chicken shed together so we will have to keep working at it. I am hopeful that we get there eventually.

For the last few nights I have been trying to get the new girls to perch with Pebbles. On the first night I moved the new girls from the cat box to the perch after dark.

The second evening I kept picking them up and putting them on the perch repeatedly as they kept jumping down again. I eventually returned them to the cat box until a little later and then put them on the perch.

The next evening I could tell that they wanted to go the perch but they wouldn’t stay there. Again I kept putting them back on the perch until they eventually stayed there as it was getting dark.

Last night I felt that they really wanted to go to the little perch but the other girls intimidated them and Pebbles also pecked them which was really not helping matters.

I stayed out with them until they were finally perched. The bigger girls do a lot of jumping up and down from their perch and a lot of pecking the girls lower down the order to keep them from perching next to them.

Added to this Pebbles would also peck at the newer girls. A few times the newer girls jumped to the perch themselves, so I can see that they want to perch up, it’s just so difficult to get all the girls settled with the bigger girls jumping up and down. By the time it had got a little darker they were finally all settled.

I decided that we needed to change the perch. It was fine for two little girls who wanted to be close to each other but wasn’t working so well with the current three. We decided to change the little perch for the longer one from the patio area. The extra space would allow the newer two girls to move further away from Pebbles and it has longer brackets which would make jumping up easier and mean we could place it a little higher.

I didn’t want to put it at the same height as the other girl’s perch or they would want to use it too which would make it even more difficult for the little girls.

The original little perch

The new perch with Pebbles trying it out

The three little girls perching together during the day

While three of the bigger girls perched above them

They look so cute together

What I can never understand is that all the girls, bigger and smaller, are happy to perch together during the day, so why the fuss at bedtime!

The three little girls managed to get on the new perch

The three little girls took their place fairly quickly on their perch but then the intimidating started. The big girls pecked each other down and in turn Speckles pecked at the little girls from her corner of the perch.

Almost all of the girls ended up back out again. I know that there is always a lot of coming and going at bedtime, but it gets sorted out in the end, so I decided to withdraw for a little while as I think sometimes my presence can make matters worse.

When I returned all the bigger girls had settled and Rusty had kept her position but Pebbles and Freckles were back out again.

I placed them back on the perch and all the girls stayed in place as the automatic door closed.

The final bedtime positions, Emerald is out of shot on the far right of the back perch

I think it will take a few more nights yet but I think we are getting there. It’s clear that the little girls know where to go, it’s just the jostling for positions that is making it difficult for them to get settled.

I hope over the coming evenings it will get easier because they need to learn to go to bed however much hassle there is. I don’t really know what else I can do but hope that it will settle down eventually. My husband suggested putting in another perch for the bigger girls on the other side of the shed which might be worth a try.

It does seem though, that no matter how much space, they still have to go through this ritual every night. I hope it gets better over the coming evenings.

Yesterday Jackie came back for a flying visit. She had lots of people to fit in so we had a very quick catch up.

I bought her to our house to visit the chooks and to see the new additions. I handed her Rusty so that she could see how tiny she is. Jackie agreed that the little girls are very cute.

Jackie and Rusty

Jackie has settled on the Isle of White and is happy there. She is renting a flat but is going to buy it after her six month rental period expires.

Jackie has a bus pass and there is a really good bus service all over the island and she is enjoying walking and exploring the lovely scenery and the beach. She is five minutes walk from the bus stop and ten minutes walk from the sea and can just about see the sea from her balcony.

Jackie has a small courtyard garden but has decided not to have more chickens as her garden isn’t big enough. She has joined the local library and the W.I. She also has her sister near by so they are able to spend time together exploring new places.

I miss having her nearby but I am glad that she is happy and we will always be friends. We will catch up with each other when we can and I was honoured that she made time for me on a short and busy visit.

Since spending a night on the perch together the three little girls seem to have bonded and the flock is now very much in two groups. This is okay though because both sets are happy together and no one is left on their own.

Every time I look out at them the three little girls are together, sometimes on a perch, sometimes on the wooden table, sometimes in the run and sometimes on the patio area.

I also saw Rusty in a dust bath next to Pebbles but couldn’t get my camera quick enough.

The three little girls are now much more together

The other five are having a communal preening session

Later the three little girls are back on the patio area again

Five girls hang out together on the table

Three little girls at the food dish

These two love having the spinach to themselves

Three little girls on the wooden table early this morning

As well as a tale of two flocks it’s also a tale of two tables. It’s very clearly the metal table for the bigger girls and the wooden table for the little girls. These three seem to have claimed this table, probably because they don’t get a chance at the other one. The metal table is the bigger girl’s chill out area. The wooden one provides an escape from the bigger girls and is becoming their own chill out area.

After a couple of nights perching together, these three have become a tight little group. Pebbles even joined them in the chicken shed, keeping me company, this morning while I cleaned up. It is good to see them hanging out together.

Peaches and Barley were the last two girls to stop laying and start moulting. Whereas the other girls started earlier and had a slow moult, these two, are having a fast moult.

There are piles of feathers in the chicken shed each morning and drifts of feathers all around the run during the day.

Barley started a few weeks before Peaches and has had only one tail feather for a while. Peaches later start seems to have made her moult progress even more quickly and she has no tail feathers now.

Peaches has no tail

Barley looks a complete mess

What a state! The good thing is that the pins are already underneath so it shouldn’t be long before they are back to their former glory.

Meanwhile, last night I decided to try perching the new girls next to Pebbles at bedtime. I waited until it was dark when all the girls were settled and then lifted Freckles and Rusty from the cat box and placed them on the perch next to Pebbles.

They settled and made no attempt to move from the perch.

Freckles gets her balance on the perch

Once again Pebbles appears to looking at her as if wondering what on earth she is up to.

The little girls are settled for the night

I checked back ten minutes later and they were still settled so I locked them up for the night.

I went out this morning before the automatic door opened and when I opened the main door the three little girls were still on their perch. Freckles and Rusty had no problem jumping down from the perch with Pebbles a few seconds behind them.

This is a good start and now that I know that they can perch for the night I just need to teach them to go there by themselves. It may take a few nights but I am sure we will get there soon.

We have now seen the biggest and the smallest slow worm in our garden this summer. They definitely appear to be breeding in our garden which is nice to know.

We saw this baby slow worm on our patio and I put a pound coin next to it to give some idea of it’s size.

Baby slow worm next to a pound coin

Tiny slow worm on our patio

We put it in the undergrowth for safety but a little later it was on the brick wall by the patio.

A little bit later it shows up again

I am sure it was the same one as it was a bit further up the same patio. I wonder why they come out into the open where they will be vulnerable. We are being very careful about checking where we step as we don’t want to step on one.

You can see the other extreme in size on this post “A slow worm path on our “.

It is good see the slow worms, big and small, in our garden.

The new girls have really found their way around now and are getting more adventurous every day.

Yesterday Freckles found her way up to the wooden table by using the little corner perch as a step up.

Yesterday Freckles found that she could get up on to the wooden table

Today all three little girls have been spending time on the wooden table

It is probably a good place to escape the bigger girls.

One by one they flew back down

Rusty and Freckles have also found their way up to the highest perch

Rusty and Freckles on the high perch

Later in the day all three little girls were perched together on the small perch by the metal table. The three girls seem to be hanging out together a bit more now.

I think that now the little girls are getting used to perching I should try them on the perches at bedtime. I think if I could get all three together on the bedtime perch that would help them to bond a bit more.

I have been waiting for the new little girls to discover that they can perch. Yesterday my husband said that he had seen Rusty on one of the newer little perches.

Later in the day I saw Freckles on the bottom rung of the ladder. Today Rusty perched on the little perch by the metal table next to me while I poop and feather picked.

A little later Rusty was perched on the little perch at the end of the run and was joined by Freckles on the bottom rung of the ladder.

I grabbed my camera and managed to get some perching photos.

Rusty finds a perch

Freckles finds the ladder

Freckles tries to work out how to join Rusty on the perch

Rusty seems quite settled

Freckles joins Rusty

Freckles has the perch to herself

Freckles realised that she couldn’t get to the perch from the bottom rung of the ladder. She jumped down and approached the perch from the other side. She managed to jump up but soon caused Rusty to jump down from her momentum. Freckles soon followed Rusty back down.

This is really good news because it gives them somewhere else to escape to when the bigger girls chase them and it means that I can now begin to teach them to perch at night.

I know this would be really easy to do if Speckles would leave them alone. It may take a while though as they will need to feel safe from Speckles attention. I am hoping that she will get bored with them soon.

Tonight I will try putting them on the perch with Pebbles once the other girls have all settled for the night. It would be really good if I could get the three little girls perching together at night.