Carol's Chickens

Butterscotch has been broody for a week now. I get her out of the nest box three or four times a day for a break. She is a docile and easy to handle broody girl. She accepts me taking her out with good grace and not a murmur.

She sits until I move her on then runs off and frantically scratches, takes a quick dust bath, poops and has some food and water, then returns back to the nest box.

While she has a dust bath Barley always helps her. She seems fascinated by Butterscotch and is always by her side while she has a dust bath. Barley scratches and pecks the dirt around Butterscotch and pecks specks of dirt from her feathers.

Butterscotch takes a dust bath

Barley is always on hand to help

Barley with Butterscotch

I then noticed that Barley would peck at the pins on Butterscotch’s head and I would chase her off. Yesterday I noticed that Butterscotch now has a bare patch on her neck.

I worried that Barley may have pulled feathers from her. I dreaded the thought of this happening again.

Butterscotch has a bare patch

Butterscotch is missing feathers

I then realised that Butterscotch has pins on the bare patch. You can just see them on the photo above and below.

Butterscotch has pins

I think what is happening is that Barley is trying to pull these pins. The white pins on black skin really show up and Barley probably thinks she is being helpful trying to remove these specks.

It’s good news that she isn’t pulling feathers but bad news if she pulls out the pins as this would leave Butterscotch with a bare patch.

I really wish her pin feathers would hurry up and open. Luckily she is in the nest box most of the time and I am watching over her when she comes out. The problem is that while she is constantly either laying eggs or broody her feathers are opening at a painfully slow pace. This leave the pins vulnerable to being pulled.

There is nothing more I can do though so I just have to hope enough feathers open to give her some covering. Butterscotch has had the longest and slowest moult of any chicken I have ever come across. I hope she has new feathers soon.

Every time I go in to the run Emerald jumps on the inner child gate. It’s firmly become her habit. Now Toffee has started to do this as well. She doesn’t do it all the time but she is doing it more often recently.

Toffee on the gate with Emerald

What a funny pair of girls they are.

For the past three days Emerald has shared a nest box with Butterscotch despite the other nest box being empty.

Emerald is sharing a nest box with Butterscotch

Butterscotch and Emerald together

They look so cute together. Soon after I took this photo I checked back in on them and I knew that Emerald had just laid because she was standing up next to Butterscotch but no egg was in sight.

I reached underneath Butterscotch and rolled Emerald’s egg out. Butterscotch promptly rolled the egg back underneath herself with her beak. I had to lift Butterscotch to retrieve the egg.

I wonder if Butterscotch has got some kind of telepathic communication going on with Emerald to make her lay her eggs next to her so that she can sit on them. It is interesting and quite funny and sweet.

We have just had a massive amount of work done to our sitting room. I decided to write three posts covering the three weeks and then put them all out together when the sitting room was finished.

What I didn’t think of, is that they are in reverse order. So if you want the whole story instead of scrolling down to the first post you can click on the links below. I have named them – Part one, part two and part three.

Here are links to the posts in order:

Part 1 – Some changes to our sitting room

Part 2 – Week two of the sitting room make over

Part 3 – The sitting room is finished

After the weekend we gave the sitting room it’s finishing touches. We had moved the furniture back in and now we put up the pictures and the mirror. I filled the bureau and gave the dado rail another coat of wood stain. We added new lamp shades and cushions. We also added new window furniture. We got the window furniture from an antique shop so that it is in keeping with the period of the room.

The finished room before we put the pictures up

The finished room the following day when we had put the pictures back up

The room in the evening with the curtains closed

The detail on the skirting

The smart antique window stay

The cornice

The cornice over the chimney breast

A new lamp shade

Another new lamp shade

A new cushion

The new ceiling rose in the finished room

The settee with the new dado rail behind it

Another new cushion

Fireplace

The opposite side of the room

The photos don’t do it justice but the walls and ceiling are all now smooth and the skirting, dado, cornice, ceiling rose and window furniture all add detail.

It was a lot of work for just one room but we feel that it should be the best room in the house and we spend our evenings relaxing in this room so it is worthwhile making it a beautiful room.

We are really pleased with the way this room has turned out.

On Monday our neighbour spent a very long day plastering all the walls except the last wall which didn’t have plaster board and was just being skimmed.

The plaster is drying out

On Tuesday he skimmed the last wall and made a start on putting up the cornice.

Starting on the cornice

He has started with the trickiest bit in the alcove. By Wednesday the cornice was completed.

The cornice is completed

My husband stained the dado rail to blend in with the rest of the woodwork

Then he stained the skirting boards

He was trying to get some of the jobs done to help speed the work up.

By Thursday the walls have had a white undercoat and we have tried a bit of the warmer peach colour which will go under the dado rail. Soft peach will go above the dado rail which is the colour on the radiator.

The walls have had the undercoat applied

The two shades of paint

The white line between the two shades of colour is where the dado rail will go.

The walls have now had the first coat of colour

Our neighbour needed to leave early today to take his daughter to the airport. My husband stepped in with painting the walls to help speed up the work.

On Friday our neighbour completed putting on the skirting and the dado rail. He had to leave early again today to attend a funeral but is returning in the morning. Meanwhile my husband continued with filling and painting.

The plain block skirting

A moulding on top of the skirting adds detail and transforms it

The dado rail is added

The ceiling rose is up.

Decorative ceiling rose

On Saturday the ceiling light is put back up.

The ceiling light is back up in the centre of the new rose

Our neighbour left at one o’clock once he had done all the bits we needed help with. He replaced the sockets and helped my husband put back the tricky curtain track.

We then cleaned up the floor together and I painted the ceiling rose and the inside of the radiator while my husband had given the outside of the radiator it’s second coat. We went round the room tweaking the final details.

We then put the curtains back up and moved the furniture back in. Tomorrow we will add the details and put up the pictures.

I will do a final post of the end result over the next few days.

We decided to go straight from having our dining room floor laid to making the changes we wanted in our sitting room. It seemed to make sense to have our neighbour continue more or less straight away with the works for us rather than return at a later date.

Throughout the entire house all the walls and ceilings are smoothly plastered and painted except in the sitting room. The sitting room has plain paper on the walls and textured paper on the ceiling.

We have painted over the paper many times. We have never liked it being papered as in places there are bubbles, lumps and bumps, joins coming up and the textured paper on the ceiling is difficult to paint and goes patchy. We know that the reason it is papered is probably to hide a multitude of sins and we have never wanted to do the work involved in getting the paper off and putting the plaster right afterwards.

We are aware that the paper will probably pull off lumps of plaster and there will be a lot of making good needed. Also the plaster above the fire place has blown and the chimney breast moves when pressed. We think it’s probably the paper and paint holding the plaster on.

This is why we have decided to employ someone to do the work for us. We would also like to put the room back to how it would have been originally with a dado rail and cornice. We would then paint beneath the dado rail in a slightly darker colour.

We are also going to put a moulded strip of wood on top of the square skirting boards to give it a bit of shape and are having a larger, more decorative ceiling rose put up.

We feel these additions will make the sitting room look more special.

As usual the photos don’t really show the imperfections but I thought that I would do before and after photos anyway.

The sitting room before work begins

The fireplace

The opposite wall

A corner of the room

We are hoping the work will start within the next few weeks and are prepared for a lot of upheaval.

Work begins

The day before the work was due to start we emptied the sitting room. As it’s having a new ceiling everything had be taken out. We put as much as we could in our dining room and some bits of furniture upstairs in the spare bedrooms.

The empty room

The plaster board is fixed to the ceiling

On the first day our workforce (our next door neighbour, his brother and his nephew) got the plaster board up ready to start plastering the ceiling on the following day.

On the second day our neighbour and his brother plastered the ceiling. On the third day they started stripping the walls. They took the old, loose, plaster from the chimney breast and exposed the hundred year old brick work. We toyed with the idea of leaving it as a feature but it would look rustic as the pointing was never meant to be seen and therefore quite scruffy.

The original brick chimney breast

As we are trying to make this room look a bit more grand we decided rustic wasn’t in keeping with the look we are trying to achieve.

The paper is now stripped from this wall

This wall is quite solid and they are just going to skim this. The other walls are having plaster board and then new plaster as they are in bad condition.

The brickwork is now under plaster board and the ceiling has had it’s first coat of white paint.

The ceiling will need three coats of white paint. We are now at the end of day four and our neighbour is away at a wedding tomorrow so work will continue next week. I will continue next weeks work in my next post.

This morning when I checked the nest boxes Emerald was sharing with broody Butterscotch. Toffee and Barley had already laid and the other big nest box was empty.

Emerald shares a nest box with Butterscotch

Emerald laid her egg and Butterscotch rolled it underneath herself. I wonder if Butterscotch is somehow communicating that she needs the eggs.

I lifted Butterscotch and retrieved the egg. We have decided to store the little, wine box, nest boxes away for now. We will keep them in case we ever need them in future but at the moment two big nest boxes are enough and the little ones are not being used.

The girls seem more happy to share these days. It is quite cute to see them sharing.

I found a huge dandelion in the garden today that had somehow hidden itself until fully grown. I knew the girls would love this.

Emerald now jumps on the inner, child gate, every time I go in the run.

This trick is now firmly a habit

I swing the gate open with Emerald on it and let her jump down when she is ready.

Butterscotch isn’t in the dandelion photos because she has gone broody again. She usually goes three weeks between going broody but this time went just over a month which is her longest yet.

Butterscotch is broody again

A dandelion for the girls

They love dandelions

They have so much fun with a dandelion and when I go back later there will be no trace of it. I think it’s their favourite green stuff of all.

Last night I took a photo of the bedtime line up.

The current bedtime line up

Since Honey and Topaz have gone Speckles and Butterscotch have paired up. Speckles often used to dust bath with Honey and seemed to have a bit of an alliance with her. Speckles now seems to have formed an alliance with Butterscotch.

I have seen Speckles and Butterscotch dust bathing together almost on top of one another and they are often perched together. It is quite sweet to see this little friendship forming. Peaches and Barley are as inseparable as ever and Toffee and Emerald don’t much bother with each other.

Butterscotch easily shows she is top girl without any fuss. Toffee often has a go at Emerald to keep her below her and Emerald passes it down by then having a go at Speckles. The rest of the girls don’t bother much and seem to accept their place without any fuss.

The flock seem very settled now and I am enjoying the good feeling of the girls getting along together without any fuss.

Butterscotch has also gone the longest stretch between going broody which I am also enjoying but I don’t know how long it will last. She has been laying for just over a month now. Maybe this is to do with her getting her feathers in.

I have just been looking at my egg records and Toffee is laying the best with five or six eggs a week followed by Emerald and Butterscotch in joint second place with four or five eggs a week. Peaches is next with three or four eggs a week and Barley and Speckles are in joint place with two eggs a week. This is giving us a total of between twenty one and twenty four eggs a week.

I am surprised at how well the game girls (Toffee and Emerald) are laying. I am really enjoying the abundance of eggs at the moment and enjoying the harmony in my flock.