Carol's Chickens

Since all the girls have been moulting they have regrown their feathers and are looking better than they have looked all summer.

Due to the feather plucking habit Pepper and Dotty both had bare bottoms. Bluebell had a bare neck and had lost her head crest. Poor Dotty looked the worse with a bare neck and a completely bare head as well as a partly bare bottom and the little girls also had bare necks and partly bare heads.

I have always felt that the stress of losing Treacle (top hen) back in February was the trigger for this behaviour and then it became a habit they enjoyed and nothing I tried stopped them doing it.

They seem to enjoy pulling feathers from each other as part of the dust bathing ritual and also as part of the bedtime ritual.

Pepper as top hen was the only one not to have her neck or head plucked but instead Dotty and Bluebell would sneak up behind her and pluck her bottom so she always had the most bare bottom. Pepper would pluck Bluebell’s neck but when cuddling up to Dotty in the evening on the coop roof she would pluck Dotty’s neck and head. These two have always been really close and it seemed to have become a bonding process between them.

I added the bantys at the end of April in the hope that more flock members might improve the situation as I had tried everything else. The little girls soon got their necks plucked as part of the acceptance ritual.

It didn’t bother the girls but it bothered me as it spoiled their appearance. Then came the moult and at last new feathers. I really hoped that they wouldn’t pull them again. Pepper had pin feathers coming in on her bottom. Bluebell got her crest back. Best of all Dotty got her head feathers back (much improving her looks) and her neck feathers started to come through. The bantys also looked smart again with their neck feathers growing back and their lovely black head feathers regrowing.

I hoped and hoped they wouldn’t pluck each other again. I wasn’t sure if Bluebells neck feathers had started to regrow and been pulled out again as there was never a noticeable change in her neck. Her missing neck feathers have never been as obvious as the other girls and they seem to have stayed like that. I’m not sure if they have been pulled again as soon as they started to emerge.

I then realised that Peppers bottom was still bare so the pin feathers that had started to come through must have been pulled out again. The next thing I noticed was that Dotty’s neck was being plucked again as below the pin feathers coming in on her neck are fluffy under feathers where some of the outer neck feathers have disappeared.

After that I noticed that Amber had started to lose her neck feathers again and yet Honey still has hers. Amber is the more feisty of the two little girls and Honey is firmly bottom hen. I have caught Bluebell pulling feathers from Amber’s neck and think it’s part of the bullying that Bluebell does to show Amber that she is below her in the pecking order.

Before we had the bantys Bluebell was bottom hen and has bullied the bantys, especially Amber, to show them that they are firmly below her. She doesn’t want to be bottom hen any more.

Bluebell is still missing neck feathers

Just below her wattle Bluebell is missing neck feathers. Because of her variable colouring it doesn’t really show too much and she is getting her crest back just behind her comb.

Bluebell’s missing neck feathers

This photo shows a little more clearly the missing feathers in a V shape just below her wattle. Luckily it doesn’t spoil her appearance because it doesn’t show up much. This is why it’s tricky to know if they started coming back in or not.

Honey still has her neck feathers

Maybe there is an advantage to being bottom hen as Honey hasn’t had any feathers plucked again so far. The white flecks in her black collar are the remaining bits of the keratin sheaf on the new quills. At first the little girls were a mass of these white flecks but they are gradually getting rubbed off.

Amber’s neck feathers have been freshly plucked

Amber’s neck feathers have been plucked just below her black collar.

Dotty has her fluffy bottom back again

Bluebell never lost her fluffy bottom. It is so lovely to see Dotty with a fluffy bottom again and her tail regrowing.

Pepper still has a bare patch on her bottom

These are the only feathers that Pepper has ever had missing so it’s not too bad but I do wonder if it’s a bit draughty  in winter though.

Overall if they end up missing neck feathers but don’t get their heads plucked again I will be happy with that. They look a lot better than they did in summer.

Amber on the log

The bantys can often be found on this log, it’s a favourite spot

This is the look that says that Amber is about to jump into the apple tree

Amber is in the tree

Dotty decides she must join Amber in the tree causing Amber to jump down

Dotty’s neck feathers have been plucked again

This shows where Dotty’s feathers have been plucked, lower down than before.

Dotty joins Pepper on the big perch

Now it’s the little girls turn on the big perch

Honey has lost the peacock like spot from her back since the moult. Honey is on the left and Amber on the right. I can only tell them apart now as I know them so well. They are slightly different in shape (have different personalities) and have slightly different combs as Amber has a peck out of hers from the integration days.

I don’t think the feather pulling problem is ever going to go away completely but if it gets no worse than this then it is an improvement. Only time will tell.

My husband swept up the leaves from the garden and put them in a bin sack for the girls. A few days ago we tipped them in a heap in the run.

A pile of leaves

The girls soon gathered round the leaves and started to scratch in them. They were having a great time and I don’t know what they find in those leaves but they didn’t even bother with the apple I put in that afternoon. They spent all day scratching in the leaves and the next day they went straight back to them. By the next day they had scattered them over the entire run.

The leaves are now scattered

The leaves have kept the girls occupied for days.

After moving the furniture around in the run yesterday, I wondered what the girls would make of the little coop having changed position. It’s against the back wall now with the ramp facing in a different direction towards the side wall. I keep the ramp facing a wall  to keep the coop dark as chickens prefer somewhere fairly dark to lay their eggs.

Pepper and Bluebell were both due to lay today and Pepper checked out the coop first.

Pepper checks out the little coop in its new position

The ramp still looks the same

Does it look the same inside?

It does look the same inside

Should I go inside?

Pepper seemed unsure for now but when I checked back half an hour later her egg was in the little coop so it seems she approves.

I checked again a bit later and Bluebell’s egg was also in the little coop so it seems that moving the coop hasn’t caused them any upset.

The new arrangement makes it much easier for me to sweep around the coop and the storage cabinet so I am quite pleased with it.

Pepper and Bluebell are laying every other day on average so we are still getting enough eggs to keep us going. This isn’t bad considering it’s their second winter and they have all been moulting.

Dotty hasn’t laid for a month now but had a heavy moult. She is now looking quite good though. The little girls haven’t laid for two months now. We have only ever once had two days in a row with no eggs at all so that’s pretty good I think and the girls are through the worst of the moult.

I decided to to move the position of the storage cabinet which holds all the things needed for my chickens. It was on the back boundary of the covered area of the chicken enclosure which is a big shed and made up of rounded logs. This means the cabinet doesn’t fit flush and every now and then we need to empty it to pull it out and clean behind it.

I thought if I moved it opposite the coop it would be against a flat fence and fit flush. This would mean I would never need to pull it out to clean behind it and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. The little coop that provides an extra nest box would be switched from the position the store cabinet will now be in to the position the store cabinet was in before. This means the footprint hasn’t changed and the floor space remains the same.

The girls like to jump back and forth from the coop roof to the storage cabinet during their bedtime routine so I wondered what they would make of the change.

I went in at dusk to see how they were getting on. As usual the little girls had taken themselves to bed in the coop and the big girls were on the coop roof. They soon started the game of jumping across from the coop roof to the storage cabinet and back again. At one point Dotty jumped from the coop roof to my back then the storage cabinet, using me as a stepping stone and then jumping back to the coop roof.

Once they were all back on the coop roof and the automatic door closer started to shut, I decided to end their fun and lift them down one by one and put them to bed.

Moving the storage cabinet doesn’t seem to have phased them at all from their bedtime game.

Changing the furniture around

The little coop is now on the end wall where the cabinet was.

The storage cabinets new position

Three girls on the storage cabinet

This photo shows Pepper has a huge bedtime crop and I find it amusing that Bluebell is looking down as if the ground may have changed position too.

The changing position of the cabinet doesn’t seem to have bothered them at all. It will be interesting tomorrow to see what they make of the little coop having moved too.

I have read that people give an occasional banana to their girls especially while moulting. I have tried mine with banana in the past and they wouldn’t eat it. They tested it with a few pecks and at the end of the day I removed it. I had a spare banana so decided to try mashing it into their pellet mash.

They loved it and ate every bit of it. I divided it into two dishes and there was much dancing around from dish to dish.

Mash with banana

Musical dishes

When the music stops …

Dotty is having this dish

I think I could get away with putting anything in their mash yet it’s only the same old pellets they have every day mashed with water. It must be the texture that they like so much. It wasn’t long before both dishes were empty.

The little girls go into the coop on their own every day now. The big girls have done so on a few of the colder days but most days they go to the coop roof and wait for me to lift them down and put them in. I am still hopeful that when we get the cold weather, which has been forecast to hit us soon, they will start to go in on their own.

When I lift Pepper down she now feels silky soft. All the prickly pin feathers have opened into silky new feathers.

When I lift Bluebell down she feels the same as she always has. She seems to have only lost a few feathers at a time and never looked noticeably different.

When I lift Dotty down she is still very prickly but it is getting a bit better. Dotty is a month younger than Pepper and starting to lay her eggs quite a bit later. I wonder if this is why she is also moulting later than Pepper.

Pepper looks almost fully feathered

Pepper never lost her tail like Dotty and in parts it still looks a little ragged. She still has some feathers to come in on her bottom and a few under feathers showing on her wings but she is fluffy and soft to the touch.

Bluebell never really looked any different

Bluebell would have an occasional loose feather and I have picked up some of her tail feathers from the run but she never looked different.

Dotty is looking better than she did apart from having no tail

The banty’s are looking quite good

All the photos above were taken yesterday.

Having their bedtime corn

These photos were taken today before bedtime. I think Dotty is looking much better.

The little girl’s have their black collar back again

This is Honey but both little girls are looking quite smart again.

Dotty’s tail feathers are growing

My husband commented that Dotty’s tail is growing and I think this photo shows it is. Dotty is on her way to being beautiful again.

This morning when I went into the chickens poor Dotty had no tail at all. When I opened the coop to do my morning clean up there was her last tail feather under the perch that she sleeps on. After hanging on for two weeks the last feather has finally fallen out.

She looks so strange with no tail at all. It reminds me of how she looked when we first had her at two months old and she wasn’t fully feathered, except that she is now a bigger version of that Dotty.

Dotty now has no tail at all

Poor sweet Dotty

It is so strange seeing Dotty like this. Some how the little girls look okay without tails but Dotty looks very odd. Pepper and Bluebell haven’t lost their tails so Dotty really stands out. I do hope it grows back soon.

Poor Dotty is having a really hard moult. At first I felt the moult wasn’t having much effect on the girls but that was before Dotty suddenly lost loads of feathers at once including her tail. She looks much worse than the other girls and isn’t her usual self. She seems to have lost her confidence.

Usually when I dig for worms Dotty would get the lions share because she was so much faster than the other girls. Now when I dig for worms Dotty doesn’t get any as she hangs back with the bantys and is slow. Just when she needs them most she is missing out.

She is last to get to me when I have treats although once she gets there she gets stuck in but sometimes when I give the late afternoon corn she comes to me first before joining the others.

She was always jumping on my back but now looks like she wants to, her neck twisting to judge a jump, but doesn’t always seem to have the confidence. To help her out I stand next to her when she is on the coop roof and she steps across to me then back to the coop roof when she is ready. It’s heart warming that she wants that contact but also pulls at my heart strings that it’s not so easy and confidant as usual.

This was Dotty two weeks ago when she looked shabby but still had a tail.

Dotty still had a tail

Two days later her tail fell out leaving one remaining small feather. Two weeks later she is still hanging on to that last tail feather.

Dotty still has one remaining tail feather

The cold weather is changing the bedtime routine but again Dotty is reacting differently from the other girls. The bantys have been going in the coop before the automatic door closes for a couple of weeks now.

The colder dusk temperatures seem to have sparked a change in Pepper and Bluebell and they have now gone in the coop themselves for the last three nights.

Poor Dotty is alone on the coop roof at dusk waiting for me to lift her down and put her in. I feel the reason for this is, because she isn’t herself at the the moment, she goes up to the coop roof first and whereas the other girls were going to the coop roof but staying alert, she hunkers down into a snoozing position.

Now it’s turned colder Pepper and Bluebell do the pecking round the coop door ritual then go in. By now it’s too dark for Dotty to join them so she waits for me. I go in at dusk and as I approach the coop I talk gently so she knows it’s me and then stand next to the coop. Dotty shuffles over towards me as if she wants me to lift her down.

I do this as gently as I can but she squeaks and feels like a hedgehog and I know it must be uncomfortable for her. If only she would go in herself, I wouldn’t have to lift her down. Yet I feel that until she gets through the moult and is herself again she won’t go in herself. She seems to want me to put her in.

I am so looking forward to Dotty getting her feathers back and regaining her confidence. It will be so good to see her back to her normal self again.

I feel so sorry for Dotty as she is having the worst moult of all my girls. Dotty is looking more ragged and tatty by the minute and when I pick her up to put her in the coop at night she is as prickly as a hedgehog because of her new feathers coming through. I handle her as gently as I can and wonder why she doesn’t go in herself so that she doesn’t need to be picked up.

A very ragged Dotty looking very sorry for herself

Dotty’s loose chest feathers

Up until now the moult didn’t seem to be having much effect on the girls but now poor Dotty is not quite her usual self. She is grumpy with the bantys and is pecking at them if they get near her in much the same way as Bluebell does, whereas usually Dotty is very tolerant with them.

When I went to the store cabinet for their late afternoon corn she didn’t jump to the coop roof like she usually does. She is usually first to the coop roof then the cabinet and often has her beak inside the cabinet door as I get the corn out. She still rushed to the corn but couldn’t seem to be bothered with the usual jumping. I am not worried about her as she is eating well and her comb is red it’s just that she doesn’t have her usual bounce.

I am giving extra protein to help the girls through the moult and I am sure she will feel much better when her feathers are through.

The bantys are now going into the coop at bedtime. The big girls still go to coop roof but it’s as if they are ready for me to put them in. If Bluebell is on the storage cabinet she will jump to the coop roof so that I can lift her down. Dotty sidles across close to me to be lifted down and Pepper sometimes goes in on her own and sometimes looks like she is going in then changes her mind and jumps to the coop roof for me to lift her down. It’s as if the big girl’s want me to lift them from the coop roof and I wonder if this has now become a habit or if they will start to go in on their own as the weather gets colder.

As the little girls have started going in on their own I am still hopeful but only time will tell.

This morning I picked up lots of feathers from the coop once more but when I went back into the run mid morning I picked up five long tail feathers. It’s Dotty’s turn to lose her tail and she only had a couple of tail feathers remaining and looked quite ridiculous.

The bantys had new tail feathers growing in behind the tail feathers that fell out but Dotty doesn’t. I had read that even chickens of the same breed can moult in quite a different pattern and this is certainly true of Pepper and Dotty. When I pick up Pepper, I can feel the pin feathers coming through but there are no obvious missing feathers and she doesn’t appear to have lost any tail feathers. Maybe Pepper will lose her tail later.

Dotty in comparison is noticeably losing feathers and her tail has fallen out as quickly as the bantys did.

For comparison this is Pepper who still has her tail

Dotty only has a few tail feathers left

What a sorry sight Dotty is and when I went back in at lunch time she had only one remaining tail feather, just like Honey before her.

Dotty now has only one tail feather left

You can see Amber in the background with her tail already regrowing whereas Dotty just has fluffy feathers.

Poor Dotty, without her tail, she has an oven ready chicken shape. It’s amazing what a difference their tail makes to their shape. I do hope it grows back soon.