Carol's Chickens

Last year I read about people giving their girls pumpkins and thought it looked fun. It keeps the girls occupied and they are full of goodness for them. I had seen piles of pumpkins at half price after Halloween on previous years and decided to wait to get a bargain as they seemed more expensive than usual.

I was so disappointed when after Halloween there wasn’t a pumpkin to be found anywhere. I even asked in one of the supermarkets and was told that they now only stock what they know they will sell so that there are none left over. I was determined not to make that mistake again.

This year I have been waiting for the pumpkins to appear in the shops and yesterday was the first time I saw them. They were on offer:  two large ones for £3.00. I thought this was a bargain and bought two for the girls. They will not miss out this year!

Pumpkins for the girls

We are snowed under with work at the moment but when I get a bit of time at the weekend I will give the girls their first chunk of pumpkin and be ready with my camera. Watch this space!

My girls have all been in the full swing of their first moult. Their eggs slowed down but with moulting and shorter daylight hours, what surprised me was that they actually continued to lay. The bantys who are in full moult mode have given up completely and I don’t blame them at all. They haven’t laid for three weeks now and before that only one egg every two or three weeks.

Pepper was laying about once a week during her moult but now her moult appears to have come to an end she is laying every other day. Dotty had taken to missing a couple of days between laying and is now on three days in a row with one missed in between. Bluebell, our egg machine, lays about five days in a row instead of up to two months in a row.

An interesting thing though is the difference in the size of the eggs. The first two in a row by Dotty produced a smaller egg than usual. I am sure this is all to do with moulting and any eggs are an unexpected bonus so I am certainly not complaining but like to log everything for future reference.

Dotty’s smaller egg

Bluebell’s egg is on the left, Pepper’s egg is the middle and Dotty’s egg is on the right.

I am amazed that the girls are still laying as many eggs are they are but I am interested how the process of moulting is effecting them. I am really pleased that they still look happy and healthy and are still laying eggs as this means it is not upsetting them too much and at the end of the day as long as they are happy then I am happy.

As I mentioned in my last post I managed to get a truly horrible photograph of Bluebell yesterday. It’s the most horrible chicken photo I have taken yet and I was just about to delete it when something stopped me. I thought it was so bad that it needed to be shared. I sent it to my two chicken keeping friends and my former chicken keeper son. With their blessing I am quoting their reaction after the alien Bluebell photo.

The most horrible photo of Bluebell ever, I was focusing on Pepper and didn’t notice Bluebell shaking her head

Lisa said – LOL that is horrible but so cool! It’s weird how the beak and wattles are in focus, but the rest of her head and neck isn’t.

Steve said – Her head doesn’t even look like a head!

Jackie said – It is 6.30 am and I have just seen this and just laughed so much.. I think it is great after all it is nearly Halloween, do you think she is practising?

Lisa said – Haahahaa I think it’s good you didn’t delete it, as you’ve made a reference in your blog I think it would be funny to put it in at the end ha ha!

The reactions to this photo made me decide it must be shared. I think it’s weird how her head seems to be the wrong way round with her beak pointing upwards and her closed eye adds to the spooky look. I don’t suppose I could get another shot like this if I tried!

Anyone else who wants to join in with a reaction to this photo, please leave a comment, I would love to know what others think.

The girls have been moulting for less than two weeks yet it seems much longer. I have got used to picking up loads of feathers from the coop each morning but it is now slowing down. The bantys started two days later than the dominiques and now there are only banty feathers in the coop in the mornings so I think it is coming to it’s end.

It is my first experience of moulting so I had no idea what to expect. Having seen photos on other blogs of girls in moult I feel I have got off lightly. I have seen photos of girls with no tails and in various states of undress. Some are almost oven ready and some have lot’s of bare patches and look quite scary in their intermediate states.

Maybe it’s partly because I have had a summer of bare patches on bottoms and necks and in Dotty’s case head (due to the feather plucking problem),  it doesn’t seem so bad. My girls have just looked a bit ragged and shabby through the moult but have at the same time regained feathers they didn’t have so it’s actually seemed like an improvement to me.

The other thing I have noticed is that their combs are lovely and red and I get two eggs from the three big girls most days (I don’t count the little girls who were never good at egg laying and now go three weeks between eggs, which is fine by me), so I feel they are coping fine with this and I feel quite blessed.

Since the bantys started laying in May, I have had only two five egg days, but I have also in that time, had only one no egg day. I think that’s pretty amazing! Go girls!

I have read about girls struggling with the moult but it seems to be the more elderly hens and I am pleased that mine seem to be breezing through with no signs of stress at all. I thought I would take some photos of the girls today to illustrate this but they were not cooperating. I had many photos of backs of heads, bottoms or just blurred images, not to mention one totally alien shot of Bluebell shaking her head and looking like something from a horror film!

The following photos are the best I managed to get. Film stars these girls are not unless you count the afore mention horror film!

Dotty’s red comb and wattles

Dotty’s comb and wattles are bright red, more so than the photos shows (fading rainy day light) and she has feathers on her head after being bald all summer, hurrah! Please may she keep them. My odd looking Dotty is finding some beauty to match her sweet nature after being the sweet ugly duckling all summer long.

Bluebell’s comb

Bluebell has always had a bright red floppy comb and seems unaffected by any moulting process. I have picked up only the odd feather from her and she only has a few slightly ragged tail feathers. She also continues to lay her eggs most days.

Pepper’s shabby chic

Pepper has the most shabby tail feathers but no bald patches and her comb and wattles are quite different from Dotty’s (as they always have been) but remain a good colour.

Bluebell

Bluebell’s comb from the other side. A floppy comb is different from each side so I always to try get a shot from each side.

Pepper’s comb

Pepper has always been the most tricky to photograph and this was the only face on shot I could get.

Dotty

Here is my dear Dotty again, just how great is it to see head feathers! Sorry to go on but I have felt so sorry for my ugly duckling all summer. She is also the most attached to me, jumping on me at every chance she gets, which is quite endearing and she always has comedy feet! Look how long her middle toes are.

Scruffy little girls

The little girls do look quite scruffy but they did have completely bare heads and now it’s patchy so although scruffy it is also an improvement.

I am really pleased with how these girls are progressing through their first moult and they continue to entertain me and fill my heart with love for them and that’s not even to mention their lovely eggs. I haven’t bought a single egg since they started laying even with the winter slow down. They still lay as many eggs as we can eat and occasionally still a few to give to our neighbours.

Just got to love these girls!

This morning when I opened the coop it looked as if one of the bantys had exploded. I couldn’t believe the amount of feathers and yet the little girls don’t look any different. They don’t even look ragged and tatty like the big girls.

Every time I went in to the girls I picked up a load more feathers from the run.

The bantys favourite place to sit

Several times I cleared this log that the bantys like to sit on. I can now see why people say they go into the run and for a few seconds think a predator may have attacked one of their girls. This is my first experience of a proper moult and I am now better prepared to know what to expect.

Meanwhile Pepper still has the sudocrem on her bottom but Dotty has completely preened it off of her bottom.

Bottoms with and without sudocrem

Bluebells fluffy bottom

This photo illustrates something that I have mentioned before. Although Pepper and Dotty are the same breed and came from the same farm they look quite different (the farm had two breeding trios and I always felt these two may have come from different parents), Pepper’s tail is always quite horizontal and curves downwards almost like a cockerels whereas Dotty’s tail curves upwards. Bluebell’s tail is straight up and she still has a fluffy bottom.

I think the bantys head feathers are also growing back in. Although they still have patches of bare skin showing they are speckled rather than complete round bare patches.

Honey

Amber

My ideal scenario is that they moult, they regrow their feathers, with winter coming they stop plucking, and they stay beautifully fully feathered. In reality this probably won’t happen and they will continue to pluck them back out again, I can but hope.

The last two mornings when I have opened up the coop to clean I found a mass of soft little orange banty feathers as well as dominique feathers. The dominique feathers are on their side of the coop and the bantys feathers are in and under the nest box. They sleep perched on the edge of the nest box and it seems they have joined in the moult. The odd thing is that they don’t look any different but like Pepper and Dotty as the bantys move around the odd feather will flutter from them.

It seems that the pure breeds have a sudden moult whereas Bluebell, a hybrid, doesn’t appear to be moulting.

I am giving them extra protein with a bit of poultry spice mixed in. This is a powder which says it acts as a nutritional supplement to help birds get quickly over the moult. I thought they could do with any help they can get.

Pepper has pin feathers coming in on her bottom and Dotty has them on her neck. I noticed Pepper had a pinprick sized red spot on her bottom and then I noticed Dotty trying to peck at the pin feathers. I decided to try sudocrem which is an antiseptic healing cream that I have read of other chicken keepers using. It is supposed to deter the pecking.

Pepper has pin feathers on her bottom

We decided to do both Pepper and Dotty’s bottom and Dotty’s neck. I really want the girls to keep their feathers. I picked up and held the girls while my husband rubbed the cream on.

Pepper has sudocrem on her bottom

Pepper didn’t seem at all bothered by this but Dotty didn’t like it all. She immediately started to preen it off.

Dotty removing the cream

What a sorry sight

I felt so sorry for Dotty. She worked so hard to get rid of the cream and had to break off to go and lay her egg, shouted very loudly to let me know she had laid, then returned to frantically preening the cream off. It wasn’t long before she had completely removed it from her bottom.

This made it a waste of time and I felt a bit concerned that she may have swallowed some of the cream. The only good thing is, that she can’t remove it from her neck and it may protect her neck and hopefully it will protect Pepper’s bottom.

I was in our local “pets at home” store yesterday and talked to the vet who saw Treacle when she was unwell. I told him about the feather plucking and he agreed that losing Treacle was probably the trigger. He said it has now become a behavioural problem.

I told him that they do it when dust bathing and roosting together and that it looks like they are grooming each other and enjoying it. He said they probably do enjoy it and that’s why it’s such a hard habit to break. He said they use it as a form of bonding. He also said I could just leave them to it as it won’t hurt them. I said it frustrates me because it spoils their looks. He then said the one glimmer of hope is that with winter coming and the colder weather they may stop doing this.

I really hope this is the case but I won’t be holding my breath. They did stop briefly during our bit of a heat wave when it was too hot to sit together and I am putting them in the coop as the automatic door closes (about 7.00 pm at the moment) so that they don’t sit on the high perch together before bedtime.

Amber has put herself to bed for most of the last week and I am sure as soon as the weather cools the others will too. It’s unusually warm at the moment which is why I think they are staying out later this year.

Last year September was cold and they started going in half way through September but this year it’s much warmer.

I am also hoping that now the bantys have joined in with the moult that they may get their plucked feathers back. I would so love to have a fully feathered flock again.

Last night we had really heavy rain for the first time since we put the winter cover over the run. I was really pleased to find the run had stayed dry and there was only one spot on the plastic cover that had pooled a little. My husband found another wooden baton in the shed and put it across under the plastic where it had sagged. This pushed the plastic up quite taut and the water ran off. I think this will now be good enough to withstand any heavy rain.

Pepper and Dotty are continuing to moult with handfuls of feathers each morning in the coop and feathers in the dust bath. Pepper has pin feathers coming through on her bottom and Dotty’s head is just about fully feathered again and some pin feathers are coming in on her neck. It is so nice to see feathers on her head again and I really hope she keeps them this time.

My husband needed some parsley and thinking of the girls bought it in a pot so that the girls could have what was left. I dug over the run for the girls then dug the pot into the ground.

The girls get stuck into the parsley

Dotty’s head feathers are regrowing

Just the parsley stems left

About ten minutes later the parsley had all gone. I emptied the pot out for the girls to scratch through. When I went back later the root ball had disappeared leaving just the scattered stems for me to pick up.

Amber has just laid her first egg in three weeks. She always struggles to lay her eggs and I knew she was about to lay as she looked quite unwell. She was standing with her tail down and her eyes closing. If I hadn’t seen this with Amber many times before I would have thought that I was going to lose her. It was with relief  that I saw her go into the coop.

I returned to check on her a little later and sure enough there was a little egg in the nest box.

After laying her egg Amber was back to her normal self as usual and had found a worm. The other girls were all chasing her and trying to take it from her. Amber ran at speed round the run several times before Dotty managed to steal her prize from her. There wasn’t much wrong with Amber now.

Amber’s egg on the right is slightly smaller than Honey’s egg

Dotty’s egg is on the left for comparison, Honey’s in the middle and Amber’s on the right. It doesn’t show very clearly in the photo but Amber’s eggs are slightly smaller and paler than Honey’s.

Amber seems to have struggled with egg laying from the start. She laid her first two eggs the size of a marble with no yolk. She then laid a couple of soft shelled eggs. I gave the girls limestone flour to strengthen the shells and she then laid normal eggs but in the run. She finally got the hang of it but always looked ill just before laying and fine again afterwards.

I feel sad to think that she struggles with the egg laying process because it should be a natural process for a chicken. I was quite pleased that she hadn’t laid for three weeks as she seemed happier and looked better.

I don’t know what you can do when a chicken looks ill before laying each time. If it was an occasional struggle I would give her a bath but I would be giving her baths all the time. I wonder if there is something not quite right inside her and worry that she may not live to a ripe old age. There again she could prove me wrong and it may be just the way she is. If so I feel sorry for her as it’s a shame for her to not look well before each egg but I can only hope it gets better in time. Amber is about one year old and has been laying for five months now.

She started laying about every three days then decreased to about once a week. Recently she then went two weeks between and then three weeks between. I don’t mind her laying less if it makes her feel better.

Honey has never had a problem laying her eggs and was laying about every other day but hasn’t laid for a week now. I do hope Amber eventually finds it gets easier to lay her eggs.

I’ve found it a little difficult up until now to tell if the girls were moulting because of the feathers plucked out and some feathers regrowing. Over the last few days I have seen the difference when they really are moulting.

The last two mornings when I have gone through the gate to the girls, Dotty has jumped on my back as usual then on to the coop roof. With her movement each morning a long tail feather drifted from her to the ground.

I opened up the coop to do my morning  pick up (yesterday and today) and found about twenty or more dominique feathers in the pine shavings. As I have read on other chicken blogs it looked like a pillow fight had taken place.

During the day there were more feathers in the run and sometimes when Dotty would shake herself a few more drifted from her.

I can also see pin feathers coming in on their bottoms and on Dotty’s neck.

Again I have my own theory of another difference between hybrids and pure breeds. Treacle and Bluebell (hybrids) both had a baby molt and lost their tail before they matured to lay eggs. Their tails then grew back very quickly. Pepper and Dotty (pure breeds) didn’t lose their tails.

A year later Bluebell doesn’t appear to be molting and her tail still looks quite good but Pepper and Dotty’s tails look ragged and tatty. I think this is why they are molting to replace their tattered feathers whereas Bluebell doesn’t need to do this at the moment. It will be interesting to see what happens to Bluebell next year.

Ragged Dotty

I think I am noticing more feathers falling form Dotty because she is losing feathers from under her wings but Pepper’s tail is more ragged than Dotty’s.

Pepper’s ragged tail

Bluebell still looks quite pristine

Bluebell’s tail feathers don’t look bad

It would be lovely to see the girls with new feathers but I just hope they don’t pull them out again.

The other difference is the fall off of eggs. I know it’s a double thing of moulting and shorter days but the egg fall has also been different between the girls.

Pepper is laying one egg a week and Dotty is laying about four eggs a week (Dotty always has laid more than Pepper). Bluebell is still laying between five and six eggs a week. Bluebell in summer would take one day off in about two months. That dropped to one day off a month and now to one day off a week. She is still a prolific egg layer. Again it’s because she is a hybrid but probably also because she isn’t moulting.

The bantys never were so good at the egg laying. Honey has gone from laying every other day to not laying for a week now and Amber has gone from laying about two eggs a week to not having laid for three weeks now. I wonder if they have stopped for winter. They are only in their first year so are not moulting.

The big girls laid all last winter which was their first year. It’s interesting to see these differences between them.

Pepper has always been fatter than the other girls. They all have the same diet and I try to give healthy treats of fruit and veg and mostly greens. I wondered if it was because she had pendulous crop when she was a few months old and her crop had perhaps stretched causing her to eat more to fill it up but my husband has another theory.

When it comes to food, Dotty is the greedy one and wolfs down treats while Pepper delicately pecks at them and Dotty is so fast she always gets the lions share of worms when I dig the run.

My husband says that just like people the phrase “eat less, move more” comes to mind. He pointed out that Dotty is always on the go. She is constantly running around, jumping up, scratching, pecking, digging, never still. Pepper spends a lot of time sitting. She greets me in the morning with the other girls, then goes for a sit down in one of her favourite spots. The same thing at lunch time when I take some fruit or veg for them, she pecks at whatever is on offer then goes for a sit down.

Dotty goes in the coop to lay her egg and shortly comes back out with the job done but Pepper can sit in there for an hour and sometimes doesn’t even get an egg laid.

Dotty is fast and slim and can jump from the ground to my shoulder whereas Pepper being heavier will only jump on my back when I am bent over. Peppers favourite spots for sitting are a hollowed dust bath near the bush, the space between the wooden block and the dividing chicken wire or the branch perch.

Pepper likes this spot between the wooden block and the wire divider

Close up of Pepper in one of her favourite spots

I think the block must make her feel secure.

Pepper on the branch

Dotty

I think this is why Dotty is slim and Pepper isn’t. Like people they have different personalities and Dotty is always rushing around whereas Pepper is chilled, she doesn’t rush herself if she doesn’t need to. Yet Pepper keeps her place as top hen, she has the respect of the flock. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t feel the need to rush herself.