Carol's Chickens

It’s unusually hot here for British summer. We often only get a few days to a week of warm weather at a time and twenty one degrees celsius or seventy degrees fahrenheit or a little above is usually the top temperature. At the moment we are experiencing thirty degrees celsius or ninety degrees fahrenheit and it’s forecast to last a month. That’s a heat wave to us.

I know from my fellow American chicken bloggers that they experience much more extreme weather conditions than we do, hot and cold, but for us this is unusual.

Last year we had one of the wettest summers on record, it really did rain all summer long. This year it was one of the coldest summers on record up until this hot spell and now this is being hailed as a possible contender for the hottest spell on record! This is after the weather “experts” said we may have no summer for the next ten to twenty years! What is it with the British and their endless obsession with the weather and I have to include myself in that statement! We can’t help it, we all speculate about it, check the reports and talk about it endlessly. It is one of the things that makes us British!

Chickens cope well with the cold but they don’t like the heat. My girls haven’t experienced this heat before. The dominiques are cold hardy with a layer of down underneath their feathers and are not so suited to the hot weather.

I am lucky that their run is at the top of our garden and shaded by tall trees behind the garden. It gets the morning sun but by midday is in shade. Even so I do all I can to keep the girls cool.

The automatic coop door opens at five o’clock in the morning at this time of year and at that time it’s still cool.

At midday I change their water for fresh cold water in both drinkers and I water a shaded area of the soil to keep the area near their favourite bush cool. I give them treats such as melon, cucumber, grapes and apples to give them extra moisture.

In the evening when they settle on the high perch I leave it until eleven o’clock to put them to bed instead of the usual ten o’clock. This means the coop is cool when they go in.

I check regularly for the dreaded red mite as they thrive in hot weather and sprinkle D.E. everywhere. So far I have managed to avoid them.

I also poop pick the run a minimum of three times a day, often a lot more, sometimes every time I go in there. This keeps down flies and means there isn’t much to pick up each time.

I shall keep up this regime as long as the hot spell lasts. My girls are doing okay. The worst bit is when they want to lay their egg in a warm coop at the hottest part of the day. The bantys have taken a week off laying since the beginning of the hot spell and I don’t blame them.

The bonus is that the girls have also stopped feather pulling since the start of the hot weather because instead of sitting in a huddle in the afternoons they sit spaced out due to the heat, which puts them out of reach for feather pulling.  I am becoming quite hopeful that this problem has finally turned a corner.

For quite some time my son, Steve, has been saying that we should put the girls portraits on the side bar of my blog. I like the idea but have held off as the girls look so tatty from the feather pulling, especially Dotty with her bare head and neck. I wanted pictures of the girls looking pristine, fully feathered and beautiful, as they should look. This has meant a very long wait and may be quite a lot longer yet!

Steve said I should do it anyway as it’s part of their character and is how they truly are and he thinks it’s amusing! I can’t bring myself to though, so instead am going to put lots of up to date portraits here.

Amber face on

Amber has missing feathers from her neck at the front, giving her a slightly scruffy look. She is also missing the rounded top part of her comb furthest from her beak. The photo isn’t close enough to see this but she doesn’t like the camera too close. The rounded part of her comb got pecked off during the first battles of introducing the new girls. The bantys are vorwerks and Amber is the more feisty of the two.

Amber side on

Amber is a much more compact shape than Honey, a sort of tear drop shape. She is also smaller than Honey.

Honey side on

Honey has a longer body than Amber and a slightly humped back, before her tail.

Honey face on

Honey also had her comb pecked and it was quite ragged for a while. Her comb has healed completely though and now looks in good shape. It is red but the bright sunlight has made it look pink.

Honey face on again

Pepper side on

Pepper and Dotty are also completely different shapes. The farm I got them from had two breeding pairs of dominiques and I have always been convinced that Pepper and Dotty were from the different pairs. Dotty was much more similar in shape to Poppy who turned out to be a cockerel and had to be returned.

Pepper is also a sort of tear drop shape but much wider. She is broad across the beam and my husband often calls her “fatty”. Her feathers around her bottom are really tatty from the feather pulling but are at last regrowing.

She has a very different face to Dotty and even her comb is different. Pepper’s comb is more ridged and pointed at the end.

Dotty stretching up ready to jump on the big perch

Dotty’s comb is much smoother and flatter and her lobes are also bigger. She is taller than Pepper and is a much narrower shape. They even sound different. Pepper has a melancholy  voice whereas Dotty has a sing song, happy voice.

Dotty and Pepper on the big perch

This photo shows Pepper’s wider shape. The odd thing is that Dotty is greedier than Pepper and Pepper will delicately spend time breaking a grape down into tiny pieces whereas Dotty eats treats at speed so I think Pepper is just naturally a wider shape.

Bluebell face on

Bluebell is our only chalkhill blue so I have no one to compare her with. She also has missing neck feathers. She is a great digger and a lays a blue egg most days.

Bluebell side on

Pepper side on again

Pepper is top hen and she is a really stubborn character.

Dotty side on again

Dotty has such a lovely nature that it’s a great shame her bare neck spoils her looks. It’s not her fault either. I really hope that after their first end of summer molt her feathers will grow back in.

Another difference between these two girls is that Dotty’s tail is pointing upwards like Bluebell’s. Pepper’s tail is held horizontally just like the bantys.

Bluebell standing up straight

Bluebell and Pepper

At one time Dotty had a black spot on her beak and Pepper didn’t but now Pepper has a bigger black spot on her beak.

Bluebells floppy comb

Bluebell has a floppy comb and a loud voice. Pepper’s feathers have regrown around her bottom and it’s no longer bare.

They are all such individual characters and have their unique funny ways. Pepper and Dotty like to jump on my back whenever they can. Bluebell will only jump on me if I hold my arm out as a perch. I am not sure if the bantys will ever jump on me but they do now let me pick them up at bedtime with no protest and they curl their little toes round my fingers, which is really sweet. You can’t help but love these funny girls.

Yesterday evening I spent some more time working on the run. I had forked the whole run over a few days earlier but there were lots of hard clods of earth. The big girls, especially Bluebell, have big strong feet and legs. Bluebell is our digger! She loves to dig huge holes and flings clods of earth everywhere. The bantys have tiny legs for their body size. When they try to dig, they merely scratch the surface.

With their tiny legs the bantys stumble around. The clods of earth are enough to make them stumble as if they are drunk. I went over the whole run breaking up the clods with a fork. I then went back over it again with a hand fork to try to make the soil finer. I then sprinkled in some rose petals for the girls.

Rose petals for the girls

The girls love rose petals

It’s been a really good year for the roses in our garden this summer and there are plenty of falling petals to give the girls.

This morning the weather forecast is saying that this heat wave is going to last for a month, so I decided it was time to take off the plastic sheet from the garden corner of the run. My husband removed the batons holding it in place and we took the sheet down. We plan to redo it in winter but will put it back on from the inside. This will be easier to do and will make the run look neater from the outside.

My next job was to prune the apple tree in the run. Not only do I like to keep it below the top of the run but every year the top part of the tree gets covered in black fly and the leaves curl up looking unpleasant. I don’t use any sprays near the girls so each year I prune off the top infected part of the tree. The tree looks much better for it.

The plastic roof sheet is off and the apple tree is pruned

The corner that we have uncovered is the left hand corner behind the apple tree. The run looks empty but that’s because the girls are all in the shade of the big hypercum bush.

This morning Pepper was shouting and strutting around like crazy and even when I went in to her I couldn’t calm her down. Bluebell and Dotty were in the nest box getting their eggs laid and I thought it was because they were in there that she was making such a fuss.

She kept going to the coop door then to the little coop. I wondered if it was because the little coop was too hot and got a piece of wood to put under the lift up lid to allow more air flow. That was when I realized what the problem was. I had shut the ramp to the little coop last night while I swept up around it and had forgotten to open it again.

I opened the ramp and she went straight in and laid her egg. I felt so bad that I had been telling her off for shouting. She is so stubborn and clearly wanted to get into her usual place to lay her egg. After all three big girls had laid their egg, all was quiet again.

Yesterday afternoon the little girls were really going for it in a dust bath. I think perhaps it was too hot for the big girls. Once again I have good and bad news on the feather pulling. The bad news is that whilst I thought Honey had been untouched, I could see when she was writhing in the dust bath and throwing her head back, that she too has a bare patch on the front of her neck.

Dust bathing bantys

Honey is on the left and is showing a bare patch on her neck.

Writhing around in the dust bath

The good news is that since the start of the hot weather a week ago, I have found no feathers in the run and not caught any of the girls feather pulling. Yesterday afternoon when they usually all sit in a huddle and pull feathers, they were all sat in a group, but spaced out at about two feet apart. I think it’s too hot to sit close together and while spaced out, they can’t reach to pull feathers. It may be a faint hope, but I am hoping that the hot spell may last long enough to break them from the habit. That would be a real bonus because I know they don’t actually like the hot weather.

Since the start of the hot weather Bluebell has switched from laying in the little coop back to laying every day in the main nest box. I think this is because the little coop gets hotter. They are both under the roofed area which is shaded by large trees at the back of the garden but mid morning a shaft of sunlight gets through to the little coop. Pepper who is a very stubborn girl, still lays in the little coop. The other effect of the hot weather is that the bantys have stopped laying altogether. They had been laying every other day and now haven’t laid for six and seven days. They seem happy in every other way so I am not worried.

At bedtime when I lift the girls down to put them in the coop the little girls now don’t mind at all. They only perched on the big perch with the big girls one evening then reverted back to sitting on my little chair that hangs under the roof. I think the big perch is too fat for their little feet. What is sweet is that as I lift them down they now curl their little toes round my fingers. It’s an incredibly sweet feeling.

The other sweet thing is that Pepper and Dotty always jump on my back whenever they can. Since the hot weather, I have been wearing sun tops with my back and shoulders bare so have been trying not to face my back to them because I was worried they would scratch me. A few times they have been too quick for me and have jumped on my bare back but it’s as if they sense that they need to be careful. They very gently and slowly drop down my back and jump off and have never left a mark or a scratch on me. It amazes me how gentle they are with me.

Finally, I been trying not to keep deviating from chickens to the garden but couldn’t resist including the delphiniums.

Delphiniums

The dark blue ones are so tall they reach up into the rambling rose next to the garden bird feeders, but the pale blue ones in the foreground are my favourite.  They are such a delicate colour.

It’s summer in the chicken run and the hypericum is in full flower. It fills the corner of the run and is so tall that it now reaches the top of the run. I have had to prune it back a bit so that I can walk past it when cleaning up. The apple tree has also re-grown to reach through the top of the run so I will be trimming it back again soon as I prefer to keep it below the top of the run.

The hypericum fills this corner and has a splash of yellow flowers

The apple tree and hypericum

In front of the hypericum is the dogwood shrub, but the girls have been jumping up and stripping the leaves as far as they can reach so it doesn’t look too great!

I also dug over the whole run yesterday. I dig over half of it every few days for the girls to scratch and dust bath. The rest I leave to compact as it’s easier for me to walk on but every now and then I dig over the whole run. Parts of it were like concrete!

The run after I had dug it over

Looking in to the run through through the veg plot shows the yellow splash of the hypericum filling the left hand corner of the run.

Looking at the run through the veg plot

The potatoes in the middle are now in flower as are the runner beans on the left. The tumble of pale pink on the left of the veg plot is the rambling rose that borders our garden with next doors.

We are now harvesting the peas and broad beans and sharing the chard between ourselves and the chooks and they love it. Soon there will be pak choi and spinach for them too. Later in the summer with any luck there will be corn cobs for the girls too. There wasn’t enough sun for them to ripen last year but this year I am hopeful. I think they appreciate the veg plot as much as we do.

The girls also appreciate the hypericum in their run which they have also stripped of any leaves within jumping distance. It provides their favourite place to sit in shade and to scratch around in the evenings.

Hot summer weather has arrived at last. Sunday was the hottest day of the year so far (high seventies) and after a washed out summer last year it was the hottest day that the chickens have yet experienced. They didn’t like it! It was the noisiest the girls have been, complaining all day.

I have been giving them fresh cold water at midday and wetting the patio area and a corner of the garden area to help keep it cool. They don’t drink the fresh cold water I give them, they drink from the muddy puddles that form. They have shade under the bush which is where they like to spend most of their time.

I give them melon, cucumber and grapes to give moisture. Sunday was so hot that they did no scratching or dust bathing. Bluebell and Dotty laid their eggs in the morning but Pepper went in at midday day when it was hottest and she always takes the longest.

When she came out she was holding her wings up and out, away from her body. She must have got over heated in the nest box. I have never seen her do this before and it made her look huge. I lightly water sprayed them to cool them down but they ran off in disgust, because I use the spray when they peck or feather pull they see it as a punishment.

Luckily yesterday was cooler with some cloud and a breeze and they seemed back to normal and all had a dust bath in the afternoon.

They love pecking at cabbage when I hang it from a wire so I wondered if they would like their afternoon apple like that too, instead of on the ground. They soon lined up at the apples.

Apples on wire

Last night when I was doing my evening clean up there was suddenly a commotion on the patio. I looked up to see Pepper attacking Amber. She was on her back holding her down and pecking her. I dashed over and grabbed the water spray. I don’t know why she suddenly attacked her and they weren’t near the food.

Poor Amber was limping and sitting down a lot. She still went to the food and water as usual but it looked like she had hurt her leg or foot. She was trying to keep off the left leg. I picked her up and checked her leg and foot and couldn’t see anything so I think maybe she sprained it when she went down. I will be keeping a close eye on her. The bantys have such tiny legs and feet and when I pick them up they curl their toes round my fingers.

This morning Amber looks okay, just a very slight limp but I will be keeping a close eye on her. Just when I thought they were all getting along, I really don’t know why they suddenly do this and it is upsetting to see. This morning everything seems back to normal though.

Amber really hasn’t got the hang of egg laying yet. Today I had been in with the girls and left them for a very short while. When I returned Amber had again laid her egg in the run. It was still warm and the big girls were gathered round it, it must have caught her by surprise again.

Two days earlier she managed to lay her egg in the nest box but once again it was a bit smaller than usual.

Pepper’s egg on the left, Honey’s egg in the middle and Amber’s egg on the right

Her eggs have hard shells now though and she doesn’t look unwell when about to lay, so I don’t mind what size they are. We are averaging four banty eggs a week (two from each of them) so not prolific layers but that’s okay as long as the girls are happy and healthy.

The veg plot has grown so much now that we can hardly see the chickens through it.

Through the veg plot you can just make out Bluebell looking out

The self seeded common spotted orchid is taking forever for the flower to open.

Common spotted orchid

I have been waiting two months since the bud appeared. Maybe it’s because we haven’t had much sun but that is forecast to change from tomorrow through to next week. Sun at last, hurrah!

It was a week ago that I noticed banty feathers in the run. At the time I couldn’t see where they were disappearing from. Over this past week I have noticed Ambers neck becoming bare but couldn’t catch the culprit in action.

Today I was in with the girls while they were having their afternoon sit together. I saw that it was Bluebell pecking at Amber’s neck and Pepper was pecking at Bluebell’s neck. Dotty would peck at Pepper’s bottom.

I told them off and sprayed them with water but Pepper looked puzzled as if she just couldn’t see what she was doing wrong. It always seems to happen most when they sit together. I had really hoped the bantys would move out of the way and couldn’t understand why Amber was being targeted when she is the most feisty of the two. Watching them today it seems that it’s because she wants to sit with them and be part of the group that she allows it.

I am finding this habit so frustrating because although it doesn’t effect the girls health or happiness, it does totally spoil their looks. I look at other peoples chooks with envy and I feel bad that I have brought the bantys into this flock only to see them spoiled too.

As they are all doing it separation isn’t an option. I only hope that when they have their first molt maybe that will stop it. If not it worries me that this may be a problem that I will always have. It also means that any future hens I add to the flock may get plucked too.

Bluebell and Dotty’s missing neck feathers

Dotty’s head and neck are bare

Dotty is missing some feathers under her wing exposing her downy under feathers.

Pepper’s neck is untouched

Pepper’s neck feathers are untouched but she is also missing some feathers under her wing.

Amber’s neck is becoming bare

Pepper’s bare bottom

Pepper’s bottom is the most bare. We have a theory that as she is top hen, they don’t peck her neck so instead peck her bottom where she can’t see them.

Bluebell and Dotty’s bottoms

Honey seems untouched at the moment

I wonder how long Honey will stay untouched. I feel so saddened that this behaviour is continuing and I can’t stop it. I should have a beautiful flock but instead they are tatty and scruffy looking!

Instead of spring greens, for the girls, I picked up sweetheart cabbage by mistake. The girls like the loose leaves of spring greens as when I throw them on the floor of the run they fling them about, pecking bits from them or stand on them to peck them.

They can’t seem to get into the tightly packed centre of the cabbage when its on the ground. I decided to hang the cabbage from a bit of wire making it easier for them to peck at it.

Cabbage hearts

Bluebell and Pepper pecking at the cabbage

The girls soon had the cabbage stripped to a stalk. The big girls have had cabbage like this before but it was new to the little girls. They didn’t take long to catch on though.

Two weeks ago Honey wanted to lay her egg at the same time as Pepper and Pepper pecked her comb until it bled. From that moment I installed the little coop as a second nest box to try to avoid this happening again.

When Bluebell laid her next egg, it was in the little coop and she has laid her eggs there ever since. I think being our biggest girl the little coop is probably more spacious for her.

A week ago Amber and Pepper had a stand off when they both wanted to lay at the same time. Amber was in the nest box and wouldn’t budge and Pepper was extremely cross, shouting and strutting and getting very red in the face. Eventually she went into the little coop. The two girls were so stressed by it all that neither of them laid an egg that day. We thought Amber had scored a point that day though.

The next day Pepper laid her egg in the little coop and has laid there ever since. We think she didn’t want to own up to losing the point so convinced herself that the little coop was the more prestigious and therefore she was simply keeping her status by using only the best nest box now. I am not saying that they think it out in this manner as we would but simply that the pecking order status is of utmost importance and must be maintained.

The following day we had our first (and only so far) five egg day. Bluebell, Pepper, Honey and Amber had all laid in the little coop with only Dotty laying in the original nest box.

Dotty has shown no interest in the little coop at all and continues to lay in the nest box. The little girls will lay in either, they don’t seem to have a preference but Bluebell and Pepper have laid in the little coop every time since their first time.

Honey and Amber have also got the hang of egg laying now. They no longer look unwell before laying and their eggs have normal shells. Honey is laying every other day most of the time and Amber every three or four days.

The little coop has been a great success as a second nest box as there is less arguing over having to share and most important there has been no bloodshed since we installed it. The pecking order is so complex and so utterly important to these funny girls!

Today I did a bit of gardening and gave the girls some weeds and the dead heads from the roses. They love the rose petals and soon hoover them up.

The girls enjoy the weeds and rose petals

I love how they flock together around this simple treat

It was the first sunny day for a long time so we went for a walk and I found another feather to identify.

I picked this up from a local field that we walked through

I think it is a buzzard feather

We have lots of red kites and a few buzzards here all the time, but I think because of how broad the feather is, that it is most likely from a buzzard. The feather is five inches long and two inches wide. I wasn’t intending to continue with identifying feathers but just couldn’t resist picking this one up as I haven’t found one of these before.