Carol's Chickens

I love the way the girls do things together. One minute they are all in the food dish and the next they are all around the water. It’s as if one signals that they all follow.

Three little heads in the food dish

Apricot waits her turn

However by the time, bottom girl, Apricot got there the other three left. I thought I was going to get a shot of all four little girls round the food dish but the other three left too quickly for me to get the shot. Oh well, it’s still quite cute.

Today has been one of many days, recently, where it has rained most of the day. On wet days the girls spend time in the shelters even though the run is roofed. When they hear the rain they seem to like the security of being under another roof.

All the little girls are in the small shelter

Speckles decided she must join them

Emerald was in the big shelter. I think she decided the small shelter was too crowded!

Cinnamon loves to dig. She is always digging and when she wants a dust bath she spends ages digging the deepest hole of any of the girls. Emerald was dust bathing a little further up the run than Cinnamon. Emerald makes a shallow well and dust baths while sitting on the almost level soil. Cinnamon keeps on digging until she nearly disappears into her hole.

Cinnamon digs and digs

And pecks at the soil

She has to get the hole just right

Cinnamon spent so much time on her hole that I eventually gave up and left her to it. The next day she was dust bathing in Emerald’s dust hole. Maybe it was just too much effort to dig her own hole again.

Cinnamon dust baths

Cinnamon still has white pins on her head

Cinnamon is pretty much fully feathered again apart from the pins on her head. Seramas seem to have pins on their heads for a very long time. Cinnamon’s show up more than the other girls because of the contrast of the white pins against her brown feathers. It will be good to see these open eventually.

Cinnamon is the smallest of all the girls but the most active. She is rarely still for long. She is a little cutie!

Little splashes of colour are beginning to appear in the garden giving us hope that spring is on it’s way.

The winter flowering jasmine has been flowering all through the winter

Snowdrops are up

They are so pretty underneath

Hellebores

Also pretty underneath

Pulmonaria

Miniature cyclamen

There are also yellow and pink primula but they didn’t photograph well. I love seeing the first flowers of the year giving the garden a little colour and the promise of more to come.

Our flock is a very united flock but just occasionally they separate into two groups.

All the little girls together

Four little girls in a line

Two bigger girls together

Speckles and Emerald

These two know that this is where the sun always is in winter. The little girls soon joined them here. I love having such a united flock.

The moult seems to be going on forever this year but I think we are getting towards the end of it.

Speckles is looking good

Emerald still has very little tail

Freckles new tail feathers are looking amazing

Dandelion is looking good

Cinnamon has dropped her ragged tail feathers

Apricot is a fluff ball

Emerald just needs her tail feathers to grow in and Cinnamon needs a few more tail feathers and still has pins on her head yet to open but they are looking pretty good.

The girl’s bedtime routine is the same every day just like clockwork. They wait at the end of the run for me to go up and give them the bedtime corn. They then have a quick scratch by the patio area to make sure no corn has been missed.

Emerald always goes in first and always sits in this corner and always faces front

Followed by Speckles

The little girls always congregate in this corner before bedtime

At this point Speckles will often run out again and go up to the little girls and cluck at them. It is so obvious that she wants them to make their way in but they take little notice of her. She then returns to her spot next to Emerald.

Cinnamon is always the first little girl to go in to get her spot next to Speckles

Cinnamon always snuggles up to Speckles. She flutters her way under Speckles wing like a chick to her mum. She has a snug warm spot as close to Speckles as she can get.

Apricot is next in

Followed by Freckles and Dandelion is always last and always on the end

The only slight variation is that Freckles likes to be around the middle and sometimes her and Apricot may be the other way around. Cinnamon is always next to Speckles though and Dandelion is always on the end.

Emerald always faces the front but all the other girls will randomly face either way. It is quite sweet to this little routine play out each day.

Yesterday we were forecast snow in the morning and then rain in the afternoon giving us a whole wet day.

The snow turned out to be more than we expected. It snowed from eight in the morning until one in the afternoon when it did indeed turn to rain.

It’s snowing

The garden in the snow

Luckily it was too wet to settle. The forecast is much milder for the next week which will be welcome.

Apricot has a habit of, quite often, having a dust bath just before bedtime. She waits until I have given the girls the bedtime corn then digs herself a dust hole. I always think the dust she is flicking over herself must be rather cold at this time of day.

Apricot has a dust bath before bedtime

End of day dust bath

When she has finished she shakes herself off and joins the rest of the girls at the patio ready to make their way into the chicken shed for the night.

Yesterday was the first day back on tylan and by the afternoon Dandelion had managed to clear the crust from her eye. I wanted to see if she could clear it herself, without my help, and despite being there all morning it was gone by the afternoon. I assume that, like last time, she scratched it off.

Dandelion’s right eye is now clear

I hope that with the milder weather that is forecast this may be the end of this for now.

Yesterday we had a frosty day and therefore I inspected Dandelion’s eyes again.  Once again she had a crusty right eye. She also seems to be sneezing a little more and I can hear a bit of a whisper in her breathing. It seems that the respiratory disease is always lurking under the surface and as soon as we have frosty weather it resurfaces in Dandelion.

I am aware that I can’t treat forever but I have also read that it doesn’t go away untreated and that tylan can be used at intervals as a preventative so I have decided that to be on the safe side I will treat again for five days.

So for the next five days I will be putting tylan in the water again and making dishes of mash with tylan water to get as much into the girls as possible. I will also add the ground up poultry zest to help with the moult. Whenever I make mash at the moment I add the zest to try to give the girls a boost.

Dandelion has a crusty right eye again

Freckles seems to have come through this but Dandelion is the weakest of the girls and seems the most susceptible to this reoccurring. It always seems to be her right eye. I just hope that I can keep treating whenever this arises and get her safely through to spring. I feel sure that once we get into better weather the girls will come through this.

I am keeping everything crossed and hoping that we won’t have too many more frosts.