Carol's Chickens

We are going through a bit of a heat wave at the moment and yesterday was particularly hot and sunny all day.

A few times I checked on the girls and found Rusty like this.

Rusty in the sun

It would be easy to be quite alarmed because that open beak would usually be a sign that they are overheating and trying to cool themselves through their beak but the thing with Rusty is that every time I moved her to the shade she would spring back to a patch of sun and do this again. She is spreading her wings to the sun. There is plenty of shade in the run but she is choosing to sit in a patch of sun.

I have to remind myself that seramas originate from Malaysia where their breed were used to heat and surely she would know if she was getting too hot. However I decided to distract her and cool all the girls down by offering them a dish of peas.

I put frozen peas in a dish of water so that they were defrosted but the peas and the water were still cold. I have done this in the past to cool the girls in hot weather. They get cold peas and some cold water with them.

This is the first time I have done this since I have had the little girls though and new things can be a bit scary.

Rusty stretched her neck to examine the peas

She was plucking up the courage to try one

She takes one I put on the patio

Speckles also takes one from the patio

Only Emerald took the peas from the dish

Emerald was happy to take the peas from the dish

Freckles takes a look but was also only happy to take them from the patio

Apricot takes them from the patio too

Apricot taking peas from the patio

Dandelion and Cinnamon take peas from the patio too

My previous girls were happy to take the peas from a dish of water but it seems not these girls. As only Emerald was happy with this I wonder if it is because she remembers this from before.

I emptied out the water from the dish but the little girls still didn’t want to take the peas from the dish. I gave in and tipped the peas on to the patio and gradually they all got eaten.

These girls are so funny about how they like things. In future I will just sprinkle the peas on the patio. I think it helped cool them down a bit though.

We cut down the apple tree in the chicken run a few years ago. It had got much too big for the run. Since then it has sprouted and then been nibbled away again. The sprouting leaves have never had a chance to grow before being pecked at.

This year however it is sprouting and surviving. I am amazed! I don’t know why it hasn’t been pecked.

Sprouting apple tree

It would be quite nice to retain a little green in the run at a lower level. I just can’t work out why it is surviving though. The only difference is that Peaches and Barley are no longer with the flock. I would find it surprising if they had been the only ones pecking at it though.

Emerald will go to any length to reach any of the leaves on all the other shrubs in the run. As you can see in this photo she is taking no notice of it at all. I will watch with interest to see how big it grows and will report back.

Speckles and Emerald stick together whether it’s perching together, dust bathing together or sitting, either in the sun or the shade, together.

These two like to stick together

Emerald and Speckles perching together with Emerald in her usual standing position

These two also like to stick together

They peck at apple together

They go to the pellets together

When I check on the nest box these two like to check it together

Rusty has a dust bath

She does her dead chicken impression

Freckles usually joins Rusty in a dust bath but she was busy in the nest box.

They like to hang out together

Apricot does her own thing

Apricot is happy to hang out with the other two amigos but she is also happy to hang out with any of the other girls as well or she will just do her own thing. Apricot isn’t part of a pair but she is friendly with all the girls and is super friendly with me.

It is lovely to see these little friends hanging out together.

Yesterday there were just two eggs in the nest box. They were Speckles and Apricot’s eggs, so the biggest and the smallest.

The big and the small

I wasn’t sure that Speckles was going to continue laying after her last whopper. That was just over a week ago. She is still continuing to grow her feathers so that is obviously having an effect on her egg laying.

The pins on Speckles neck are opening

Her head feathers have taken ages to come in properly and now her neck feathers are nearly completely open.

She usually only lays about three eggs a week, she isn’t a prolific layer, but she does lay the biggest eggs. I would say her eggs are larger than a standard girl’s egg.

Emerald hasn’t laid for just over a week so I think she is finished for this year. She lays five or six eggs a week so is a really good layer while she is laying. She has laid for longer than usual this year so I expected her to take a break.

Speckles usually stops laying at the end of next month so it will soon be up to the little girls to keep egg production going. As we need three little eggs to make up one standard egg we have been able to eat all our eggs ourselves rather than giving some away.

This does mean we can’t “gift” them but it is quite nice to be able to eat them all and really appreciate them. Thank you girls.

Rusty and Freckles seem to be taking turns at going broody. So far I have only had one broody at a time. Rusty has laid seven eggs in fourteen days and laid yesterday.

Today she kept going to the nest box and because she lays every other day I knew that she didn’t need to lay. I kept taking her out. Once I take her out she stays out for a few hours before returning again. She isn’t properly broody yet but she is on her way.

When I take Rusty out she puffs herself up and her tail is pointing straight up

Tail up in the nest box

Tail up out of the nest box

Now that I am more experienced with seramas I know that this tail up pose means they are are going broody. Luckily both Rusty and Freckles are completely docile broodies and they let me pick them up without any protest.

I have found that if I remove them from the nest box every time I go in they will come out of it in three days. It will then be about two weeks before they start laying again.

After a few moments Rusty is off and running and she will go into the run and scratch and dust bath.

Compared to past broodies I have had these girls are really easy to manage and I am now used to this little routine. Seramas are such easy girls to handle and I totally love this breed.

When I took some photos of my jellyfish for the novelty fruit and veg competition I thought it would be the ideal time to compare my new camera to my old one. I took a couple of photos with my new camera and then a couple of photos with my old camera.

I was amazed at how different they were. The new camera shows the detail a little better but more than it has a much brighter and truer colour. With the new camera the satsumas look  a bright orange whereas with the old camera they look dull and faded. See below.

Jellyfish taken with my new camera

Jellyfish taken with my old camera

While using my old camera I was reasonably happy with the quality, it was the speed that annoyed me. Now I can see how the quality has improved as well as the speed. I am really happy with my new camera.

One of the blogs I follow is called “Going Gently” written by John Gray. It is often amusing,  always interesting and gets many, many comments.

At the moment John is taking photos from his readers of novelty fruit and veg to enter a competition at his local flower show.

I sent a photo of my husband’s “apple bird” which I have shown on here before. That seemed a bit like cheating though so today I decided to make my own and send it in. Here are my “jellyfish”.

Jellyfish

It’s simple but I am actually feeling quite pleased with it. Now we need to eat the satsumas!

Since we moved here, just over ten years ago, the tree in our next door neighbour’s garden has doubled in size. It was already a large tree but it is now an enormous tree.

Our next door neighbour’s tree as seen from our bedroom window

It overhangs the gardens either side despite the fact that we had someone come and cut the overhang from our side a few years back. It is a towering height and I imagine the neighbours will soon have to crawl under it to go up their garden.

It blots out a lot of sun from our garden. It fills the view from our upstairs bathroom window and it dwarfs everything in our garden. The neighbours don’t use their garden so I can’t imagine them doing anything about this tree any time soon.

I think we are stuck with this ever growing, monster, tree for the foreseeable future.

It has been quite heart warming seeing the friendship blossom between Emerald and Speckles.

Emerald and Speckles perch together

They spend a lot of time perching side by side. Emerald has a tendency to stand rather than sit. This is also true of her position in the shed at bedtime until later in the evening.

However yesterday after Emerald had laid her egg she wanted to brood for the first time. In the four years that we have had her she has never showed any signs of going broody. She had always stopped laying half way through May.

This year she has laid for three weeks longer than she has ever laid before. I think maybe that is why she wants to go broody. I think yesterday’s egg was probably her last egg of the season and she has now decided that it is time to sit.

Emerald wants to stay in the cat box

Emerald and Speckles roost together

Speckles often used to roost at the far end of the perch, away from the rest of the bigger girls. Now Speckles and Emerald always roost together. I think Emerald’s flattened, sitting down, pose, is because of her broody feelings.

Yesterday she wanted to stay in the cat box. She has never done this before. I took her out several times and she returned to the cat box. I put the grill on the cat box to close it from her. I was surprised to find that she managed to open the grill and climb over it to settle in the cat box once more. She was determined to get in there. I closed it more securely.

This morning I left the cat box closed and Emerald stayed in the shed near the cat box. She didn’t even want to come out for some corn. I decided to remove the cat box. She still returned to the shed so I decided to close the pop hole.

I really don’t want Emerald to spend her day in the shed and the other girls can lay their eggs in the wooden nest boxes. Once I had closed the shed Emerald stayed out in the run.

I don’t think she will start laying again until next year as she has already laid for the longest stretch ever but I just don’t want her to spend time sitting in the shed when she could be out in the run with her flock mates doing chicken things.

I hope she will soon forget and get back to normal. This seemed like an appropriate time to remove the cat box as without Emerald laying it will no longer be needed. Only Freckles and Rusty lay their eggs in the cat box and with Rusty it’s only been her last two eggs. I am sure they will soon get used to the wooden nest boxes again.

Last year we had our garden path done which was the last big job we needed to do in the garden. It has now softened nicely with the planting spilling over the edges.

Our path is disappearing under the plants

The edges are being softened

After the rain the path through our veg plot had disappeared which was not so good

The potatoes are now tied back giving us our path back again

The path has made a huge difference to the garden and I now have my corner spot to sit in the sun at the end of the day which is an extra bonus. We are really pleased with how the path has turned out.