Carol's Chickens

We have been having an ongoing problem getting Pebbles to go in to bed on her own for a while now. I have tried putting her in early and she just comes out again. I have tried leaving her and she stays outside until after the door closes. I have resorted to putting her through the pop hole and blocking it until she perches up.

This was not satisfactory and I needed a rethink. There has to be a reason she isn’t going in on her own.

I decided to try adding another perch lower than the existing one to form a sort of ladder. The little girls move up the outside ladders easily. There seems to be a two fold problem with the bedtime perches. Freckles can’t easily judge the perch and always flies too high then drops back down on to the perch. I worry that she could hurt herself.

Pebbles has to have her position next to the door and if there isn’t a big enough space there she can’t judge the jump up.

The little girls’ perches

A new perch added

I put Pebbles on these perches several times to show her. Once she had jumped down a curious Emerald decided to check it out.

Emerald tries out the new perch

I decided to stay with the girls at bedtime so that I could see what happened and take photos. The bigger girls always go in first. I think the little girls wait until the big girls are settled to make it easier for themselves which is understandable.

As usual Rusty went in first and was soon followed by Freckles. To my surprise Pebbles followed them a few minutes later without any help from me.

Rusty was first up to the new perch

Freckles hopped up easily

Rusty and Freckles do a bit of beak to beak contact

Freckles moves up to the top perch and Pebbles hops on to the bottom perch

Rusty gets ready to join Freckles

Rusty hops up to the top perch

Pebbles gets ready to hop up

They settle in their usual positions

I was really pleased with this. I feel that all three girls were able to get up much easier. I think it’s much better for Freckles and I think it’s easier for Pebbles to get into the position she wants. Pebbles was also able to linger on the lower perch while Rusty and Freckles sorted themselves out then she made her move.

I think perhaps she wasn’t going in because it wasn’t easy enough for her to take the position she likes. I am hopeful that now it is easy for all three of them to get to the perch the bedtime problem will be solved at last.

Even if she doesn’t go straight in tomorrow night I think it won’t take long for her to get used to it but I am hopeful that having gone in on her own tonight she should do it again tomorrow.

I am much happier with this perch arrangement as it is now really easy for all three little girls to get to the bedtime perches. Sometimes I have to just keep watching the girls and mull over a problem for a while before fine tuning to get it just right. I am quite confident that this is now going to work.

I took the water bottles away three days ago and I have been worrying about whether Freckles and Rusty have been drinking from the water dish.

I have given them mash and melon and grapes as well as spinach so that they have had some moisture from their food.

Every time I went in to the run I didn’t see them take a drink of water. On the other hand I didn’t see several of the other girls take a drink of water either. I saw Peaches and Speckles drink yesterday and yesterday morning, first thing, I saw Pebbles drink but that was all. Just because I don’t see them drink doesn’t mean they aren’t drinking and they look happy and healthy but I just wanted that reassurance of actually seeing them drink.

Mid morning, yesterday, I went in and I was so pleased to see Freckles, Rusty and Peaches at the water dish.

Freckles and Peaches have a drink of water

Rusty and Peaches have a drink

Rusty and Freckles have just had some water

Rusty has some water

I am now happy and satisfied that Rusty and Freckles are drinking without the water bottles.

This morning I sprinkled some of their sunflower hearts near the metal water container.

Rusty and Freckles by the other water

Three little girls by the water

Rusty takes a seed from the water

A sunflower seed had dropped into the water and Rusty picked it out. This has satisfied me that they know there is another water. It would seem that they just prefer the china water dish. I would have thought this water would be easier for the little girls to reach but they seem to prefer the other one.

It doesn’t matter which water they prefer as long as they are drinking. I am happy with that.

The little girls have become much braver about getting their share of treats. With most of the treats that I leave on the patio such as spinach, mash, fish or apples, the little girls wait until the bigger girls have had some and moved away, then the little girls have the treat to themselves.

Today I put four little dishes of yogurt on the patio and the little girls were quite bold about helping themselves to their share.

Four dishes of yogurt

Pebbles was the first of the little girls to have some yogurt. Emerald is at the fourth dish which she is hiding. Peaches is more interested in the water at the moment and Toffee hasn’t bothered to come to the patio at all.

Rusty decides to join in

Rusty is very brave to have yogurt next to Speckles. They both have yogurt beaks.

Bold little girls

I thought Pebbles and Rusty were quite brave to hold their position between Peaches and Barley.

Barley has her share

Although Barley is at the dish the little girls move back a little but they don’t run away. Barley and Rusty both have yogurt beaks in this photo.

Eventually the little girls move on to another dish

I am quite impressed with how bold these little girls are. They hold their position quite well against the bigger girls. They no longer run from them but just casually move on to the next dish.

The little girls are perfectly capable of getting their share of the treats. They are quite used to moving away a little and bouncing back to an easier position. They are not intimidated for long.

I have found that when it comes to training chickens some things come much easier than others. When it comes to treats they cotton on the fastest but other things sometimes take a bit longer.

I give the girls some sunflower hearts in the morning and some corn at bedtime in winter and reverse this in summer as digesting corn is supposed to help keep them warm in winter. I am careful to measure out a small amount per hen so that they don’t get fat.

Right from when we first got the little girls I could see that they couldn’t compete with the bigger girls for this treat and were chased away so I slipped them their portion on the patio while the bigger girls have theirs thrown in the run. They picked up on this straight away.

Morning and evening I throw the sunflower hearts/corn out into the run and the bigger girls go after it. The little girls wait by my feet until I sprinkle theirs on the patio. It works like a dream and all the girls get their fair share.

The bigger girls have their corn in the run

The little girls have theirs on the patio

What is taking longer to sort out is getting Pebbles to go in by herself at bedtime. I don’t really understand what is going on here because she used to go in by herself but has stopped doing so. I am having to go up once all the others have gone in and guide her through the pop hole and block it while she takes her place.

I am finding it frustrating that she used to go in and now she doesn’t. I don’t know why this is happening and left on her own she would get shut out and end up on the outside perch or on top of the little coop.

I don’t know how else to train her to go in. I have tried putting her on the perch earlier and she just comes out again. I have tried leaving her alone and she perches outside. I can easily put her on the perch, but I want her to do it herself, so I am just guiding her in at the moment and waiting for her to get the hang of it.

I am wondering if she is ever going to get the hang of it. It is frustrating to have seven out of eight girls going in by themselves. It means I couldn’t leave them overnight but then it’s unlikely I would be away overnight anyway. Even so it would be better if she would go in just in case we were ever to be away.

I also removed  the water bottles today as I want the little girls to get used to the water dishes because in frosty weather the water bottles will freeze quickly. I have seen Freckles and Rusty drink from the china water dish so I know they are able to do this. Oddly enough I have never seen them drink from the metal water drinker.

I am keeping an eye on them because I worry they may not drink enough while they get used not having the bottles. Today it rained a lot and they drank drips from the wire but they like to do that at any time. I didn’t see them go to the water dishes during the afternoon but then again I didn’t see the other girls go to them either.

At bedtime Freckles was clearly looking for the water bottles.

Freckles goes to where the water bottles were

She can’t work out why the bottles are no longer here

Freckles did have a quick drink from the water dish

I would have liked to see her drink more but it shows she does know the water is here. I tried to show both Freckles and Rusty the metal water drinker by dipping my fingers in it in front of them but they just ignored it.

Tomorrow I will be around more during the day so I will be watching them. A farmer once told me that chickens will always find the water but after the first day we had these two girls and they wouldn’t drink at all before I put in bottles, I am not so sure. I know how entrenched in their habits they can become.

And so the training goes on with some successes coming easily and some not so easily!

Today I went to the woods for some more twigs. I decided that it would be best to have a supply so that as I dig up the leeks I can replace them with twigs. I decided to store them in one of the terracotta pots to keep them tidy.

A pot of twigs

Our patch of leeks

I will be digging up a couple of leeks to go with our Sunday roast. These will keep us in leeks for a while yet.

No cat poop in the garden today, hurrah!

We have a real problem with cats doing their business in our garden and every winter we have to do something to protect the vegetable plot or it will become a giant toilet.

We try to keep the rest of the garden as full as possible to leave no space for the cats but even this doesn’t always stop them. Sometimes they actually do their business on top of a low laying shrub which is horrible to clear up.

We have in the past put net or chicken wire over the veg plot in winter but it looks unsightly and sometimes the cats poop on top of it which is even worse to clean up. They are very determined.

We have tried all deterrents to no avail.

What we did notice during the summer was that the pea twigs stopped them. Maybe it inhibits them being able to squat. This gave us an idea. We could fill the veg plot with twigs over winter. We didn’t mind the look of it and if it would keep it cat poop free we would be happy with that.

We went in to the woods and gathered a bundle of twigs.

We collected a pile of twigs

One side of the veg plot has twigs planted

At this point we got rained off so had to leave the job to finish another day.

The next thing we did was empty the last two potato bags and put the compost in the chicken run. I have now bought the soil level in the chicken run back to what it used to be.

I emptied the two terracotta tomato pots back into the holes that they came out of and cleared this side of the plot of all but the leeks.

The first side is completed now that the potato bags have gone

The other side planted with just the leeks remaining

The finished plot

As I take out the leeks I will fill the space with more twigs until the entire plot is covered with twigs. We have found some cat poop in the bigger gaps between the twigs so today I have filled in the gaps with small twigs. I will keep going until it stops the cats completely. I am hoping this will now solve the problem.

We now have a winter veg plot full of twigs. I think it looks okay.

We have had a really busy couple of days business wise and I haven’t had time to write a blog post. I intended to do a post to show the little girls on all the smaller perches that we put in for in them. I took a couple of photos of them on one of the new perches then got too busy to follow up so I thought would just put these out for now as they are so cute.

Three little girls perching together

Catching a few rays of sunshine

We put in four lower and smaller perches for the little girls plus the recent one on the patio area. They like this one and the two that are near both the metal and the wooden table but the other one is behind the other ladder and I have never seen any girl on that one.

I think because it is behind the ladder, rather than beside the ladder like this one, it doesn’t appeal to them. They also like to perch on the ladders and the high perches above the ladders but I have never seen them on the high perch outside the hatch or on the metal table or the perch above that table.

They spend a lot of time on the wooden table though. I think it’s because they like perching high up but they need a step up to get there. Before we had the little girls the wooden table was rarely used but now it has become the little girl’s domain and gets a lot of use.

It is good that both sets of girls have their own favourite areas as well their shared areas. The little girls like to perch up a lot of the time. I have yet to see the little girls perch on the same perch as the bigger girls though.

Toffee stopped laying at the end of March and Emerald at the end of April. They were the first to moult but do it slowly and Emerald is still dropping the odd feather and still has some pins under her tail.

Peaches is at the opposite end of the scale and went on laying until the end of September. She had a fast and furious moult.

Whereas Barley lost her tail feathers one by one Peaches lost her entire tail in one go.

Peaches with no tail

A scruffy looking Peaches

Peaches is full of pins

Peaches feathers are opening

Peaches feathers are nearly there

Peaches just has one small patch of grey under feathers showing

Her tail is now fully grown

Her feathers have all filled in

In just under two months she has gone from looking a mess to being completely back to normal. It has been amazing to see how fast she has moulted and grown her feathers back again and all done in time for winter.

I have often noticed that chickens like to sit up against something or even better in a corner. I think it makes them feel safe and secure. Today I was digging the run over when I noticed the three little girls sitting in the corner behind one of the gates.

Three little girls in a corner

Preening together

They were sitting in here for a while and were preening together. I couldn’t get a photo of all three girls facing the camera but these two photos give the gist of them in their corner.

They do make me smile.

Just when I thought we had cracked the bedtime routine Pebbles has started to slip again. For a few weeks all the little girls went in and settled on their little perch each night. For the last three nights Pebbles has settled here.

Pebbles has perched here for the last few nights

I don’t understand why she has suddenly started doing this. I put her through the pop hole then opened the main door to watch her and let in a bit of light. Pebbles always perches nearest the door. She looked agitated because there wasn’t enough space on the perch nearest the door for her to jump up. She went to the other side of the perch and got ready to jump up.

Pebbles gets ready to jump up.

She jumped into the space on the perch and I closed the door. I heard a thud and opened the door again to find she had jumped back down. She looked like she was going to jump up to  the side nearest the door.

Pebbles wants to jump up this side but there isn’t enough space

She gave up and jumped up on the other side again. Once more I heard a thud once I had shut the door and she had jumped down again. On the previous two nights I had just picked her from the outside perch and placed her in her spot near the door where she settled. Tonight I thought I should try to let her jump to the perch herself and that seems to be where the problem lies.

I moved Rusty and Freckles along a little bit and placed Pebbles in her favourite position near the door. I closed the door and she stayed put. I swept the patio and checked back again and she was still settled. The automatic door closed and I retreated.

I put Pebbles on the perch in the position she wanted she be in

Pebbles has always perched in this position nearest the door and I have never seen her perched in any other position. Could it really be that she won’t go in if she can’t get her favoured position! It seems ridiculous that she would rather perch outside than take a different position on the perch.

If she is so determined to get this position I don’t understand why she doesn’t go in first but she has always been in the habit of going in last. Tomorrow I will go up sooner and try to encourage her to go in earlier.

I feel a bit frustrated that every time I think the bedtime routine is sorted something seems to upset it again. It always seems to be Pebbles that doesn’t always go in. I will try to retrain her over the next few nights.