Carol's Chickens

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.

Every morning when I poop pick the chicken shed the three little girls keep me company. They spend the time that I am in there scratching and pecking at the shavings. I have to be very careful where I put my feet and if they scratch shavings on to my boots they peck at my boots.

As soon as I have finished and leave the shed they follow me out and go about their day.

The little girls always keep me company in the mornings

You can see my pot and disposable glove in the background, I had just finished picking up when I stopped to take a few photos.

I don’t know why they like scratching in the shavings

There was some mash left from the day before so I put it in the store cabinet overnight and put it back on the patio when I had finished picking up in the shed.

Brave little girls to eat from the dish at the same time as Peaches

Rusty and Freckles share the mash with Peaches

I was surprised to see Peaches and the two little girls sharing the mash. They usually have to wait their turn when the bigger girls have moved away and this is the first time I have seen both sized girls at the same dish. Progress! The flock do seem more united these days which good to see.

This morning was the first hard frost this winter. It was -2 degrees which isn’t extreme by any means but cold enough to freeze the water in the bird bath. The chicken’s water dishes are sheltered so only freeze when the temperature gets quite a bit lower than this.

The chicken’s water bottles had frozen though and I think that I may take them away and ween the little girls off of them. They do drink from the water dishes too so should soon get used to just having those. I think this will be better in winter when the bottles will freeze much more easily.

Frozen bird bath

Frozen water bottle but not the water dish

The garden looked pretty in the frost.

The cabin roof and the rose

Shrubs

Frosty umbrella in the sunshine

rosemary

Fern

Tall grass against a blue sky

Sedum

I thought the sedums were the prettiest of all as every individual petal was outlined in white frost.

The same sedum later in the day

The girls all perch up when the ground is cold.

Little girls perching together and all fluffed up

Bigger girls perching together just before Emerald joined them

Emerald was busy in a dust bath but joined them a few minutes later.

Little girls

All the girls perching

Bigger girls above and little girls below

I love how the flock are together even though they are on two levels. They are together but still in their two groups. I like that even though they choose to be in two groups they do all gather together. They are a proper little flock.

We think that the little girls can probably be trusted to take shelter on the patio area if the weather is really cold so we decided it would be a good idea to reinstate a perch on the patio area.

At the moment the little girls sit on the little coop roof and we thought it would be better if they had a perch. The previous perch got moved when we needed another perch in the chicken shed.

We still had some spare brackets in the shed and we collected some twigs from the woods for another project (a future post) so I picked a suitable sized branch to make them a perch.

I tried Rusty on the new perch

I added freckles to the new perch

I showed Pebbles the new perch

The bigger girls inspected the new perch

If there is one thing you can say about chickens, it is that they are nosy. My husband had an audience of the bigger girls while he was putting the perch up. They just have to know what is going on and they must inspect anything new.

I think if the weather was really cold I could hook open the chicken shed door and the little girls could take shelter on the patio area or in the shed. If the door was hooked open and it was light in there they may go in although I wouldn’t hold my breath on that but if they get used to the perch on the patio area it is, sheltered, covered and dry.

I think that this may be all that is needed to keep them comfortable and happy in the winter. I will be watching over them when the cold weather comes.