Carol's Chickens

Both yesterday and today the girls were perching together in a line but on a different perch each day. They are such a together flock. In a few days time I might rock their world a little with the addition of new girls. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

All five girls in a row

A lot of preening going on

At last, all five heads

Those photos were yesterday just outside the hatch that joins the older part of the run with the newer part.

Below was this morning at the bottom end of the run.

Five girls in a row once more

Peaches stretches her wing

I love to see the girls together like this. They are a really tight little flock. I just hope the new girls fit in without too much trouble and that they remain a happy flock.

I am looking forward to having a few more characters.

This week has been a bit busy and I have slipped behind with blogging. Last Saturday my husband collected his mum from up north for a two week stay with us. It was her ninety sixth birthday.

We bought her some flowers and a Chinese takeaway and we organised all the family to come over for a huge Sunday roast the following day.

Birthday flowers

This weekend my mother in law went to stay with her niece for a couple of days while we had a couple of catering functions to do. We delivered a finger buffet Saturday morning and did an Indian style Barbecue on Saturday afternoon. We had done the same combination for these people twice the previous year and as with last year it all went really well.

This morning my husband is collecting his mum, from his cousin’s house, to bring her back to us and we will have Sunday roast together and then will host a family afternoon tea tomorrow for our grandson’s fifth birthday.

My mother in law is going back home on Thursday and my good friend Jackie is also moving to the Isle of Wight on Thursday. Phew! What a busy couple of weeks.

While all of this has been going on, life in the chicken run has been very quiet. My flock of five feels very small and I feel the time is right to add some new girls.

We visited a farm a year ago to see some bantams that we might like to add to our flock when the time is right. I now feel that time has come. I want to add a couple of seramas to our flock.

I knew this wouldn’t be possible until after my mother in law’s stay as I will need to separate the run, let them out early in the morning, keep an eye on them settling in, get them to bed in the evening and eventually start the integration process as well as take photos and blog about the whole experience.

I called the farm a few days ago to check that they have some seramas for sale and as Kirstin will be out all day Saturday and Sunday the following weekend we have arranged to go over on Thursday afternoon to collect a couple of seramas.

I am now getting really excited at the prospect of new girls. I know this could potentially rock a very calm boat but on the other hand it could boost Speckles as she may no longer be bottom girl.

Seramas are slightly smaller than my girls and docile by nature so I am hoping this means that I won’t be introducing any aggression from the new girls. I think Speckles and Barley will the ones to watch as bottom girls always want to move up the pecking order when new girls arrive and Barley has in the past had little spats with each member of the current flock to prove that she won’t be messed with.

Having said that, with Barley, it has been a one off and once she had proved her point she has never continued to throw her weight around and the flock are all getting along with no aggression at all at the moment. I am confident that two new little girls should fit into the flock quite well after initial integrations. Having done this many times before I know what to expect and feel ready for the challenge.

I just can’t wait to bring home some new girls. Watch this space!

Peaches and Barley have always been an inseparable pair of girls.

Peaches and Barley chilling together

They are often sitting together like this or dust bathing together. They couldn’t sit much closer together if they tried. We often think they look like a pair of bookends. They do make me smile.

Speckles is still dropping feathers. She has a very pale comb and a short tail at the moment. Her two little feathers that stand up on her head have returned and her head has a lot more white than before she moulted.

Speckles with her little head feathers sticking up

Speckles has more white on her head than before she moulted

She has quite a white patch on her head

The girls do look funny when you catch them straight on

She seems to have been moulting for ages and she does get more white each year. She is a cute little girl.

After Butterscotch had gone Toffee wanted to sleep out in the run for the first three nights. I chased her into the shed each night and on the fourth night she went in by herself and has done so ever since then.

The surprising thing is, that she has changed her habit from always sleeping by the shed wall, to sleeping in the middle of the perch in the position Butterscotch always sat in. At first I thought it may be a one off but she has roosted in this middle position every night since.

I think perhaps she has settled into Butterscotch’s position of being top girl and therefore also her position on the roost.

Last night I thought I would take a photo to demonstrate this. I took three in case there ended up being a blurred one and thought they were quite amusing so decided to use all three.

I just love the way the girls look down from the perch and always wonder what they expect to see down below.

Toffee is in the middle

Speckles looks down

Barley looks down

These girls do make me smile.

I love the way our path zig zags beyond the veg patch and the edging plants tumble over it.

My favourite part of our new path

I like this corner of the path

It will look better still when the plants on the right edge of the path fill in and tumble over it too.

I am so pleased at the way the path enhances the garden rather than detracting from it. I think as time goes on it will look better and better. I am so glad we have got the path done at last.

Since Butterscotch left the flock Toffee had chosen to sleep outside in the run for three nights. Last night I knew things were changing. When we went up after dinner and gave out the usual dandelion leaves Toffee was no longer perched up in the corner of the run but was hanging out with the girls.

I knew this was the night that she would return to the chicken shed. I could sense the change in her.

Later I checked in on the girls and sure enough they were all in the shed. The surprising thing was that Toffee was no longer in her usual position against the wall but was in Butterscotch’s position, right in the middle of the perch.

Toffee has taken the position in the middle of the perch

This was a total surprise to me. The last three nights I have chased Toffee in at near dusk and even in near dark she has moved from the middle to her usual position next to the wall. Last night she went in of her own accord and chose the middle spot and stayed there.

It will be interesting to see if this is a one off or if this is a new routine. I may be reading too much into this but it seems to me that she may be accepting her new role of top girl and moving more confidently into the middle position of the former top girl.

Time will tell but I think things are changing.

The day I wrangled with the decision of taking Butterscotch to Moira was a really horrible day. Dealing with Butterscotch’s story was enough to post that day so I put the other matter aside for another day.

I had come to the certain conclusion that Butterscotch was being plucked and felt the sooner I acted the better and I decided to call Moira in the afternoon after our deliveries were done.

We delivered our lunches and arrived back home at lunch time. To our surprise our neighbours had devastated our rose along the fence line while we were out.

When we moved in nine years ago the gardens were very open and overlooked. Because our path runs alongside the boundary fence we couldn’t grow anything against the fence.

My husband came up with the idea of putting up arches and growing roses and honeysuckle over them. The neighbours we had at the time said they loved seeing the rose growing over the fence as their garden didn’t have much planting and they got the flowers before we did because of the direction of the sun.

Of course we told them to feel free to cut anything that encroached too much on their side and they used to give the rose a gentle prune at the end of each summer.

We had new neighbours move in at the end of last year and of course we said to them too that they should feel free to prune anything that came too far over the fence.

What we hadn’t expected was that they would cut it back completely without talking to us first. Had we have known they were thinking of getting rid of everything on their side we would have pulled as much of the rose as we could back over to our side.

They had reached through the trellis and cut through thick branches that had growth going along the entire length of the fence. This killed lots of the growth that we had tied along the fence over the past nine years giving both us and them a screen between the gardens for some privacy.

Our rose on our boundary fence

Our rose is at it’s best in June

The rose is trashed

We have lost our screen

The rose is no longer over the fence

The gardens are as open as they were nine years ago when we moved here

We now looked straight into their garden and also straight into their kitchen (the white extension). My husband was absolutely furious. He couldn’t understand why they didn’t talk to us first so that we could have managed the rose between us instead of just killing huge swathes of it.

In the mean time I had called Moira and she had agreed to take Butterscotch but it needed to be right away as she was going out later and was busy the next day.

The journey over was awful as I was upset to be taking her and my husband was so angry about the rose. This was turning out to be a really horrible day.

At the end of the day my husband asked the neighbours not to cut any more and said that we would make sure the next day that it was all on our side. He let them know he was upset by this and I stayed indoors as I didn’t feel up to confrontation and I didn’t want to fall out with the neighbours.

The next day I had a lunch for fifty with lots of extras ordered so I had to plod on with the work while my husband set about repairing the damage. He decided to put up some boards to keep the rose on our side.

I went out to help at moments when he needed another pair of hands. I saw our neighbour sitting on her patio and felt that I must say something as I didn’t want there to be bad feeling between us. I said that I didn’t want us to fall out over a fence and explained that we were putting solid panels up instead of just trellis to keep the rose to our side.

She said that they were putting a bamboo screen up on their side as they wanted more privacy. She said she was happy for us to put what we wanted on our side and then they would add the bamboo to their side.

I can understand that they probably thought that the way to go was to cut everything level with the fence so that they could then put up some bamboo screening but I still think they could have talked to us and we could have done it between us without so much damage.

It isn’t like a hedge that can just be cut smoothly, some branches are long reaching. They know the hours we are at home and they didn’t need to do it while we were out but I just don’t want bad feeling between us.

My husband put some boards on to the top of the fence

View from the other direction

We then attached some trellis

View from the other direction

We put up the boards then some trellis then tied any remaining bits of the rose to the trellis making sure it was all on our side. This cost us just over a hundred pounds plus an afternoons work.

In the early evening our neighbours put up the bamboo screen on their side.

Our neighbours have now put up a bamboo screen on their side of the fence

View from the other direction

Had we not have put the panels on our side they wouldn’t have had any more privacy than through the rose. I took a photo to show that you can actually see straight through the bamboo.

Close up of bamboo as a screen!

We have actually done them a favour by putting solid panels on our side. It doesn’t look so bad from our side now but it will take a few years for the rose to grow back over the empty panels.

I think they may be intending to do the same throughout the length of the garden so we will have to do this on our side over the rest of the garden to keep the rest of our roses. This will be more awkward to do behind the chicken run but we will tackle that another day.

Any one who reads my blog regularly will know that not only am I passionate about chickens but we are passionate about our garden too so this was a pretty stressful few days.

I don’t think our neighbours are going to be good friends of ours in the future but as my husband says we won’t have to see them through the fence any more.

At bedtime the day before yesterday, without Butterscotch, Toffee decided she wanted to sleep outside in the run. Toffee is usually first in the chicken shed at bedtime because she likes to take her place against the wall of the shed.

The only time she has decided to sleep out since we have had the chicken shed was when we had the path done and the stress of the guys working by the run coupled with the fact that I couldn’t go up to the girls as I couldn’t stand on the newly laid path led to her to sleep out for one night.

I have to assume that she feels a bit of upset at Butterscotch, who was the top girl, leaving as she once again decided to sleep out. I chased her from the perch at the furthest point of the run to the chicken shed four times before deciding to close the pop hole and keep her in.

Yesterday morning it was unusually quiet. I had to look out of the bedroom window to check that the automatic door had opened as there wasn’t a squeak out of the girls. Usually I hear them in the early morning before I go out to them.

I decided to give them some mash to cheer to them up a bit.

I gave the girls some mash

They all joined in at the mash

They are enjoying this treat

Speckles was a bit intimidated by Peaches and Barley

Emerald and Speckles decided to give up for now

Peaches and Barley only had to look at Speckles to cause her to run away. I knew she would go back to the dish when they have had their fill though.

In the evening the same thing happened again. Toffee decided she was sleeping out. I don’t know why Butterscotch leaving should cause Toffee not to want to sleep in the shed. It’s very odd.

Four girls in the shed at bedtime

Toffee wants to roost here

I chased Toffee into the shed

Once again I chased Toffee into the shed and closed the pop hole. I will continue to do this until she gets back into the habit of going to bed in the shed. I am amazed that Butterscotch going has changed her habit like this. I think the girls are missing Butterscotch.

Toffee is back in her usual spot

At dusk I checked in again and Toffee was in her usual position next to the wall. I connected the automatic door back up again for the morning. I wonder how long this new routine will continue. It has clearly unsettled the girls having Butterscotch leave.

I agonised over this decision yesterday and decided to call Moira at the farm for a chat to help me make up my mind.

I am not happy that Butterscotch hasn’t been able to keep her head feathers, let alone the crest that she should have, in almost her entire time with our flock. Below is a photo of when she first came to us and this is what she should look like.

Butterscotch in all her glory

I feel so saddened that it has been such a long time since she has looked like this. For many months now I clung on to the hope that she may just be moulting her head feathers every time she goes broody and that the next time she grows them she will keep them.

This time round I realised that this is not so. She simply must be getting plucked each time she goes broody which she does like clockwork. I looked back and realised that she only looked like this in the early months with our flock. For over half her time with us she hasn’t looked like this.

This is not fair. She shouldn’t be destined to live her life without her bouffant hair do and magnificent crest.

I talked to Moira and asked if she would take her and she said she would be happy to. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have Moira who I trust completely to take my girls. I think Butterscotch deserves a life with a flock that won’t leave her constantly with no head feathers.

Moira said that if she kept her until she got her head feathers back, I could always have her back again if I wanted to. I said that wouldn’t be fair. I wouldn’t want to keep unsettling both Butterscotch and my flock and I would always be afraid that the next time she went broody she would get plucked again. Once the decision is made I believe that it is best to stick by it.

It seems crazy to send the victim to a new home rather than the perpetrator but I believe that in this case it is the best course of action. I don’t know who the perpetrator is for sure but I would guess that it is Barley. I couldn’t separate Barley and Peaches plus I have had them from six weeks old and I have had them for more than twice as long as Butterscotch.

Butterscotch could live with Moira’s flock and grow back her head feathers in the first month or two and keep them. I am sure she will be happier not being plucked every time she goes broody. She has always been very much her own girl and not dependent on the flock.

Moira said that I could bring her straight away and as she was busy the next day and we are also really busy in the next few days it seemed best to jump right on to it and take her straight away. Moira said that as she is broody and just wants to sit she will keep her in the cat box that I took her in until dusk and then put her in the barn.

I know Moira is very well used to integrating new girls successfully and she says she loves taking in waifs and strays as it keeps her busy. She has just taken a mare and foal from a man who wanted to retire from horse keeping but wanted them to go to a good home.

I feel a bit choked and the flock feels a bit small but I also feel that I have made the right decision.