Carol's Chickens

I have talked a bit recently about some of Emerald’s funny habits. Emerald and Speckles are the two girls that have their funny habits firmly entrenched in their daily routine. They are the most predictable and interactive with me.

Yesterday I decided to try to catch this with photos to demonstrate.

When I go up the garden towards the chooks they all run down to the wire to greet me. Without fail Emerald always goes up the ladder as I reach this point so that she is on eye level with me.

Emerald always goes up the ladder as I get to this point

She then goes back down the ladder and follows me to the gate with the rest of the girls. As I open the gate Emerald always, without fail, jumps on to the inner gate.

Emerald jumps on the inner gate as I open the outer gate

She seems to like to get as close to me as she can and yet if I have any treats to drop into the run she then has to drop down again from the gate. She uses up extra energy running up and down the ladder and up and then down again from the gate but she does this every time. It’s become a very firm habit.

Once through the gate I give the girls some corn in the morning, some spinach mid morning, some apple in the afternoon and some sunflower hearts before bedtime. I give the corn at bedtime in the winter and in the morning in the summer because digesting the corn provides heat.

The flock share their morning corn

The flock share some spinach

That’s Emerald’s habits and this is Speckles habit. Almost every time I walk through the gate and always at corn and sunflower seeds time Speckles jumps on my back. She then makes her way up to my neck and chatters in my ear.

Speckles moves up my back to my shoulder

You can see the footprints where she makes it to about half way up my back and then moves upwards. I keep this cardigan as my “chicken cardigan” for this reason and my husband brushes me down when I leave the run.

She likes to move to my neck

This is especially nice when she has muddy feet and dirt drops inside the neck of my cardigan.

This is where she likes to be

I pause to turn to camera

I make my way to the store cabinet

I reach in for the seeds

It’s not the easiest of manoeuvres but I have got used to gently taking things from the cupboard with speckles on my shoulder.

Occasionally Peaches or Barley have jumped on my back then shoulder when I am at the cupboard and they then jumped from my shoulder to the shelf inside the cupboard. I had to quickly lift them down before they cause mayhem. Speckles has never done this though, she stays on my shoulder until I stoop down so that she can safely jump down.

If I don’t stoop down she will fly down and I am always afraid she will crash into something and hurt herself so I always crouch down to allow her to jump down safely. Then I can throw out some seeds.

This routine takes place every day without fail. Peaches and Barley also jump on me but it is at random and is usually when I am poop picking the run or bent over looking in a nest box. They don’t do this every day like Speckles does. Speckles, however, only does this as I walk through the gate. It’s a bit like a greeting.

She does this many times a day. She wouldn’t bother if I just popped in when she was having a dust bath or having some turf but if she is near the patio area she always does it and without fail she does this first thing in the morning and last thing before bedtime.

They do make me smile with their funny little ways and they are such creatures of habit.

Emerald is laying really well at the moment. She generally lays every other day and lays four or five eggs a week.

Emerald has a few unique traits and one of them is that she often gets a bit manic before she lays. I have never seen any other chicken do this but she sometimes runs back and forth as if she is demented. She will run to the nest box coops then run out into the garden part of the run and then back again. At first I used to think that there was something wrong with her. She looks like animals do when they are pacing because they are caged up except she does it a manic speed.

She then goes and settles in the nest box and quickly lays her egg. I have wondered if she does this because I am a distraction and she is torn between wanting to go into the nest box and staying out in case she misses something so I now leave if she is behaving like this.

Emerald also spends a lot of time picking over the grit and oyster shell. Yesterday she laid an egg with lots of little calcium bumps on the shell. I think she has been taking a bit too much calcium.

Emerald’s egg

Most of her eggs are normal so I am not worried about this and it means her eggs have good hard shells.

Today was a five egg day. I wonder if we will ever get that elusive six egg day. All the girls laid except Toffee as she hasn’t laid for a couple of weeks due to her moulting. As Butterscotch lays half the time and is broody half the time it is probably unlikely to have all six girls laying at once. I am amazed that we have had, five, five egg days this year so far.

A five egg day

From the left the first egg is Emerald’s and the second egg is Speckles large egg, next is Butterscotch’s egg then Barley’s then Peaches on the right. Well done girls!

It seems to have taken forever for Butterscotch to get her head and neck feathers in but at last her pins are opening. I took a set of photos a few days ago to demonstrate this but I had other posts tumbling out and didn’t get the post written straight away.

Butterscotch’s head feathers are coming in at last

The side of her head has longer pins

The other side of her head

The top of her head

The gap is disappearing

Today I could see another change in just the few days since I had taken these photos. Her head is now flecked with orange instead of just white pins on grey skin.

Butterscotch today

Her head is almost covered

The other side of her head

I think she will soon be fully covered in feathers without any gaps. Whether her crest comes back this year remains to be seen but I am pleased that she will no longer have a bare head. She is looking much better than I had thought she would at one point.

I look forward to taking more photos when her feathers are completely grown back.

Yesterday Barley laid her egg too close to the ramp again. Once more it had rolled down the ramp on to the patio and cracked. I scrambled it and dotted it on top of a dish of mash.

Is this a ploy from Barley! Lay the egg where it will crack and the chooks get to have it as a treat. Okay, I don’t think my girls have enough brain power to think that one through but it’s just a little joke in our house. Barley has insured the girls get a little scrambled egg once more.

I put the dish down and there is a mad scrum to get the bits of egg.

Some scrambled egg on top of a dish of mash

It’s a mad dash to get the egg

The egg is gone in seconds

The girls really love scrambled egg and it only lasted a few seconds. It disappears faster than any other treat. The mash lasted about an hour before the dish was completely emptied. I always feel this is a way of giving them a treat that encourages them to eat more pellets. I do like to see happy girls.

We have poppies, amongst other things, self seeded around the garden but we had an empty pot that had held an annual last year and a yellow poppy has self seeded itself perfectly in the middle of this pot. It looks like it has been planted and can happily stay there.

Self seeded yellow poppy

We have planted various bulbs in the nine years we have lived here but have long since given up planting tulips as they never come back after the first year. I think the squirrels, of which we have many, dig them up.

However the few tulips that were already in this garden when we moved in have survived. They don’t increase in number but they do come up each year. My favourite of these are this little group.

A bright splash of colour when closed

An even brighter of colour splash when open

Every year there are just four of them but they are beautiful. In fact I have photographed them before but just couldn’t resist doing it again. I love the contrasting yellow centres when they open up in the sun.

They are a lovely splash of colour.

Toffee hasn’t laid an egg for two weeks now. I was wondering why she had stopped laying when suddenly she started moulting. It seems a bit early to be moulting.

The game girls do have a short laying season and Toffee’s is a bit shorter than Emerald’s but this is short even for her.

Last year Toffee started laying at the beginning of April and finished at the end of May. She laid thirty five eggs in two months.

This year Toffee started half way through March and stopped at the end of April. She has laid twenty six eggs in one and a half months.

This is Toffee and Emerald’s third egg laying year with us but as the farmer used game birds as his broodies I can’t be sure how old they were when we got them. They may have been one or two years old already.

Both Toffee and Emerald are showing white tips to their feathers when they lose their outer wing feathers. It’s almost like us going grey.

Toffee’s feathers

I picked these up one morning a few days ago and picked up the same again in the afternoon.

Toffee’s white tipped feather

As she loses outer wing feathers a white tipped feather is exposed.

Toffee has a bunch of loose feathers under each wing

Toffee has feathers sticking out under each wing

I took these photos of Toffee yesterday. As she moves feathers are fluttering from her. I looked back at last year and she did start moulting at the end of May so I am guessing her earlier start to egg laying this year is why she is moulting earlier.

When researching game birds before I got them I had read that they were poor layers and was surprised because while Toffee and Emerald lay they do lay almost every day. I now think that it is meaning the amount of eggs per year because they have such a short season.

They are such lovely girls though that I couldn’t care about that. I would always want game girls in my flock as I love the way they look and the way they behave. They are adorable. It is interesting how different the different breeds are and that is part of what I love about my diverse little flock.

Until quite recently we have been having frosts in the morning so have held back from planting the veg plot. This week the weather has changed and at last we have been having lovely warm sunny days. It was time to start off the veg plot.

We are experimenting with doing things a little differently this year. We used to grow tomatoes and courgettes successfully in pots but last year planted them directly into the veg plot and had our worst crop ever.

We usually grow our potatoes in the veg plot and have good crops but are plagued by wire worms in them.

Our runner beans also gave us our worst crop last year and they take up so much space.

There seems little point in having our patio crammed with pots of veg and struggling to fill up the veg plot so we have come up with a plan to trial. We are sinking the tomato pots into the veg plot and planting courgettes and potatoes in bags on the veg plot. We are trying dwarf beans instead of runner beans from some beans that Jackie has given us.

On Thursday my husband started work on the veg plot

My husband has sunk some pots for tomatoes and planted broad beans on the left. The courgette and potato bags are filled with potting compost in readiness.

On Friday my husband continued with the veg plot.

The tomatoes are now planted in the pots at the front and a chilli plant, that was on offer, is in the metal container (a chimney cowl that my husband kept in case it came in useful!).

Three courgette plants are in this bag

Three potato bags with maris piper seed potatoes planted

The beans have been planted within this square marked with string

On Friday Jackie and I visited the allotment and we dug up dandelions and chard. I added a few more dandelions to fill any gaps in the girl’s dandelion patch and planted chard in the rest of their strip. Some were plants from the allotments and some were from the garden centre. The girl’s strip is now filled.

The girl’s dandelion patch being checked out by Peaches

The girl’s chard being checked out by Emerald

The girl’s strip

The veg plot on Saturday

We have added leeks on the left and peas on the right. Next to the path on the right is a row of pak choi.

My husband has added some pea sticks he collected from the woodland behind our garden

The plot from the other direction

We have a bit of space in the middle in front of the potato bags to add something else. We are quite pleased with how it is looking and now just have to watch everything grow and hope it will be a good year.

Yesterday we were at a garden centre buying what we needed for our veg plot (a post coming soon) when I spotted some turf. I just had to get one for the girls.

I laid down the whole turf in a spot with dappled shade. The girls went straight to it to investigate.

A turf for the girls

They are loving the turf

Once the other girls had lost interest Butterscotch and Speckles had the turf to themselves

A little later and four girls are on the turf

These three girls spent the most time on the turf

Later in the day all six girls were back on the turf

Later that afternoon all the girls were sitting in the sun or taking dust baths but Toffee was sitting in a shaft of sunlight on the turf. I didn’t manage to get a photo but she looked very queenly sat on her comfy strip of turf.

The girls would go back to the turf throughout the day.

This morning first thing the girls were all back on the turf and as the day has gone by the grass is beginning to thin.

Today on the turf

The grass is gradually getting thinner

I think I can safely say they are all enjoying the turf. I am not sure it will last very long but eventually they can enjoy scratching the roots and soil once the grass has gone.

I think at last Butterscotch is getting feathers on her head. We haven’t seen any pulling of pins for a while now which is really good. Butterscotch seems to have a mix of fluff and pins on her head at the moment.

She is also moulting once more. I am picking up a dozen feathers each morning under her roost spot and again during the day from the run and her dust bath spots. She has been moulting a bit at a time for eight months now.

Butterscotch has pins in the gaps

Her little black heart is on show in this photo, so sweet!

She has fluff and pins on her head now

She has pins on the top of her head

Only time will tell how well covered her head will be but I am more hopeful now that she will have a feathered head even if she doesn’t have her crest this year. As this is her first year I can’t predict how she will look and will just have to wait and see but I am more positive now that she will have feathers covering her head which I am really pleased about.

When we had Topaz and Honey in the flock the bedtime routine was a drawn out affair. The lower ranking girls would roost on the back perch then when Topaz and Honey went in they would peck at them until they jumped down and ran out again.

It was always Speckles, Emerald, Toffee, Peaches and Barley that would in turn coming running out again. Butterscotch used to go in last and was never moved from her position.

They finally settled as it was getting dark and I would go in and clean up the poop from the patio before locking the gate to the run for the night.

I re-homed Topaz and Honey purely because of the feather pulling. I couldn’t bare to see feathers pulled from the girls and couldn’t risk it becoming a habit throughout the entire flock.

What I hadn’t expected was the huge change this has brought to the flock. I have talked recently about the harmony in the flock now. There is no longer a need to spread treat dishes around so that the lower ranking girls get a share. All six girls happily share treats from one dish with no pecking and chasing.

The bedtime routine has also completely changed. After their bedtime corn the girls spend a while scratching together (maybe they think they might just find a bit of hidden extra corn).

Then they all go into the chicken shed and line up on the back perch. There is no squabbling and no running out again. When I go in to lock the gate there is usually one blob of poop only on the patio which shows how quickly they have settled. They don’t even wait for it to get dark.

The bedtime line up

Some things don’t change though. Butterscotch still likes the middle of the perch. Peaches and Barley still like to stick together. Emerald or Toffee are often apart from the rest of the girls. Has Emerald been sent to Coventry? Sometimes, especially when it’s cold, they are all bunched up together only taking up half the perch.

I used to wonder why, when they sit together during the day, they couldn’t just sit together at night without a fuss first. I hadn’t realised at the time how disruptive the two top girls aggressive behaviour was. I am sure that Speckles has a much nicer life now than before.

The routine is now easy and quick and settled which is so nice to see.