Carol's Chickens

This year we have an exceptionally busy Christmas so I have had to be much more organised than usual.

Tonight we have our annual get together of twenty friends. We all club together to cover the cost and we are supplying the mains and desserts (being the caterers) and another couple are hosting at their house and getting in the booze and doing a cheese board. They are supplying bed and breakfast for some of the couples and we are supplying bed and breakfast for one couple (dear friends from Dorset).

We are all meeting up tomorrow for a pub lunch before everyone goes on their way again. Some of the friends are far flung and this is an annual chance for us all to meet up and catch up with each other. Tomorrow we also have to fit in preparing Monday’s lunches.

Next Saturday we have a wedding for a hundred and fifty people, this has been booked since the spring. We are doing an afternoon tea on our vintage crockery then they will have a hog roast in the evening. This means a lot of time leading up to it will be spent getting everything ready. We also have a lunch for twenty on the same day which I will deliver in the morning and it will be going into their fridge until later.

A few days before Christmas we are doing the full turkey Christmas dinner and all the trimmings for my husbands family (and exchanging and opening gifts) and on the same morning we are delivering a finger buffet for a hundred for a memorial service (which we will have prepared the day before).

We will then do the whole  turkey Christmas dinner again a few days after Christmas for my family (along with exchanging and opening gifts) and have also had a party enquiry for that day too.

With all this going on I needed to get ahead of the game so I started Christmas shopping earlier than usual and by the first week of December I had bought and wrapped all the gifts, written all the cards and posted everything that needed to be posted.

All that remained was to get the Christmas tree and decorate the house. Yesterday afternoon we bought a tree and I set about decorating it.

We have a Christmas tree

The lights are on and the fairy is on the top

The tree is decorated

The final touch, the gifts are under the tree

It looks a lot of gifts but it is for all our family including the grandchildren. Now we are ready for Christmas! We have a lot of work to squeeze in over the Christmas period but the house is ready.

Butterscotch is my star winter egg layer. She laid at first light this morning after missing a day yesterday. For a bantam girl her eggs are a good size. They are only fractionally smaller than a medium shop bought egg.

Butterscotch’s egg

A medium shop bought egg on the left and Butterscotch’s egg on the right. Thank you Butterscotch.

I have done a few posts on getting the bedtime perches to the right height. I knew there was a problem when I went out to the girls at first light and the automatic door was open but none of the girls had yet come out.

I realised they were struggling to get down from the perches in the restricted space and were not using the ladder as I had expected them too. Never expect them to do what you think they should do!

Since we took out the ladder and lowered the perches they have gone back to squeezing under the door as soon as it starts to rise which I have photographed recently.

I thought I would continue looking at this habit a bit further. They come out so quickly that I knew they must have already jumped down from the perch and were crowding behind the door waiting for it to open. I decided to open the big door a little and shove my camera in and try to capture them behind the door. Once again the photos are not great because I can’t really see what I am going to get as if I open the door a little bit more they will all squeeze through the smallest gap just as they squeeze under the pop hole. They are so eager to get out.

You have to make allowances for a night time’s worth of poop under the perches. I like to keep the shed clean and don’t like poop in photos but to get this early morning shot I had to put up with the mess being on show.

I thought I would start with the night time line up. I have taken a photo on each of the last three nights. The pattern seems to be that as it’s got colder they prefer to all perch on the back perch rather than the perches on either side.

None of the girls seek out being next to each other except for Peaches and Barley. Sometimes as they are bumping around and sorting out their positions I can hear Peaches and Barley making a sound that is almost like crying, a tiny whimpering sound. I would look in thinking that they were being pecked (some of the girls, in fact mainly Peaches and Barley give poor Speckles a hard time at bedtime) but no, it was simply that either Peaches or Barley couldn’t find a space next to her soul mate. They would sound upset if they couldn’t perch next to each other. Honestly, they are like children at times!

Bedtime three nights ago

Peaches and Barley have managed to get next to each other at the expense of Emerald being pushed off of the favoured back perch. I love how the girls look at each other.

Bedtime two nights ago

Peaches and Barley didn’t manage to get next to each other on this evening. This was when I could hear the whimpering because there was no space next to Barley so Peaches had to settle for grabbing the remaining space between Toffee and Emerald.

Last night’s bedtime line up

Last night all was quiet during the bedtime routine because Peaches and Barley had bagged their spot next to each other and all the girls had managed a spot on the favoured back perch, hurrah! Still love how the girls look at each other.

This morning the automatic door still wasn’t open at quarter to eight. It was raining heavily and still quite dark. I opened the main door a crack and stuck my camera in. I have included all of the photos that I took.

Behind the door

Toffee, on the right, looks as if she has just landed down from the perch.

We want to come out

Hurrah! The door is open

Lets get out of here

It was so dark out in the run that I gave them a sprinkle of sunflower hearts on the patio so that they didn’t need to go out in the dark. It made no difference though. As soon as the sunflower hearts were gone they were off out into the run.

A sprinkle of sunflower hearts on the patio

Although they perch up well before dark they are always willing to come out in the morning in low light. They obviously know that at night it will get darker and they need to get in before that happens but in the morning it will only get lighter so they are happy to come out as soon as possible.

Their enthusiasm to get out as quickly as possible makes me smile but then again it is understandable after a long night of being shut in. Once again I have to say that I know both the girls and I are looking forward to the longer days of spring and summer.

At the weekend we visited some antique shops. We are always on the look out for bargains to add to our vintage crockery collection and we enjoy browsing the antique shops. We found a few bargains and I also found a cute egg cup for only a pound. How could I resist! I have posted before that I seem to have an unintentional egg cup collection. It’s made up of gifts and bargains such as this one.

Bargain egg cup

I keep them on the top shelf of our kitchen cabinet.

The left side of the cabinet

The right side of the cabinet

I think it fits right in.

Scrambled egg is the girls very favourite treat of all. It goes so quickly that it’s almost impossible to photograph.

I gave the girls this treat this morning. I put it in four small dishes and the only way that I can insure Speckles gets a little is to put two dishes on the patio for the girls then put two dishes further away on the wooden blocks to allow Speckles a chance at the furthest away dish.

Once again my camera struggles to click fast enough to keep up with them. I only managed these four photographs. I wanted one of Speckles at her dish but it all happened so quickly that I only have her in the background.

A scramble to get to the scrambled egg

The first two dishes are empty so the girls move on to the next dish

The two dishes on the patio are emptied in seconds and the girls move on to the third dish on the first wooden block. Speckles is eating from the fourth dish on the second wooden block. You can just see her tail in the background.

Speckles is moved away from the furthest away dish

Half the girls now move on to the fourth dish and Speckles moves away.

All four dishes are empty

The scrambled egg is all gone. If I didn’t space them like this Speckles wouldn’t get any at all and although she only had her dish to herself for a few seconds at least she got a few pecks of egg. I think we can safely say that the girls enjoyed this even if only very briefly.

Today I visited Jackie’s flock, we collected some greens from the allotment for our girls and then she visited my flock. Jackie had sent me a photo of Blossom (used to be my Bluebell) during her first really heavy moult. I had never seen her looking like this before. Jackie said it was a vast improvement from how she looked a week or so earlier.

Blossom is four years old and has laid through her first three winters without a proper break or a full moult. This winter she stopped laying and moulted big time. I took my camera with me when I took Jackie back home.

Bluebell is so shy that I struggled to get a photo of her and only managed one of her trying to escape behind a bush.

Bluebell has moulted and got her feathers back in

Blossom and Chelsea

Poor Blossom looks very shabby but it is Chelsea’s first winter and she is looking fabulous. She has a big red comb and perfect feathers.

A tatty looking Blossom

Blossom and Chelsea

They enjoy some greens while Bluebell is too shy to join in in my presence

It is so odd to see her looking like this but she does have rows of pristine tiny feathers on her back and she will soon be looking beautiful again. She also seems a lot more ginger on the front of her neck but as she was intent on eating greens I couldn’t get a shot of this.

The next photos I put on here will be of Blossom looking back to her glorious best I am sure. What these poor girls have to go through to get their new feathers! It is funny how they all moult in their own way. It was really good to have a catch up.

The days are getting noticeably shorter. Last week the automatic door was closing at quarter past four and opening at quarter past seven. Last night the door closed at four o’clock and this morning it didn’t open until quarter to eight. It was very overcast which probably made it a bit later.

I decided to go and fetch my camera and have another go at trying to catch the girls tumbling out. Again I was frustrated that my camera won’t click fast enough to keep up with the girls and I have included every shot that I got which missed half the girls exiting.

I could hear them bumping about impatiently behind the door. It seems that they pretty much come out in their pecking order with top girl Topaz being first and bottom girl Speckles being last.

Topaz is eager to make her exit

Topaz flattens herself under the door

I love the way she has to hold her wings out to make herself flatter. She can’t wait one more second until it is more comfortable.

Barley, Butterscotch and Peaches are next, followed by Honey

That’s Barleys tail in the foreground and Honey is just visible under the door.

Next out is Toffee followed by Emerald

Speckles is last

Speckles is out

This whole process only took a couple of minutes and the last girl was out just as the door was raised a third of the way up. I love this demonstration on how impatient they are to get out. I can’t blame them though as they now spend twice as long in the coop as they do out of it.

I look forward to the days getting longer again and I am sure the girls will be glad to spend less time in the coop too.

A few days ago my husband called me out to the garden to show me two Red kites in the top of the tree behind our garden. We see them overhead every day but have never seen them perched in any of the trees surrounding our garden before.

I went back inside to grab my camera but when I returned one of them had flown already. My camera isn’t very sophisticated and even with the zoom the photos are still very distant but I did think it gives a bit of an idea of their size. Any other bird as high up in this tree wouldn’t show up at all in a photo from my camera.

Red kite in the tree top

And again

I walked further up the garden for the second shot to try to get a bit closer. We watched it for a few minutes before it lazily soared away. They are such magnificent birds.

After four months in our flock Speckles has at last got used to me. She is still the most nervous girl around her flock mates but she now runs to me with the rest of the flock. She now takes no notice of me when I am cleaning in the run and will allow me to take close up photos of her.

She also likes to come and check out what I am doing each morning when I poop pick the chicken shed. She will hover right next to me whereas at one time she wouldn’t come any where near me.

When I used to try to take photos of her I could never get close ups because she would always move away from me. Now she is no longer bothered by the camera. I feel we have come a long way. She will probably always be the most shy but she is no longer nervous around me and that gives me such a good feeling.

This was Speckles in a dust bath last month. I have already used this photo but thought I would show it again as it demonstrates how she is no longer bothered by me being close to her. She always used to leave her dust bath if I attempted to get close.

Speckles enjoying a dust bath

Yesterday these three girls were on the table. Speckles is now looking at me with interest rather than turning from me as she used to do.

Three girls on the wooden table

When I got closer Toffee and Topaz jumped down but Speckles stayed on the table. Before she would always have jumped down as soon as I got close to her.

Speckles on the table

This morning I was going to try to take a photo of her while she hovered by me when I was cleaning but it was too tricky with gloves and cleaning at the same time. Instead I decided to try to get a close up once I had finished. I was really pleased with this photo. Speckles would never have stood still for me to take this shot a few months ago.

A close up of Speckles

This is a very different girl to the one who first came to us. I had thought at one point that she would never get used to me. At one time she would choose to run past her flock mates who would peck at her as she passed rather than run past me. Now I think she would more happily get close to me than some of the girls.

As I have found in the past it takes time and patience to get the very shy girls used to me but we get there in the end. It is very pleasing to be able to get so close to Speckles now. She is never going to want me to pick her up, of that I am sure, but she is happy to be close to me and that will do for me.

I have been digging up just enough potatoes and leeks all summer as we need them but decided it was time to dig the rest up before winter. There were a couple of potato plants still to dig and  half a row of leeks of very differing sizes.

I was quite pleased with how many potatoes there were (more than I expected) and we have had some huge leeks but with tiny ones in between which is odd as they were all in the same ground.

The last harvest of the year

The veg plot is now empty

Its been a mixed year with the worst year ever for beans but the best year ever for leeks. The tomatoes didn’t get blight for the first time and yet the yield was small. The courgettes kept rotting before they got big enough to eat until late summer when I was picking them small and cooking them whole right up until last weekend.

Most weekends we have had something from the garden though, which is very satisfying. We will have a rethink next year and see if we can do better.

I decided to cook all the leeks.

The leeks are ready for cooking

Then I made them into portions (enough for the two of us) topped with cheese sauce.

Leeks in cheese sauce

I have kept one for Sunday dinner and put the rest into the freezer. I find they freeze well like this and when needed just need to go into a hot oven for half an hour and they taste the same as if they have just been made from fresh.

Meanwhile the chicken’s strip still has dandelions and chard to supplement their daily greens.

The chicken’s plot

That’s Peaches waiting expectantly for me to pass some leaves through the wire. They love to take the greens from my fingers and rush over if I pause at this spot. This strip is just to provide a bit of fun for both the girls and me and I intend to keep something in this strip for them all year round.

Other than that we will just have to wait and see what next year brings to the veg plot. It’s always fun to anticipate the crops we will get.