Carol's Chickens

Dotty, Amber and Honey have all had piles of feathers falling from them and have now regrown their feathers and are looking really good. Bluebell seems to be moulting one feather at a time, she never looks much different apart from some tatty tail feathers. Pepper seems to have moulted in two halves. She lost lots of feathers and felt prickly with pin feathers underneath her, then silky soft as they came through but didn’t lose her tail like Dotty, Honey and Amber.

This last week though there have been piles of domonique feathers in the coop again every morning and I am constantly picking them up from the run. Pepper now looks really tatty around her back and tail.

Pepper also stopped laying two weeks ago. Dotty stopped laying two months ago and the bantys stopped laying three months ago. Bluebell is laying an average of five eggs a week and is keeping us in eggs for breakfast at the weekends and one mid week breakfast every other week. When I look in the fridge and see six blue eggs I realize that without Bluebell we wouldn’t be getting any eggs at the moment.

The good news is that two weeks ago I said that I thought Dotty and Amber were getting their necks plucked again as they both had a v shape of under feathers below where they were plucked before but Honey had all her neck feathers. Now I have noticed that both Dotty and Amber’s neck feathers have filled in. I was wrong, they weren’t being pulled out after all, they had just not regrown from moulting. This is really good news and I am hoping they will stay fully feathered as they look so lovely at the moment.

Pepper also has pin feathers on her bottom again so maybe they will all be fully feathered soon.

The other change that has taken place is that Honeys feathers have come back with the traditional vorwerk colouring of plain black and gold (minus the peacock like spots she had on her back before the moult) but Ambers feathers have come back with black speckles on her back and her breast. I think this is really pretty and the bonus is that it’s much easier to tell them apart now. Amber has remained smaller (but feistier)  than Honey but my husband couldn’t tell them apart. Now I think he can although he still confuses their names!

Pepper now has an extremely tatty tail, what is left of it!

Poor Pepper looks a sorry sight

Dotty  on the right of this photo is looking good now

Bluebell has some tatty tail feathers

Amber’s neck feathers have grown back in

Dotty’s neck feathers have grown back in

Amber now has black speckles on her back and breast

Honey has a plain gold back and breast

Amber is newly speckled

Honey is plain gold and black which is the usual vorwerk colouring

I am loving seeing the girls getting their beautiful feathers back again and think they all look so adorable. I really hope this time they stay feathered.

Pepper and Dotty are dominiques which are a rare pure breed with rose combs. They are one of the oldest American breeds and very cold hardy due their comb which is not prone to frostbite and their thick layer of downy under feathers.

When we first collected them Pepper was two months old and Dotty was one month old and not fully feathered. I wondered if we would be able to tell them apart when they were fully grown. I needn’t have worried as they look very different and have quite different combs and faces.

There was only one place I could find breeding them in England and that was a farm in Dorset which is a one and half hour drive from us. The breeder had two breeding pairs of dominiques and I have often speculated that Pepper and Dotty may have come from the two different sets of parents.

The rose comb is a ridged comb ending in a backward facing spike. Pepper’s comb is quite ridged and her spike goes to quite a point. Dotty’s comb is much flatter and less pointed and I often think it looks as if it’s made of plastic. Dotty’s lobes are also bigger than Pepper’s. I think Pepper has a prettier face and comb but Dotty has a very sweet nature.

Having been together since they were so young, these two have a real bond with each other. Pepper is top hen and Dotty is second in command. I sometimes wonder if this is what gives her such a sweet nature. She enjoys the prestigious position that comes from being so close to Pepper but doesn’t need to peck at the others to maintain her place in the pecking order. Dotty basks in Pepper’s top position and gets on with enjoying her own position without any hassle. Dotty doesn’t bother the other girls and they don’t bother her. Pepper keeps the other girls in their place with a swift peck when needed, to remind them she is top hen, but she has never ever pecked Dotty nor has Dotty ever pecked her.

Pepper’s comb is spikey

Pepper has a point to her comb

Dotty’s comb is quite smooth

Dotty’s comb has a more rounded and flatter spike

Pepper’s comb side view

Dotty’s comb side view

Bluebell is a chalk hill blue and is a hybrid. Bluebell has quite a large floppy comb and large lobes.

Bluebell has a floppy comb

Bluebell was firmly bottom hen before we added the bantys to our flock in May. She has since then bullied them to let them know that they are below her and that she doesn’t intend to be bottom hen any longer.

The bantys are pure breeds and are vorwerks. They have a single comb and we got them at about six months old. I had much more difficulty telling these girls apart until I got to know them. Amber is the smallest of the two but also the feisty one and Honey is firmly in the position of bottom hen.

Like Dotty I often think Honey has an easier life because she accepts her place at the bottom and therefore doesn’t bother the other girls and Bluebell doesn’t bother her as much as Amber. Because of this Amber has a little bit missing from her comb where it was pecked during the integration period.

Ambers comb

It’s difficult to see as these girls and their combs are so small but the top part of her comb has a little bit missing.

Honey’s comb

Honey’s comb has more of a point to the end.

Amber also shows Honey from time to time that she is above Honey in the pecking order. When we first got them and they were in the separated part of the run, while going through the integration period, they would run at each other. They would chest butt and fly at each other and it soon became obvious that Amber was top out of the two of them. If there were treats Amber would peck Honey away from them. They soon settled their order and are always together.

Recently though when I was cleaning the run I heard a commotion and was really  surprised to see Amber and Honey having a real go at each other. They were flying at each other and feathers were drifting from them. Amber was the instigator because I separated them with my hand but Amber would chase Honey behind the bush. I had no idea what had started this and soon they resumed being together as normal. I can only assume that Amber was making her higher position known to Honey and yet Honey seems happy to be bottom girl and never contests her position.

I have never seen the big girls do this other than the baby chest bumping during their early days. It seems that although Amber is the smallest she is not going to let that stop her from avoiding the bottom position. I find the pecking order quite fascinating.

I know I recently did a post about the girls enjoying a bag of leaves but it is so joyful that I can’t resist briefly revisiting this. I recently met up with my friend and fellow chicken keeper Jackie and she gave me a bag of leaves and some greens from her allotment for the girls which are always much appreciated.

As promised I did tell the girls they were a gift from Auntie Jackie but I am not sure they were paying much attention!

They approached with the usual caution and interest

They soon had their heads down finding goodness knows what amongst those leaves

At last I managed to catch Dotty mid scratch

The girls always do this scratching movement among the leaves but most of the time by the time I have clicked the shot it’s missed it. This photo shows the typical scratching movement that the girls do all the time and is so amusing to watch.

When I went back a little later the leaves were scattered over the entire run. The girls will have days of joy from scratching in these leaves. Thank you Jackie.

Since all the girls have been moulting they have regrown their feathers and are looking better than they have looked all summer.

Due to the feather plucking habit Pepper and Dotty both had bare bottoms. Bluebell had a bare neck and had lost her head crest. Poor Dotty looked the worse with a bare neck and a completely bare head as well as a partly bare bottom and the little girls also had bare necks and partly bare heads.

I have always felt that the stress of losing Treacle (top hen) back in February was the trigger for this behaviour and then it became a habit they enjoyed and nothing I tried stopped them doing it.

They seem to enjoy pulling feathers from each other as part of the dust bathing ritual and also as part of the bedtime ritual.

Pepper as top hen was the only one not to have her neck or head plucked but instead Dotty and Bluebell would sneak up behind her and pluck her bottom so she always had the most bare bottom. Pepper would pluck Bluebell’s neck but when cuddling up to Dotty in the evening on the coop roof she would pluck Dotty’s neck and head. These two have always been really close and it seemed to have become a bonding process between them.

I added the bantys at the end of April in the hope that more flock members might improve the situation as I had tried everything else. The little girls soon got their necks plucked as part of the acceptance ritual.

It didn’t bother the girls but it bothered me as it spoiled their appearance. Then came the moult and at last new feathers. I really hoped that they wouldn’t pull them again. Pepper had pin feathers coming in on her bottom. Bluebell got her crest back. Best of all Dotty got her head feathers back (much improving her looks) and her neck feathers started to come through. The bantys also looked smart again with their neck feathers growing back and their lovely black head feathers regrowing.

I hoped and hoped they wouldn’t pluck each other again. I wasn’t sure if Bluebells neck feathers had started to regrow and been pulled out again as there was never a noticeable change in her neck. Her missing neck feathers have never been as obvious as the other girls and they seem to have stayed like that. I’m not sure if they have been pulled again as soon as they started to emerge.

I then realised that Peppers bottom was still bare so the pin feathers that had started to come through must have been pulled out again. The next thing I noticed was that Dotty’s neck was being plucked again as below the pin feathers coming in on her neck are fluffy under feathers where some of the outer neck feathers have disappeared.

After that I noticed that Amber had started to lose her neck feathers again and yet Honey still has hers. Amber is the more feisty of the two little girls and Honey is firmly bottom hen. I have caught Bluebell pulling feathers from Amber’s neck and think it’s part of the bullying that Bluebell does to show Amber that she is below her in the pecking order.

Before we had the bantys Bluebell was bottom hen and has bullied the bantys, especially Amber, to show them that they are firmly below her. She doesn’t want to be bottom hen any more.

Bluebell is still missing neck feathers

Just below her wattle Bluebell is missing neck feathers. Because of her variable colouring it doesn’t really show too much and she is getting her crest back just behind her comb.

Bluebell’s missing neck feathers

This photo shows a little more clearly the missing feathers in a V shape just below her wattle. Luckily it doesn’t spoil her appearance because it doesn’t show up much. This is why it’s tricky to know if they started coming back in or not.

Honey still has her neck feathers

Maybe there is an advantage to being bottom hen as Honey hasn’t had any feathers plucked again so far. The white flecks in her black collar are the remaining bits of the keratin sheaf on the new quills. At first the little girls were a mass of these white flecks but they are gradually getting rubbed off.

Amber’s neck feathers have been freshly plucked

Amber’s neck feathers have been plucked just below her black collar.

Dotty has her fluffy bottom back again

Bluebell never lost her fluffy bottom. It is so lovely to see Dotty with a fluffy bottom again and her tail regrowing.

Pepper still has a bare patch on her bottom

These are the only feathers that Pepper has ever had missing so it’s not too bad but I do wonder if it’s a bit draughty  in winter though.

Overall if they end up missing neck feathers but don’t get their heads plucked again I will be happy with that. They look a lot better than they did in summer.

Amber on the log

The bantys can often be found on this log, it’s a favourite spot

This is the look that says that Amber is about to jump into the apple tree

Amber is in the tree

Dotty decides she must join Amber in the tree causing Amber to jump down

Dotty’s neck feathers have been plucked again

This shows where Dotty’s feathers have been plucked, lower down than before.

Dotty joins Pepper on the big perch

Now it’s the little girls turn on the big perch

Honey has lost the peacock like spot from her back since the moult. Honey is on the left and Amber on the right. I can only tell them apart now as I know them so well. They are slightly different in shape (have different personalities) and have slightly different combs as Amber has a peck out of hers from the integration days.

I don’t think the feather pulling problem is ever going to go away completely but if it gets no worse than this then it is an improvement. Only time will tell.

My husband swept up the leaves from the garden and put them in a bin sack for the girls. A few days ago we tipped them in a heap in the run.

A pile of leaves

The girls soon gathered round the leaves and started to scratch in them. They were having a great time and I don’t know what they find in those leaves but they didn’t even bother with the apple I put in that afternoon. They spent all day scratching in the leaves and the next day they went straight back to them. By the next day they had scattered them over the entire run.

The leaves are now scattered

The leaves have kept the girls occupied for days.

After moving the furniture around in the run yesterday, I wondered what the girls would make of the little coop having changed position. It’s against the back wall now with the ramp facing in a different direction towards the side wall. I keep the ramp facing a wall  to keep the coop dark as chickens prefer somewhere fairly dark to lay their eggs.

Pepper and Bluebell were both due to lay today and Pepper checked out the coop first.

Pepper checks out the little coop in its new position

The ramp still looks the same

Does it look the same inside?

It does look the same inside

Should I go inside?

Pepper seemed unsure for now but when I checked back half an hour later her egg was in the little coop so it seems she approves.

I checked again a bit later and Bluebell’s egg was also in the little coop so it seems that moving the coop hasn’t caused them any upset.

The new arrangement makes it much easier for me to sweep around the coop and the storage cabinet so I am quite pleased with it.

Pepper and Bluebell are laying every other day on average so we are still getting enough eggs to keep us going. This isn’t bad considering it’s their second winter and they have all been moulting.

Dotty hasn’t laid for a month now but had a heavy moult. She is now looking quite good though. The little girls haven’t laid for two months now. We have only ever once had two days in a row with no eggs at all so that’s pretty good I think and the girls are through the worst of the moult.

I decided to to move the position of the storage cabinet which holds all the things needed for my chickens. It was on the back boundary of the covered area of the chicken enclosure which is a big shed and made up of rounded logs. This means the cabinet doesn’t fit flush and every now and then we need to empty it to pull it out and clean behind it.

I thought if I moved it opposite the coop it would be against a flat fence and fit flush. This would mean I would never need to pull it out to clean behind it and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. The little coop that provides an extra nest box would be switched from the position the store cabinet will now be in to the position the store cabinet was in before. This means the footprint hasn’t changed and the floor space remains the same.

The girls like to jump back and forth from the coop roof to the storage cabinet during their bedtime routine so I wondered what they would make of the change.

I went in at dusk to see how they were getting on. As usual the little girls had taken themselves to bed in the coop and the big girls were on the coop roof. They soon started the game of jumping across from the coop roof to the storage cabinet and back again. At one point Dotty jumped from the coop roof to my back then the storage cabinet, using me as a stepping stone and then jumping back to the coop roof.

Once they were all back on the coop roof and the automatic door closer started to shut, I decided to end their fun and lift them down one by one and put them to bed.

Moving the storage cabinet doesn’t seem to have phased them at all from their bedtime game.

Changing the furniture around

The little coop is now on the end wall where the cabinet was.

The storage cabinets new position

Three girls on the storage cabinet

This photo shows Pepper has a huge bedtime crop and I find it amusing that Bluebell is looking down as if the ground may have changed position too.

The changing position of the cabinet doesn’t seem to have bothered them at all. It will be interesting tomorrow to see what they make of the little coop having moved too.

I have read that people give an occasional banana to their girls especially while moulting. I have tried mine with banana in the past and they wouldn’t eat it. They tested it with a few pecks and at the end of the day I removed it. I had a spare banana so decided to try mashing it into their pellet mash.

They loved it and ate every bit of it. I divided it into two dishes and there was much dancing around from dish to dish.

Mash with banana

Musical dishes

When the music stops …

Dotty is having this dish

I think I could get away with putting anything in their mash yet it’s only the same old pellets they have every day mashed with water. It must be the texture that they like so much. It wasn’t long before both dishes were empty.

The little girls go into the coop on their own every day now. The big girls have done so on a few of the colder days but most days they go to the coop roof and wait for me to lift them down and put them in. I am still hopeful that when we get the cold weather, which has been forecast to hit us soon, they will start to go in on their own.

When I lift Pepper down she now feels silky soft. All the prickly pin feathers have opened into silky new feathers.

When I lift Bluebell down she feels the same as she always has. She seems to have only lost a few feathers at a time and never looked noticeably different.

When I lift Dotty down she is still very prickly but it is getting a bit better. Dotty is a month younger than Pepper and starting to lay her eggs quite a bit later. I wonder if this is why she is also moulting later than Pepper.

Pepper looks almost fully feathered

Pepper never lost her tail like Dotty and in parts it still looks a little ragged. She still has some feathers to come in on her bottom and a few under feathers showing on her wings but she is fluffy and soft to the touch.

Bluebell never really looked any different

Bluebell would have an occasional loose feather and I have picked up some of her tail feathers from the run but she never looked different.

Dotty is looking better than she did apart from having no tail

The banty’s are looking quite good

All the photos above were taken yesterday.

Having their bedtime corn

These photos were taken today before bedtime. I think Dotty is looking much better.

The little girl’s have their black collar back again

This is Honey but both little girls are looking quite smart again.

Dotty’s tail feathers are growing

My husband commented that Dotty’s tail is growing and I think this photo shows it is. Dotty is on her way to being beautiful again.

This morning when I went into the chickens poor Dotty had no tail at all. When I opened the coop to do my morning clean up there was her last tail feather under the perch that she sleeps on. After hanging on for two weeks the last feather has finally fallen out.

She looks so strange with no tail at all. It reminds me of how she looked when we first had her at two months old and she wasn’t fully feathered, except that she is now a bigger version of that Dotty.

Dotty now has no tail at all

Poor sweet Dotty

It is so strange seeing Dotty like this. Some how the little girls look okay without tails but Dotty looks very odd. Pepper and Bluebell haven’t lost their tails so Dotty really stands out. I do hope it grows back soon.