Carol's Chickens

This morning I put two wedges of pumpkin and some of the seeds, in the run for the girls. The bantys were the first to investigate but the other girls quickly followed. The seeds proved the most attractive and they all went for them first even though the seeds were quite large. Once the seeds had all gone they ate the stringy bits of flesh then settled to pecking at the hard flesh. Honey would break a bit off and run off with it to eat in peace as is her usual way.

I took lots of photos but because they were pecking so quickly a lot of them were blurred. Dotty’s head seems to be blurred in most of the photos so I had to make do with these.

First taste of pumpkin

They like the pumpkin

The seeds have already gone

Amber’s arched shape

Since Amber has been moulting her shape has changed and she appears to have a humped back. Honey has this shape too but not as obvious as Amber. It seems to be where the feathers have come out from her back and left the appearance of a hump from the remaining thicker layer of feathers.

When I went back an hour later one of the wedges was almost cleared of flesh. At that moment there was a strange whistling bird call overhead. It wasn’t kites calling as they call all the time and are familiar to us. This was something I hadn’t heard before and the girls reacted to it. The bantys ran straight for the cover of the bush while the big girls, especially Dotty and Bluebell, stopped in their tracks. They stretched up tall and listened with a really intent look on their faces.

Dotty on alert

You can see the remains of the pumpkin by Dotty and her whole posture is on alert. Bluebell is in front of Dotty and has the exact same pose.

Dotty and Bluebell listening to the strange bird call

You can see the bantys under the bush in the background. As soon as the bird had moved away the girls relaxed back to normal.

After this we had a storm with thunder, lightening and torrential downpours. I went back in to the girls and they didn’t seem at all bothered by the weather.

Most of the pumpkin has gone

The girls keep going back to the pumpkin, so I am pleased that it keeps them busy, especially on such a horrible day.

A very wet day

Just when the run had dried out, it has now got quite wet again. Nothing is going to keep such heavy rain out though. The girls have all got muddy feet but they don’t seem to mind and they all seem to have enjoyed the pumpkin.

I had a rather pathetic small pot of parsley and as it is summers end I decided to give the parsley to the girls. I knew it would only last a few moments but thought they may as well have it.

Let’s check this out

We like this

That didn’t last long

As I expected it did only last a few minutes but it was a few minutes fun for the girls.

Last year I read about people giving their girls pumpkins and thought it looked fun. It keeps the girls occupied and they are full of goodness for them. I had seen piles of pumpkins at half price after Halloween on previous years and decided to wait to get a bargain as they seemed more expensive than usual.

I was so disappointed when after Halloween there wasn’t a pumpkin to be found anywhere. I even asked in one of the supermarkets and was told that they now only stock what they know they will sell so that there are none left over. I was determined not to make that mistake again.

This year I have been waiting for the pumpkins to appear in the shops and yesterday was the first time I saw them. They were on offer:  two large ones for £3.00. I thought this was a bargain and bought two for the girls. They will not miss out this year!

Pumpkins for the girls

We are snowed under with work at the moment but when I get a bit of time at the weekend I will give the girls their first chunk of pumpkin and be ready with my camera. Watch this space!

My girls have all been in the full swing of their first moult. Their eggs slowed down but with moulting and shorter daylight hours, what surprised me was that they actually continued to lay. The bantys who are in full moult mode have given up completely and I don’t blame them at all. They haven’t laid for three weeks now and before that only one egg every two or three weeks.

Pepper was laying about once a week during her moult but now her moult appears to have come to an end she is laying every other day. Dotty had taken to missing a couple of days between laying and is now on three days in a row with one missed in between. Bluebell, our egg machine, lays about five days in a row instead of up to two months in a row.

An interesting thing though is the difference in the size of the eggs. The first two in a row by Dotty produced a smaller egg than usual. I am sure this is all to do with moulting and any eggs are an unexpected bonus so I am certainly not complaining but like to log everything for future reference.

Dotty’s smaller egg

Bluebell’s egg is on the left, Pepper’s egg is the middle and Dotty’s egg is on the right.

I am amazed that the girls are still laying as many eggs are they are but I am interested how the process of moulting is effecting them. I am really pleased that they still look happy and healthy and are still laying eggs as this means it is not upsetting them too much and at the end of the day as long as they are happy then I am happy.

As I mentioned in my last post I managed to get a truly horrible photograph of Bluebell yesterday. It’s the most horrible chicken photo I have taken yet and I was just about to delete it when something stopped me. I thought it was so bad that it needed to be shared. I sent it to my two chicken keeping friends and my former chicken keeper son. With their blessing I am quoting their reaction after the alien Bluebell photo.

The most horrible photo of Bluebell ever, I was focusing on Pepper and didn’t notice Bluebell shaking her head

Lisa said – LOL that is horrible but so cool! It’s weird how the beak and wattles are in focus, but the rest of her head and neck isn’t.

Steve said – Her head doesn’t even look like a head!

Jackie said – It is 6.30 am and I have just seen this and just laughed so much.. I think it is great after all it is nearly Halloween, do you think she is practising?

Lisa said – Haahahaa I think it’s good you didn’t delete it, as you’ve made a reference in your blog I think it would be funny to put it in at the end ha ha!

The reactions to this photo made me decide it must be shared. I think it’s weird how her head seems to be the wrong way round with her beak pointing upwards and her closed eye adds to the spooky look. I don’t suppose I could get another shot like this if I tried!

Anyone else who wants to join in with a reaction to this photo, please leave a comment, I would love to know what others think.

The girls have been moulting for less than two weeks yet it seems much longer. I have got used to picking up loads of feathers from the coop each morning but it is now slowing down. The bantys started two days later than the dominiques and now there are only banty feathers in the coop in the mornings so I think it is coming to it’s end.

It is my first experience of moulting so I had no idea what to expect. Having seen photos on other blogs of girls in moult I feel I have got off lightly. I have seen photos of girls with no tails and in various states of undress. Some are almost oven ready and some have lot’s of bare patches and look quite scary in their intermediate states.

Maybe it’s partly because I have had a summer of bare patches on bottoms and necks and in Dotty’s case head (due to the feather plucking problem),  it doesn’t seem so bad. My girls have just looked a bit ragged and shabby through the moult but have at the same time regained feathers they didn’t have so it’s actually seemed like an improvement to me.

The other thing I have noticed is that their combs are lovely and red and I get two eggs from the three big girls most days (I don’t count the little girls who were never good at egg laying and now go three weeks between eggs, which is fine by me), so I feel they are coping fine with this and I feel quite blessed.

Since the bantys started laying in May, I have had only two five egg days, but I have also in that time, had only one no egg day. I think that’s pretty amazing! Go girls!

I have read about girls struggling with the moult but it seems to be the more elderly hens and I am pleased that mine seem to be breezing through with no signs of stress at all. I thought I would take some photos of the girls today to illustrate this but they were not cooperating. I had many photos of backs of heads, bottoms or just blurred images, not to mention one totally alien shot of Bluebell shaking her head and looking like something from a horror film!

The following photos are the best I managed to get. Film stars these girls are not unless you count the afore mention horror film!

Dotty’s red comb and wattles

Dotty’s comb and wattles are bright red, more so than the photos shows (fading rainy day light) and she has feathers on her head after being bald all summer, hurrah! Please may she keep them. My odd looking Dotty is finding some beauty to match her sweet nature after being the sweet ugly duckling all summer long.

Bluebell’s comb

Bluebell has always had a bright red floppy comb and seems unaffected by any moulting process. I have picked up only the odd feather from her and she only has a few slightly ragged tail feathers. She also continues to lay her eggs most days.

Pepper’s shabby chic

Pepper has the most shabby tail feathers but no bald patches and her comb and wattles are quite different from Dotty’s (as they always have been) but remain a good colour.

Bluebell

Bluebell’s comb from the other side. A floppy comb is different from each side so I always to try get a shot from each side.

Pepper’s comb

Pepper has always been the most tricky to photograph and this was the only face on shot I could get.

Dotty

Here is my dear Dotty again, just how great is it to see head feathers! Sorry to go on but I have felt so sorry for my ugly duckling all summer. She is also the most attached to me, jumping on me at every chance she gets, which is quite endearing and she always has comedy feet! Look how long her middle toes are.

Scruffy little girls

The little girls do look quite scruffy but they did have completely bare heads and now it’s patchy so although scruffy it is also an improvement.

I am really pleased with how these girls are progressing through their first moult and they continue to entertain me and fill my heart with love for them and that’s not even to mention their lovely eggs. I haven’t bought a single egg since they started laying even with the winter slow down. They still lay as many eggs as we can eat and occasionally still a few to give to our neighbours.

Just got to love these girls!

This morning when I opened the coop it looked as if one of the bantys had exploded. I couldn’t believe the amount of feathers and yet the little girls don’t look any different. They don’t even look ragged and tatty like the big girls.

Every time I went in to the girls I picked up a load more feathers from the run.

The bantys favourite place to sit

Several times I cleared this log that the bantys like to sit on. I can now see why people say they go into the run and for a few seconds think a predator may have attacked one of their girls. This is my first experience of a proper moult and I am now better prepared to know what to expect.

Meanwhile Pepper still has the sudocrem on her bottom but Dotty has completely preened it off of her bottom.

Bottoms with and without sudocrem

Bluebells fluffy bottom

This photo illustrates something that I have mentioned before. Although Pepper and Dotty are the same breed and came from the same farm they look quite different (the farm had two breeding trios and I always felt these two may have come from different parents), Pepper’s tail is always quite horizontal and curves downwards almost like a cockerels whereas Dotty’s tail curves upwards. Bluebell’s tail is straight up and she still has a fluffy bottom.

I think the bantys head feathers are also growing back in. Although they still have patches of bare skin showing they are speckled rather than complete round bare patches.

Honey

Amber

My ideal scenario is that they moult, they regrow their feathers, with winter coming they stop plucking, and they stay beautifully fully feathered. In reality this probably won’t happen and they will continue to pluck them back out again, I can but hope.

The last two mornings when I have opened up the coop to clean I found a mass of soft little orange banty feathers as well as dominique feathers. The dominique feathers are on their side of the coop and the bantys feathers are in and under the nest box. They sleep perched on the edge of the nest box and it seems they have joined in the moult. The odd thing is that they don’t look any different but like Pepper and Dotty as the bantys move around the odd feather will flutter from them.

It seems that the pure breeds have a sudden moult whereas Bluebell, a hybrid, doesn’t appear to be moulting.

I am giving them extra protein with a bit of poultry spice mixed in. This is a powder which says it acts as a nutritional supplement to help birds get quickly over the moult. I thought they could do with any help they can get.

Pepper has pin feathers coming in on her bottom and Dotty has them on her neck. I noticed Pepper had a pinprick sized red spot on her bottom and then I noticed Dotty trying to peck at the pin feathers. I decided to try sudocrem which is an antiseptic healing cream that I have read of other chicken keepers using. It is supposed to deter the pecking.

Pepper has pin feathers on her bottom

We decided to do both Pepper and Dotty’s bottom and Dotty’s neck. I really want the girls to keep their feathers. I picked up and held the girls while my husband rubbed the cream on.

Pepper has sudocrem on her bottom

Pepper didn’t seem at all bothered by this but Dotty didn’t like it all. She immediately started to preen it off.

Dotty removing the cream

What a sorry sight

I felt so sorry for Dotty. She worked so hard to get rid of the cream and had to break off to go and lay her egg, shouted very loudly to let me know she had laid, then returned to frantically preening the cream off. It wasn’t long before she had completely removed it from her bottom.

This made it a waste of time and I felt a bit concerned that she may have swallowed some of the cream. The only good thing is, that she can’t remove it from her neck and it may protect her neck and hopefully it will protect Pepper’s bottom.

I was in our local “pets at home” store yesterday and talked to the vet who saw Treacle when she was unwell. I told him about the feather plucking and he agreed that losing Treacle was probably the trigger. He said it has now become a behavioural problem.

I told him that they do it when dust bathing and roosting together and that it looks like they are grooming each other and enjoying it. He said they probably do enjoy it and that’s why it’s such a hard habit to break. He said they use it as a form of bonding. He also said I could just leave them to it as it won’t hurt them. I said it frustrates me because it spoils their looks. He then said the one glimmer of hope is that with winter coming and the colder weather they may stop doing this.

I really hope this is the case but I won’t be holding my breath. They did stop briefly during our bit of a heat wave when it was too hot to sit together and I am putting them in the coop as the automatic door closes (about 7.00 pm at the moment) so that they don’t sit on the high perch together before bedtime.

Amber has put herself to bed for most of the last week and I am sure as soon as the weather cools the others will too. It’s unusually warm at the moment which is why I think they are staying out later this year.

Last year September was cold and they started going in half way through September but this year it’s much warmer.

I am also hoping that now the bantys have joined in with the moult that they may get their plucked feathers back. I would so love to have a fully feathered flock again.

Last night we had really heavy rain for the first time since we put the winter cover over the run. I was really pleased to find the run had stayed dry and there was only one spot on the plastic cover that had pooled a little. My husband found another wooden baton in the shed and put it across under the plastic where it had sagged. This pushed the plastic up quite taut and the water ran off. I think this will now be good enough to withstand any heavy rain.

Pepper and Dotty are continuing to moult with handfuls of feathers each morning in the coop and feathers in the dust bath. Pepper has pin feathers coming through on her bottom and Dotty’s head is just about fully feathered again and some pin feathers are coming in on her neck. It is so nice to see feathers on her head again and I really hope she keeps them this time.

My husband needed some parsley and thinking of the girls bought it in a pot so that the girls could have what was left. I dug over the run for the girls then dug the pot into the ground.

The girls get stuck into the parsley

Dotty’s head feathers are regrowing

Just the parsley stems left

About ten minutes later the parsley had all gone. I emptied the pot out for the girls to scratch through. When I went back later the root ball had disappeared leaving just the scattered stems for me to pick up.

Amber has just laid her first egg in three weeks. She always struggles to lay her eggs and I knew she was about to lay as she looked quite unwell. She was standing with her tail down and her eyes closing. If I hadn’t seen this with Amber many times before I would have thought that I was going to lose her. It was with relief  that I saw her go into the coop.

I returned to check on her a little later and sure enough there was a little egg in the nest box.

After laying her egg Amber was back to her normal self as usual and had found a worm. The other girls were all chasing her and trying to take it from her. Amber ran at speed round the run several times before Dotty managed to steal her prize from her. There wasn’t much wrong with Amber now.

Amber’s egg on the right is slightly smaller than Honey’s egg

Dotty’s egg is on the left for comparison, Honey’s in the middle and Amber’s on the right. It doesn’t show very clearly in the photo but Amber’s eggs are slightly smaller and paler than Honey’s.

Amber seems to have struggled with egg laying from the start. She laid her first two eggs the size of a marble with no yolk. She then laid a couple of soft shelled eggs. I gave the girls limestone flour to strengthen the shells and she then laid normal eggs but in the run. She finally got the hang of it but always looked ill just before laying and fine again afterwards.

I feel sad to think that she struggles with the egg laying process because it should be a natural process for a chicken. I was quite pleased that she hadn’t laid for three weeks as she seemed happier and looked better.

I don’t know what you can do when a chicken looks ill before laying each time. If it was an occasional struggle I would give her a bath but I would be giving her baths all the time. I wonder if there is something not quite right inside her and worry that she may not live to a ripe old age. There again she could prove me wrong and it may be just the way she is. If so I feel sorry for her as it’s a shame for her to not look well before each egg but I can only hope it gets better in time. Amber is about one year old and has been laying for five months now.

She started laying about every three days then decreased to about once a week. Recently she then went two weeks between and then three weeks between. I don’t mind her laying less if it makes her feel better.

Honey has never had a problem laying her eggs and was laying about every other day but hasn’t laid for a week now. I do hope Amber eventually finds it gets easier to lay her eggs.