Carol's Chickens

Yesterday I was in the garden when I heard one of the bantys making an agitated noise. I went to investigate and Amber walked out from under the bush into the open. At first I thought one of the big girls was having a go at her as they gathered around her.

Amber then held her wings down and stood like a penguin. I have heard of hens looking like this when they have an egg stuck and started to feel worried about her. Dotty peered at her bottom and I thought she was going to pull a feather from her so I waved Dotty away.

At that moment Amber stepped forward and there beneath her was a warm egg. I had just, for the first time, witnessed an egg being laid. Amber simply wandered off. She really doesn’t seem to know when her eggs are immanent and the other girls were clearly interested in what was going on. After a year with chickens, there are still moments like this, of experiencing something for the first time.

Last year I had the idea of cutting a turf into twelve squares and planting them in seed trays. I would put one tray in the chicken run each day for the girls to have daily grass and by the time they were on the twelfth tray the first one had recovered.

That was fine while the girls were little and just pecked at the grass. Now they are fully grown and they scratch the grass to bits. The grass can no longer recover and it’s time to give up on this idea and throw out my trays of grass.

The pathetic looking trays of grass

There are still a few sparse blades of grass but not enough to keep the girls happy for long. I now give them greens each day instead. Spring cabbage only costs a pound a bag and lasts the girls a week. I am also growing some things for them in our veg plot. I have chard, spinach, pak choi, corn on the cob and nasturtiums for them. Sometimes you just have to give up on what seemed like a good idea at the time!

The other thing to update on is the feather pulling. I had hoped that having the new girls to think about would distract the big girls from the bad habit of pulling feathers from each other.

No such luck, every day I pick up feathers from the run, mostly dominique feathers. Dotty’s neck is becoming more and more bare, giving her a very strange look!

Dotty’s bare neck

I then noticed on occasion that Pepper would go up to one of the bantys and try to pull a feather from her neck. I always tell her off and water spray her if I am quick enough. I had a dread of the bantys getting plucked but I really thought that they would get out of the way.

My worst fears were realised yesterday when I went in mid morning and found a little pile of six banty feathers by the bush. I wasn’t sure if one of the bantys had been attacked but there was sign of anything amiss and I couldn’t tell where the feathers had come from. I have noticed that the bantys neck feathers are thinning though.

In the evening while doing my clean up chores, I left the chicken run for five minutes to fill my watering can ready to give the girls their daily clean water. When I returned there were another six banty feathers in the middle of the run. I have yet to catch the culprit but it seems a lot of feathers to pull out in such a short time.

I feel so saddened that the bantys may end up plucked as well. I inspected the little girls and Amber is getting a bare neck at the front. It seems that by becoming part of the flock they are also becoming part of the feather pulling ritual. I have tried everything possible in the past to stop this and nothing works but I had really hoped that the bantys wouldn’t allow this to happen to them. It seems as if this is a part of making friends and being accepted by the big girls. I feel so disappointed by this development just when I have achieved one integrated flock.

The bedtime routine seems to be ever changing. The way in which it is changing is that the little girls are getting closer and closer to the big girls. They have gone from the coop roof to the little chair and last night to the high perch, right along side the big girls.

Is this the new routine?

All five girls on the high perch

As I close in Amber hops down

This is the first time I have seen the little girls on the high perch. As I got close to them they hopped down and resumed their position on my little chair. From there I lifted them both down to the coop and then lifted the big girls down to join them. They seem to get closer to the big girls every day!

last night before bedtime I scooped up a couple of buckets of damp wood chip that the girls had scratched out of their run. I dumped it back in the run and watched them scratch through it. They found a few worms and little bugs and I love the way that they are so together now.

Five girls scratching together

They love scratching through the wood chip

The photos are not great because of the constant movement but they show that my little flock truly are one flock now!

Yesterday Bluebell laid her egg in the little coop. This morning she laid in the little coop again. I wondered if Bluebell preferred the little coop because it has more headroom than the nest box. Bluebell is our biggest girl and I know hens have to stand at the moment of expelling their eggs so wondered if this meant the little coop suited her better.

Later in the day I checked the little coop again and found Pepper’s, Honey’s and Amber’s eggs all together. This now seems to have become the preferred nest box, it seems that it may be a prestigious thing. Pepper’s egg was cold but Honey’s and Amber’s were still warm so Pepper was the first to lay. Dotty laid later in the afternoon in the usual nest box. She is the only one not to have shown any interest in the little coop.

This is our very first five egg day. Both the little girls eggs had normal shells and they didn’t look unwell before laying them so perhaps have got the hang of it at last.

Today’s eggs

Bluebell’s egg is on the left, next is Dotty’s egg, then Pepper’s then Honey’s and Amber’s egg on the right. Although Pepper and Dotty are both the same breed I can tell their eggs apart because Dotty’s eggs are slightly darker in colour than Pepper’s. At the moment Amber’s eggs are slightly smaller than Honey’s but when they catch up their eggs will be impossible to tell apart unless the shade of them changes.

For a while now the big girls have been roosting on the high perch above the storage cabinet at dusk, until I go and lift them down and put them in the coop. For the last week the little girls have taken to roosting on my little chair which hangs just below the top of the run and opposite the high perch. They obviously want to roost as near to the big girls as they can get.

The little girls on my chair

The big girls on the high perch

The little girls turn to face me

They look so sweet on here although I wouldn’t think it’s that comfortable as the chair is smooth and slopes down slightly.

I pick up the nearest little girl and put her in while the other one flies down. I then lift down the three big girls and put them in. Then I lay my torch on the ground to light the coop door and the second banty follows it and goes in and I close the door. I have been doing this every evening recently and it is a quick and easy way to get them all in.

The other thing that has changed in their bedtime routine is that the little girls now sleep on the perch with the big girls or on the floor in front of the perch instead of in the nest box. They have definitely grown in confidence and want to be around the big girls.

The other change to routine yesterday was that Bluebell laid her egg in the little coop instead of the nest box. I have no idea why she chose to do this. They are funny girls.

I have also identified the feather that I found below the bird feeder.

Spotty feather

I looked at owl feathers and other birds of prey and there were several birds with spotted feathers but when I put “greater spotted woodpecker feather” into google I got a photo of a feather that matched mine exactly. It had the same number of spots in the same place and was identical in every way to my feather. As we have greater spotted woodpeckers visiting the feeders in our garden this makes sense. Another mystery solved!

In my last post I showed part of the garden so decided to follow up with the rest of the garden. I also wanted to update on my quest to identify the mystery plant.

I had a hunch that it may be an orchid so put wild orchid into the internet search. It didn’t throw up my plant so I added spotted leaves to the search. This gave me common spotted orchid. The leaves exactly match the leaves on my plant. The flower hasn’t yet opened so I won’t be able to match the flower until it opens properly but from the leaves I am certain this is what the plant is. I can only think it got to our garden from a bird dropping the seed. I will follow up with a photo when it opens.

The veg plot in front of the chicken enclosure

From the veg plot looking down towards the patio

Looking up the garden

Looking up towards the chicken enclosure

Hosta’s

I will be straight back to chickens after this but felt this completes my previous post.

I don’t usually write on subjects outside my chickens but this time I am making an exception. I have a plant which self seeded in one of our patio pots last year. It looked unusual and a bit special so I transplanted it to a small pot of it’s own. It is very slow growing and this year has produced a single flower bud which is taking a very long time to open.

It has narrow leaves with black spots on and the bud looks as if it will be white. There is nothing in my garden that looks anything like it and it’s not like any plant that I have seen before. I wonder if anyone knows what this is?

Strange plant

Unknown plant

While on the subject of unknown items, I found this feather under our bird feeder today. I am very familiar with the wide range of wild birds we have visiting our feeders but I have no idea what this spotty feather belongs to.

Spotty feather

unknown feather

While I am off topic I thought I would show a snapshot of the garden.

The big poppies have been really good this year

A big splash of mauve

The mystery plant a few weeks later

The mystery plant is taking ages to flower. It’s been like this for weeks now.

Pale pink bud

Here it is another week later and I can now see that the bud isn’t white but is pale pink. This is so incredibly slow to flower that I have run out of patience and will update at another time if it ever fully opens.

Our rambling rose – Paul’s Himalayan Musk

This is the view going up our path.

It also rambles over our cabin

This is the view from the other side. The cabin is our kitchen where we run our catering business from.

It tumbles over the arches

It is a mass of soft pink with plenty of buds still to open

The other rambling rose is just starting to open

The honeysuckle beneath the rose is also in flower. I tie the rose into the arches but this year will have to cut it back a bit once it has flowered. We are now having to duck under the arches but I don’t want to spoil it while it’s flowering.

The garden is full and lush after the recent slightly warmer temperatures and intermittent rain. We put these roses in when we moved here six years ago and they have grown an incredible amount in that time. This entire garden was laid to lawn when we moved in and we gradually took out the lawn and replaced it with cottage garden plants. It is still evolving but we are very pleased with the results.

Honey laid her egg in the little coop yesterday. Dotty laid this morning (in the nest box) and Bluebell has taken a day off after her new record of laying for thirty eight days in a row!

This afternoon Amber and Pepper both wanted to use the nest box at the same time. This is where the problem arose last time causing me to install the little coop as a second nest box. Pepper reluctantly tolerates sharing the nest box with the big girls but absolutely will not share with the little girls and last time pecked Honey’s comb until it bled.

Amber is the smallest girl and also very feisty. She took possession of the nest box first. Pepper was not happy. She shouted and shouted, louder than I have ever heard her shout before. Her face went redder than I have ever seen it before. She was livid! She strutted around, kept looking in the nest box and kept shouting.

Then to my surprise she went into the little coop and settled down.

Pepper in the little coop

We wanted to go out at this point but I didn’t want to leave with Pepper shouting or with the possibility of Amber getting her comb pecked. Now that Amber was in the nest box and Pepper was quietly installed in the little coop, I felt that I could safely leave them to it.

We returned a couple of hours later and I went to check on them. To my surprise neither girl had laid an egg. Once again they had put themselves through all that upset when they weren’t even ready. Amber still doesn’t seem to have got the hang of when she needs to lay and Pepper often takes a long time to lay and does have false alarms from time to time.

In the end though, it doesn’t matter which girl uses which coop as long as they can manage it without any bloodshed!

This morning I noticed Honey going in the little coop a couple of times. After lunch I went to check for eggs and was surprised to find Honey’s egg in the little coop and Bluebell’s egg in the nest box. This is really good news as it means if Honey is happy to lay her eggs in the little coop she will be safe from getting pecked by the big girls.

She had laid her previous egg two days earlier and today she showed no sign of looking unwell. Maybe the limestone flour has sorted out her problem and it looks like she is starting to lay normally now.

It will be interesting to see where Amber lays her next egg.