The new girls have got the hang of everything really quickly. On the first night I put them to bed as they hadn’t yet worked out how to find their way in to their coop.
By the next day they had got the hang of getting in their coop and were in and out all day. They come out for food and water and a run around and then go back in.
They spend a lot of time scratching and pecking in the pine shavings and at one stage I looked in and they were “dust” bathing in the shavings. This is because it is what they have been used too and it will take time to learn that there is real dust to dust bath in.
I checked on them at at six o’clock and they had gone in the coop. I decided to leave it open in case they wanted a last top up of food before bedtime. This was a mistake. They came out again and once it had got a little bit darker they couldn’t find their way back in. I guided them in at half past six.
Last night when I checked on them at six o’clock and they were in the coop I closed it. I have decided it is better to close them earlier while they able to put themselves to bed. They were snuggled up to each other in the back corner.
When I open the coop in the mornings they now come out straight away and go straight to the food and water.
Scratching and pecking in the pine shavingsClose upSynchronised drinkingAlways together
They are a very tight little pair and are always very close together. From past experience I know that these two will stay as a tight pair.
The good thing is that the other girls are taking no notice of the new girls. Occasionally one of them will look at them with curiosity but nothing more than that. There is no pacing the wire.
I think that these girls are so small that they don’t pose a threat to the other girls so hopefully the integration shouldn’t be too difficult. These two will go in at the bottom of the pecking order.
Shadow is slightly bigger than Sugar but there is already no doubt that Sugar is top girl of this pair. Sugar leads and Shadow follows and every now and then Sugar runs at Shadow to let her know she is boss.
We have two new girls. At the beginning of August I put my name on the list with my serama breeder for new girls. She was selling them so fast that they were going out from a few days old to a week old and nothing was staying with her beyond a week. She takes back any that turn out to be boys.
I don’t want to do that and after my experience with little chicks and having Blue turn out to be a boy so I now go on her waiting list instead. This means that at the end of the year if she has any unsold that have reached about three months she lets me know.
Yesterday the breeder e-mailed me to say that she had a few older girls. I arranged to go over to her after lunch. I had put my name on her list for silkie girls too but she only had a few silkie feathered girls and someone else was in front of me on the list. She is keeping me on the list so I may get some later in the year.
There was a lovely brown and white frizzle but I have promised myself never to have another frizzle after Dandelion as I don’t think the frizzle feathered girls are hardy enough for winters outside.
There were only a few to choose from but I was happy as they were pretty colours. I chose a white one and a pale grey and white one. By the end of the day I had named them Sugar and Shadow.
The breeder sold me some chick crumb and I will keep the new girls separated until the few remaining laying girls stop laying. Then I will put all the girls on growers pellets until the new girls are ready to start laying and will gradually start integrating.
I closed off the triangular part of the run and put a nest box in there for them. I set up a dish of chick crumb and of water on some tiles as a feeding station and added two water bottles as well.
New girls yesterdayExploring their new homeShadow calling because she had lost sight of Sugar
Shadow was crying out because she couldn’t find Sugar. Sugar appeared to have vanished. Eventually I lifted the nest box and found her underneath. As soon as they were together again they were quiet. I have now heaped the soil around the edge of the nest box so that they can’t get underneath. These two girls are already bonded and can’t bear to be out of sight of each other.
I had put them in the nest box and closed it for five minutes in the hope that they would then know that this is where to go at bedtime. It didn’t work and at near dusk they were still outside. I put them in and closed it.
I went out at seven o’clock this morning and opened the nest box. I went back at eight o’clock and they were still inside. I guided them down the ramp. They have since returned to the nest box a few times so I am hoping that tonight they will be able to find their way in on their own.
Sugar and Shadow this morningOn the moveDrinking together
They soon got the hang of both the dishes of chick crumb and water and the water bottle too.
When we got back home yesterday there was a surprise for us. Speckles went into the nest box the day before and I wondered why she was in the nest box but didn’t think any more of it.
Yesterday afternoon when we got back there was a large white egg just inside the pop hole of the chicken shed. I know this is Speckles egg because Flame stopped laying a week ago and her eggs always have little clusters of calcium bubbles on. Ebony’s eggs are smaller and are beige and at the moment dusty as she had suddenly taken to laying them in the shelter instead of the nest box.
Now that the new girls have this area it will stop Ebony from laying her eggs in there. This egg was larger in size, more oval in shape and was smooth and white. There is no doubt that it is Speckles egg. It is her first egg of this year.
Well done Speckles! That was so unexpected and I can’t believe that she waited until we were out to lay it.
Speckles egg on the left, Ebony’s egg in the middle and Spangle’s egg on the right
Only Ebony and Spangle were laying until this egg. I wonder if that will be her only one this year or if she will lay another.
I will report back tomorrow with news of whether the new girls find their own way in tonight. They have cottoned on to the food and water very quickly so I am sure that they will soon get the hang of it.
The other girls have taken no notice at all of the new arrivals so that bodes well too.
The nights are drawing in and the days are getting cooler and this has an effect on the girls. Egg laying is slowing right down.
Smoke went broody, yet again, after laying eight eggs in eleven days. But this time she wasn’t as committed as usual. I think the cooler weather helped her to come out of it more quickly. She was broody for less than a week and that was without me interfering.
Marmite hasn’t laid for over two weeks but that is a blessing because it means she isn’t looking poorly before laying.
Salmon also hasn’t laid for two weeks but that is because she is moulting. She is looking really scruffy. Her breast feathers are loose and wafting from her and she is also dropping head feathers. Every time she has a dust bath she leaves behind a cluster of feathers.
Spangle is the only little girl still laying and is in fact laying better than usual. She is laying every few days.
Ebony and Flame are still laying but have slowed down to just two or three eggs a week.
A tatty looking SalmonSalmon has lots of loose breast feathers
There is also a change in the little girls behaviour. The pecking order has always been Smoke in top place followed by Salmon and then Spangle and then Marmite firmly in bottom place.
While I was watching the girls from their patio I saw Spangle go at Marmite with her ruff raised. They both went breast to breast with ruffs raised until Marmite backed down. It was obvious that Spangle was making sure that Marmite was staying below her in the pecking order.
A few minutes later Spangle did the same thing to Salmon. The pair of them were jumping at each other breast to breast with their ruffs raised. This little spat looked much more brutal because salmon was not going to back down.
I was just about to reach for my water spray to try to break up this spat when Ebony went to them and quickly broke them apart. She then nonchalantly wandered back to continue pecking at a broccoli stalk.
I have seen Ebony do this in the past but it is quite something to watch how quickly and easily she breaks up a spat. You can almost add a thought bubble saying “children, stop that right now”.
I haven’t seen the little girls having spats like this since the early days of settling the pecking order. I wonder if it’s because Spangle is the only little girl laying and this has given her a newfound confidence. Egg laying does seem to bring on different behaviour at times.
The pecking order can be such a finely balanced and yet complicated thing.
Of the bigger girls Speckles is top and that has been earned by her age and being in the run the longest. Next is Ebony and then Flame at the bottom of the three.
It is also interesting because Speckles is the most frail of the three and Ebony is quite a thug and could easily take on Speckles but she doesn’t attempt to. I have seen Ebony pin Flame down to the ground and Flame is always submissive to her.
The pecking order can look quite brutal but none of the girls are ever bothered by it. It is just what chickens do. At other times the little girls will show the girl below them with a quick peck that doesn’t actually land but is just a gesture to show them their place.
It is interesting to me how this behaviour happens at the start of egg laying in the spring and then again at the end of egg laying in the Autumn.
We are still harvesting so much bounty from the allotment plots. I never expected the raspberries to produce for so long and we are all three sharers still picking them.
The plot below us was dug over at the beginning of the year and then abandoned. It hasn’t been fenced. Our wild flower seeds from our plot have seeded a huge swaithe of purple flowers on the empty plot. I decided to help myself to some and shared them with our next door neighbour too.
Allotment wild flowers
We have just had a letter saying that our first plot has won “best plot” for the second year running. We were really surprised to win it again and very happy with that.
With chickens nothing gets wasted. We gave the girls two of the spent broccoli stalks yesterday. They kept the girls occupied all day and by the end of the day the stalks were pecked clean.
Broccoli stalks for the girlsThe girls pecking at the broccoli leavesAt the end of the day the stalks are pecked clean
With chickens nothing gets wasted and not only am I not buying any veg for us but I am also not buying any greens for the girls. There is plenty for the girls to enjoy.
We had a patch of corn on the cob on our first allotment plot and we also randomly planted six in our garden. I had visions of it growing tall enough to make it’s way above the surrounding plants.
It didn’t happen like that. The corn on the allotment plot grew huge and our corn in the garden never made it above the surrounding plants. It was stunted and small and pathetic.
Last weekend we visited the allotment just as T and C were checking out the corn. Some corn cobs looked good, some had not filled out to the end of the cob and a lot had dried up kernels. I think with hind sight we should have picked some of them sooner.
T and C were checking the cobs and sorted them in to good and bad piles. I said that I would take all the dry ones for the chooks so they wouldn’t be wasted. They divided the good ones into three lots so each of the three of us sharing the allotment plots would have some.
The chooks love the corn and will peck on it throughout the day. I took a couple of photos of them pecking the corn then decided to see what our garden corn was like.
I have never seen such tiny corn cobs. It had tried but not made it. I photographed them in my hand then added them to chicken run. They may be rubbish but the chooks still liked them.
Salmon and Marmite at the cornMarmite pecking the cornOur pathetic garden cornSalmon and Spangle with Salmon pecking at our mini corn
The corn that hadn’t made it to the end of the cob was the most tender which coupled with the ones that were completely dried out made me think that we should have picked them sooner. A lesson for the future. The chooks loved them though and they don’t care what condition they are in.
One success in the garden, or at least in the pots, are our chilli plants. Our huge chillies are now turning red.
Our chillies are turning red
These are really hot and with two plants having loads of chillies I think they will have to go in the freezer. We won’t need to buy chillies for a very long time.
We went to the allotment this morning to pick some produce. There is so much of everything at the moment.
T and C were already picking produce and T picked a small posy for me from his allotment flower bed which was so sweet. He had planted dahlias around the edge of his wild flower bed.
Sweet flowers
We picked plenty of produce because we share with our next door neighbours each weekend.
We picked enough raspberries for our dessert at lunch time today and they were delicious. We also picked sweetcorn, red cabbage, carrot, beetroot, red and white potatoes, red and white onions, pumpkin, courgettes, kale, chard, tomatoes and NO beans.
C had taken beans a few days earlier and they have slowed down now. We were pleased because we have been over run with them over the last few weeks. There are plenty of flowers on the beans so more to come later and we will enjoy them again when they are growing more slowly.
My lovely husband made coleslaw with some of the red cabbage and carrot and we will have a variety of veg for Sunday dinner tomorrow. Some of the chard will go to the chooks.
Only a few sweetcorn had ripened so we shared them out between the three of us allotment sharers and all the ones that had only got a little bit of corn in them T gave me for the chooks so they are going to be in for a treat.
We have had so much more produce this year than last year. It is so good not to need to buy any veg at all and flowers in doors are an added bonus.
T wanted some pretty things on our second plot and this is very pretty.
We are getting loads of potatoes now too and onions and the raspberries are still plentiful and so good. So far it has been a very good year for the allotment plots.
Speckles is definitely showing her age but she is still well and happy which is so good as she is our oldest girl yet.
Speckles still really enjoys a dust bath and it’s always so good to see. She is moulting at the moment and always leaves behind a few feathers in her dust bath.
We have never made pickles before. We have lots of gherkins from the allotment and of course an abundance of runner beans.
We decided to try pickling the gherkins and the runner beans. We googled how best to do this. There seemed to be lots of different ways of pickling gherkins. Pickled vegetables seemed more straight forward.
Our pickles
We had been saving pickled onion and gherkin jars and also coffee jars for this purpose.
The method we followed for the gherkins was to salt them overnight which is supposed to make them end up crunchy. We sprinkled them with salt and the next day poured off the water that had come out of them. We decided to use the brine we had saved from our bought gherkins and added a bit of vinegar and a little sugar. We added, our home grown, chopped chillies.
Our chillies
We cut the gherkins length ways to fit two jars. We bought the mixture to the boil and poured over the gherkins to cover. They need about three weeks before they are ready.
For the runner beans we cheated a little and bought some pickling vinegar. This made it really simple as it already has all the correct ingredients and spices and doesn’t need boiling.
I prepared the beans in the usual way and cooked them for just five minutes. I ran them under a cold tap until completely cold and filled a coffee jar with them. Then it’s just a simple matter of pouring the vinegar over them until they are covered and putting on the lid. Again leave them for three weeks.
We have no idea how well these will turn out but it is an experiment and will either be repeated or not according to the results.
We are looking forward to trying them out in a few weeks time.
We can tell that Speckles is really feeling her age these days although I am pleased to say that she remains well. I was also pleased that while Ebony and Flame were feeling the recent heat Speckles didn’t actually didn’t seem bothered by it. Maybe because she is less active.
Speckles Spends a lot of time sitting. Sometimes she will perch with the other two bigger girls and sometimes she will just sit on the ground. Speckles also likes to sit in the shelters or on top of the big shelter in the shade of the hypericum. She is often joined there by the little girls.
Speckles sitting in the shelterSpeckles sitting on top of the shelter surrounded by her girls
Another sign of her age is that Speckles is easily anxious. If both Ebony and flame are in the nest boxes at the same time Speckles shouts the whole time until one of them is out again. This was another reason to break Ebony from being broody.
It’s only occasionally that they would normally be laying at the same time but with Ebony in the nest box all the time it would happen regularly. We have also seen Speckles spook herself. I would be pottering in the run when Speckles would cry out as if being attacked and run to the patio although there would be nothing to be seen.
Speckles is our longest lived girl and we call her our creaking gate. I know that we have to be ready to lose her one day but at the moment we are making the most of her and she seems a very happy retired girl.