Carol's Chickens

Over the last few days I have seen a fair sized slow worm on the path. Most times it had gone by the time I got my camera but eventually I just managed one photo before it disappeared.

Our rambling rose is just getting started. I took a photo of it against the blue sky.

In chicken news Smoke came out of being broody nearly a week ago. I decided that as Smoke was no longer broody I would close the nest boxes at the end of the day to encourage broody Flame to go in the chicken shed at bedtime.

Flame would then sit on top of a nest box.

Despite this Flame still went and perched in the chicken shed at bedtime. This makes life easier as I don’t have to lift her at bedtime and it is also less disturbance for her too.

After doing this for a couple nights I decided to close the nest boxes during the day once the laying girls had laid their eggs. I was pleased to find that Flame stayed out in the run instead of sitting on the nest box.

I have now been closing the nest boxes for the last couple of days and I am hopeful that Flame will soon give up on being broody. I am also expecting Smoke to start laying again soon.

It is always good to have a bit of respite between broody girls.

The three of us sharing the allotment plot have just taken on the plot next to ours. It had an older couple sharing it with their daughter but she has now moved away and they couldn’t manage it on their own.

It is overgrown but it has the advantage of having a row of mature raspberry canes which is an absolute bonus for us all.

T has been going up early in the morning and digging it over and is doing a great job. We went up yesterday so that I could take some photos of both plots. I wanted to photograph the new plot before it’s cleared so that I will have before and after photos.

Some photos of our first plot.

We feel so lucky to have the allotment at the moment. We feel that this year will be even better than last year as we have learned a lot and we all have plenty of time.

We are looking forward to seeing how much produce we get this year, probably enough to keep our neighbours supplied too, but the main thing is that it gives us all a lot of pleasure.

There are lots of lovely splashes of colour in the garden at the moment. I thought I would try to capture a few.

The garden is so lush at the moment and we feel so lucky to have the garden. All birds are also welcome visitors to the garden too.

Smoke has now been broody for two weeks and Flame went broody four days ago. Once again our best two layers are broody together but as we have been getting plenty of eggs it’s not a problem at the moment.

Smoke and Flame have taken to sharing a nest box quite a lot of the time and at bedtime I have to lift them both from the nest box and put them on the bedtime perch.

A few days ago Marmite looked a bit down again and I knew she was leading up to laying another egg. The next morning her egg was in the run and the shell was fine. Marmite always looks a bit down the day before laying which must be when the egg is at an uncomfortable stage. When she actually lays the egg she seems unaware as it has been on the patio or, this time, in the run.

Marmite then goes to sit in the nest box showing that she is unaware of having laid her egg. We have seen this behaviour before with Amber in the past and with Salmon last year so it seems that the pattern is discomfort the day before but no awareness of the egg being laid.

Marmite really wanted to sit in the same nest box as the two broody girls. Obviously if they were both in one nest box then that had to be the best nest box.

Flame is a tolerant girl but Smoke isn’t. Smoke had pecked Marmite away every time she got too close to her. Smoke is happy to sit with broody Flame but she doesn’t want to share a nest box with any of the little girls.

Smoke got fed up with all the intrusions and moved to the nest box next door. In the meantime Ebony was ready to lay her egg and her current favourite nest box is the one that Flame was occupying.

I don’t understand why Marmite wants to be in the same nest box as Smoke because Smoke clearly doesn’t want her there.

Marmite spent ages stood on the ramp to the nest box Smoke was in. Every time Marmite stepped over the threshold Smoke would peck her away.

Once Ebony had laid her egg, and I quickly removed it, Marmite decided that it would be better to share with the more tolerant Flame.

Soon after this Marmite gave up on laying the egg that she had in fact already laid and left the nest box. This gave Smoke the opportunity to take up residence with Flame once more.

The two broody girls were still together like this at bedtime when I moved them to chicken shed once the pop hole door had closed.

It would seem convenient that these two are happy to share a nest box leaving the other two free but in fact it doesn’t help at all as the rest of the girls want this nest box too. Sigh. That’s chickens for you!

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary ( Tuesday 12th May ). It was also my grandson’s third birthday and my new grandson ( his sibling ) is now three weeks old.

We have been coping with the lock-down well but the one thing I really miss is visiting my three year old grandson and being able to hold my new grandson. I will never get to hold him as a new baby.

However his birth went smoothly and they are all well and happy so that is the only thing that really matters. My eldest son has been sending me photos from the moment of new baby’s birth and we have kept in touch with google hangouts so that I could watch the new baby as I chatted to my son.

Yesterday we did a video call on whatsapp so that I could watch my three year old grandson open his birthday present from us which we had posted to him. It was lovely to see him and chat to him.

We are lucky that during these difficult times we have the technology to stay in touch and I look forward to a time when I can see them again in person.

As I am the one doing the shopping for us I bought an anniversary card for both of us and said in it that we were lucky that if we had to be locked in we were locked in together.

I bought some posh chocolates and for our evening meal I bought smoked salmon canapes as a starter and cooked ribeye steak, mushroom and chips.

My lovely husband surprised me with a home made card and some wild flowers from the allotment.

It was lovely and just shows how we can still do special things in very simple ways.

We are all having adjust to these strange times and must make the best of what we can. It was a happy day.

The girls, just like me, love sunbathing. I love to see them them spreadeagled and soaking up the rays.

This is always joyful to see. One of the things we have in common is our love of the sun.

My husband has now made a smaller frame for the cabbages. They need the same protection as the broccoli but don’t need so much height.

We are looking forward to a productive year from both the allotment plot and our own veg plot. Of course we have much more time to put in the care this year.

While Marmite has recently been struggling to lay her eggs Salmon had looked better than ever and had been laying much more frequently than ever before. Salmon has sometimes been laying two days running which had only happened on rare occasions the year before.

Last week Salmon and Flame were sharing a nest box. I thought they looked so sweet together that I took a photo.

When I checked back a little later Flame was out in the run. I checked the nest box and couldn’t see an egg so I lifted Salmon and found that she was sitting on Flame’s egg.

I wondered if Salmon was going broody or if she had just decided to sit on Flame’s egg while waiting to lay her own. I removed the egg and left Salmon to it.

A little later I checked again and Salmon had laid so I took her out of the nest box and she stayed out. Perhaps not broody then.

The following day Salmon looked poorly. She looked just like Marmite does when she is struggling to lay. I couldn’t understand why Salmon should be struggling when she had laid her egg the day before with no problem.

Salmon had the same posture that Marmite often has and her eyes kept closing but she opened them when I took her photo.

I hate to see the girls like this and feel so helpless. I can’t understand why this should happen as nothing has changed in their diet. Salmon looked like this until she went in at bedtime and from experience I knew that she would probably get her egg laid in the morning and hopefully bounce back.

The next morning Salmon looked back to her normal self again. I found half a soft shell on their patio area and the rest of it in a sticky mess in the chicken shed. I think they must have managed to get half the egg outside and eat the contents.

Later that day Salmon spent time in the nest box and I knew that she hadn’t realised she had laid her egg as this often happens after a soft shelled egg. I always think that it is odd that the girls look so poorly before they lay the egg but then when they actually lay it they don’t seem aware of it. A little later Salmon left the nest box.

The next day Salmon was back in the nest box again. This time she was in the nest box for a long time and when I checked on her she raised her tail like the broody girls do and had an angry glint in her eye at being disturbed. Once again I wondered if she was going broody.

Salmon has never been broody but then again she has never laid so well as this year either and it tends to be the better laying girls that go broody.

I lifted Salmon out of the nest box and she went straight back in again. I decided that if she was broody it would be a good chance for her to take a break from laying.

However the next time I checked on Salmon she had laid a good shelled egg and was back out in the run looking perfectly normal again.

It seems that it was just a blip and Salmon has looked her usual self since then. These girls do like to throw a bit of drama our way every now and again.

The day after Salmon looked poorly Marmite looked poorly again. Here we go again, I thought! The following morning Marmite had also bounced back and there was her egg on the patio just outside the pop hole. It looked perfect but when I picked it up the shell broke in my hand. The shell was really thin.

A few days later Marmite went into the nest box without looking poorly. This time Marmite laid a good shelled egg. While looking poorly Marmite always goes to the grit so she knows what she needs. It seems that she is taking grit and oyster shell but it doesn’t seem to be helping her form her shells properly.

I hope that after laying a good shelled egg Marmite is now improving. It seems to be one drama after another with these girls at the moment. Today both Salmon and Marmite look happy again so I can only hope it stays that way.

In other news Smoke has gone broody again. She has laid nine eggs in twelve days. Sigh!

My husband had been going to the allotment most afternoons during the recent sunny spell. He dug and weeded and mowed the grass. He put the canes in ready for the runner beans. He bought me home a few wild flowers in his water bottle.

On the last day before the weather broke and the rain came we went up together and I took a few photos.

The netting is now the required green instead of the offending orange of last year and the frames are now a better height. They are high enough to be useful but not so high as to offend anyone.

One of the artichokes has turned into a giant. We exchanged some of our globe artichokes for some Jerusalem artichokes with the lady on the next plot. It is good to have some things on the plot that will come back each year.

We have raspberry canes, rhubarb and a strawberry bed which will all remain there every year. We were also surprised to find that the wild flowers we sowed from seed last year have also come back and last year’s parsley is looking amazing.

We have lots of plants almost ready to go in. The only thing we haven’t managed to get is seed potatoes so we are going to try chitting supermarket potatoes and plant those.

We have also put whatsapp on my phone and called it – allotment gurus. All three of us sharing the plot have it so that we can message each other to say when we are going to the allotment or when we are watering the plot so that we can space out our visits and take turns with watering.

We can also share photos of anything coming up on the plot or being grown at home for the plot. Who would have thought that the lock-down would have us using technology that we have never used before!

We were worried before the lock-down that it would stop us from using the allotment this year but actually it has all worked out very well. It gives us a source of exercise and will provide fresh produce and there is plenty of space between plots to keep distanced if other people are tending their plots.

With our app it means we all three get each message instantly instead of texting each other as we did before and we can all feel involved. I think the plot will be even better this year.

Marmite has been having an egg laying problem. It isn’t actually about the laying so much it’s about the shell forming.

After her soft shelled eggs and then the really weird shaped one she has improved but the egg shells are still a little odd.

Marmite lays, on average, every three days and she sometimes has the humped shape before she lays and doesn’t look happy although she isn’t looking as miserable as when she was laying soft shelled eggs.

Her last two eggs have had firm shells but are just slightly misshaped. They have a band around them rather than a smooth oval shape.

It’s difficult to show in a photo but there are slight bands/ridges running around the middle of the eggs.

Marmite has also been doing watery poops on the patio area just before laying. There is obviously something not quite right with her.

The good news is that Marmite is eating well and looks fine in between laying. She has been dust bathing and sun bathing when it was sunny. She is lively and quick to the treats. I am not too worried about her at the moment.

I hope that her eggs will continue to improve and she will stay well. I keep hoping that this will pass. Only time will tell.