Carol's Chickens

Speckles is moulting and sitting around in dust holes during the heat. Smoke came out of being broody more quickly than usual. She was broody for just under a week and as usual started staying out for longer periods.

I closed the nest boxes at the end of the day for two evenings and she perched in the chicken shed and then no longer returned to the nest box.

Two weeks on and Smoke would usually start to lay again but instead she is also moulting. I am finding a little heap of feathers under her roost spot in the mornings.

Marmite looked uncomfortable again yesterday afternoon and I knew another egg was coming. This morning she looked fine once more and her soft shelled egg was actually in the nest box. It’s the first one in ages that has made it to the nest box and it was partly intact this time.

As it was so hot I decided to give the girls a treat of mash made with ice cold water and topped with frozen peas.

The girls love this and it’s a great way to get all the girls in shot and to cool the girls down. It won’t be long before the dishes are emptied.

I have been picking up feathers from Speckles for the last few days both from the chicken shed in the mornings and the run during the day.

Speckles is moulting early. I think it’s because she hasn’t laid at all this year and her hormones have decided that she is done with that for the year. Speckles only laid six eggs last year and I wondered if she would lay three this year following her pattern of halving her total each year.

Speckles had a few moments of sitting in the nest box almost as if to remind herself that this is the usual thing to do but no eggs. She is really looking her age these days and does a lot of sitting in the run so I don’t expect her to lay again. I am just happy that she looks okay.

Yesterday afternoon Speckles was having a lovely dust bath surrounded by feathers. I wanted to get a photo but as soon as I walked through the chicken run gate with my camera she ran to me.

Instead I took a photo of her dust hole and of her at the water dish.

Speckles comb has never got as big or as red as when she was laying and I can see her age in her eyes but as long as she stays well and happy I am happy.

Yesterday we picked more raspberries and strawberries from the allotment plus a few lettuce. D and S, our lovely allotment friends, who lived opposite moved on Friday. They are only ten minutes walk away but we felt sad to no longer have them across the road from us.

We gave them a prosecco send off on Thursday evening with all of us allotment sharers, at a suitable distance, in their large front garden. We will miss spending time in their front garden, who would have thought we would have had so many meetings for drinks in their the front garden!

T and C picked three bunches of wild flowers from the allotment so that we could all three have a vase of them.

They are longer stemmed than usual so fitted nicely in a different vase.

I know the allotment will keep us all together and we will all still see each other but it is a bit of an end of an era not having our friends opposite us. We know that they will be happy in their new home though and at least they haven’t moved far away. Times are changing but we will always be friends.

Marmite is still really struggling with her egg laying. I had hoped she might get better but she seems to be getting worse if anything.

We always know when her next egg is due as she looks so miserable. She always has a really humped shaped tail and she isn’t interested in eating while like this. She drinks a lot of water and stands with her eyes closing and often puts herself to bed early.

Usually a soft shelled egg is laid in the chicken shed in the morning and then she bounces back to normal and eats enthusiastically again.

This process usually takes a couple of days but this time she has looked miserable for four days. She looked so poorly that I actually started wondering if we were going to lose her. I felt so sorry for her and so helpless.

Yesterday it rained all day and Marmite was drinking from a puddle. She had the really humped shape tail and her wings are always down to the ground when she is like this. She later moved to the water dish and continued to drink.

Marmite was drinking a lot of water and not eating and so was doing very wet, white, poops. She took herself off to bed early each day late afternoon.

I was so worried about her but this morning she was out in the run looking normal again and eating. I gave the girls a couple of dishes of mash to help build Marmite up again and she was straight to the mash.

At first there didn’t appear to be a soft shelled egg in the chicken shed but with a disposable glove I sifted through the shavings and I found some bits of soft shell stuck to the shavings.

Marmite never seems to realise that she has finally expelled the egg and she has a ritual of sitting on the top of the nest box before sitting in the nest box for a while. Eventually she gives up.

In the past she has sometimes laid an egg on top of the nest box and I have found it broken where it rolls down the back. These days she seems to move into the nest box but either way I knew it didn’t matter as she had already laid.

Marmite has a lovely red face and comb and looks the picture of health once she has laid. It is such a shame that laying is such a problem for her.

I wish Marmite would take a break from laying but sadly that is unlikely to happen. I am so relieved that she has bounced back again for now.

We have been so lucky that the neighbours that moved in next door in December have turned out to be lovely neighbours. We hit it off straight away.

We welcomed them with a card and a bottle of wine. They then saved me their moving in packaging for my e-bay selling.

They have been starting their garden from scratch as it was originally all lawn. We have passed over the fence self seedlings from our garden. We have also given them veg seedlings/plants as we have loads. When growing from seed there are always plenty to share around.

A few days ago they said that they had something for me. They gave us a bottle of wine and a bunch of yellow tulips to thank us for the plants we have given them. We were really touched as there was no need and it is easy to share the plants.

We have a quart pot hanging on our fence which has a succulent in it and luckily it thrives on neglect. This year it is flowering at it’s best yet.

My lovely husband continues to bring me wild flowers from the allotment which gives a lovely splash of colour indoors.

Yesterday we went to the allotment and I picked our first punnet of raspberries from our second plot. These raspberry canes are four or five years old and although the raspberries are small they are really abundant.

Having picked these I had made hardly any impression on the bushes. We were so lucky to have mature raspberry canes on our second plot.

I had bought some vanilla ice cream for the freezer on my last shop with these in mind. Raspberries and ice cream will be our lunch time dessert for the next few days.

There will be so much produce this year from the allotments that there will plenty to share around. It is so lovely to be able to share with our neighbours on both sides and to know that they appreciate this too. Good neighbours are a blessing.

The roses over our arches are always spectacular at this time of year but are soon past their best. However the roses on the opposite side of the garden are a different story.

We have one rambling rose which was here when we moved in but was small and hidden behind a shrub. We uncovered it and it has grown so much since then and rambles up into the twisted willow tree that we planted.

We also have what was originally a standard rose that a group of our friends gave me for my 50th birthday. We have let it get rather overgrown and just trim it back a bit at the end of each year.

Both these roses flower all summer until the first frosts usually at around the end of October and sometimes at the beginning of November.

Both these roses are beautiful and our next door neighbours say that they enjoy them over their side of the wall too.

The garden is looking amazing after first the sun and then the rain making everything look lush. The roses are now past their best but even so I love to see them as I walk under the arches so thought them worthy of photographing.

I just love the garden at this time of year.

I have had to write this post in hindsight because my camera card stopped working. It wouldn’t let me access my photos so there has been a delay while I ordered another card and waited for it to arrive.

Smoke went broody again four days ago. She had laid eight eggs in ten days. As a serial broody her laying time between bouts of being broody is getting shorter and shorter.

It is frustrating that our best, little girl, layer only has such short bursts of laying.

Marmite is still struggling with laying. She often looks miserable in the afternoon and then lays a soft shelled egg in the chicken shed in the morning. This is happening on average about every three days.

A few days ago I found a really tiny egg in the chicken shed in the morning. This may be the tiniest yet. It was about the size of a small blueberry. I am guessing that this was from Marmite.

Smoke is broody so isn’t laying and both Salmon and Spangle are laying normal eggs on average every two to three days. They had both laid the day before the tiny egg. Marmite had laid a soft shelled egg two days before and has since laid another soft shelled egg two days later.

I looked inside after I had taken this photo and there was no yolk.

Marmite has laid a selection of the most odd eggs I have come across during my time keeping chickens. There is obviously something adrift with her ability to make shells because I see her taking the grit and oyster shell and sometimes her soft shells have calcium bubbles/pimples on them. It is as if the calcium isn’t forming in the correct place.

It is also odd that Marmite laid properly last year and this problem has developed this year. Fortunately Marmite bounces back as soon as the egg is laid.

I just hope that Marmite continues to bounce back and I have a faint hope that maybe in time her egg laying will improve again but only time will tell.

Having just found a source of asparagus for both allotment plots I decided to go back to the garden centre before they sold out and get another two for our garden veg plot. It will be lovely to have some in our garden too.

I thought that before the rose goes over completely I would take a photo from our bedroom window.

The roses have gone mad and everything is looking so lush. We have finally had some much needed rain during the night before last and then yesterday afternoon.

A day off from watering veg and the rain will do so much good. I am missing the sun though but mustn’t complain.

As I have mentioned in a previous post the three of us sharing an allotment plot have taken on a second plot next to the first.

Sometimes we have been working on one plot while T or D work on the other plot. Just after my 60th birthday I mentioned to T, who was working on the second plot that day, that I would like to grow asparagus now that we have much more space.

T instantly put together a raised bed and said that would be for the asparagus. We all agreed that it would make a great extra 60th birthday present and as asparagus is for the long haul we would all remember it being planted around my 60th birthday.

I started looking online and found that all the asparagus crowns and asparagus plants were sold out. I ordered seeds but was disappointed because plants take two years to crop whereas seeds take four years to crop which is what I meant by it being the long haul. Once cropping though the plants produce for twenty to fifty years.

Garden centres had now reopened and the next day T sent a photo to our allotment phone app of asparagus plants at our local garden centre. They were eight pounds each which I thought expensive so I said I would get three. My lovely husband said I must get six and have them as my 60th birthday present.

I bought six plants and prepared the raised bed with manure in the bottom then a layer of compost then a layer of topsoil. In the meantime word had got round the allotment grapevine and someone had been digging out asparagus from their plot. They had recently taken the plot over and didn’t like asparagus! They had already dumped some but had now very kindly saved me three crowns which was very much appreciated.

The ones I had bought were purple asparagus and these were green asparagus. I decided to alternate three purple and three green in the raised bed. I then decided, with agreement from T and D that I would plant the other three on the first plot so that we would have some on each plot. There was a patch where some of last year’s raspberry canes had died over winter so I prepared this patch for the remaining three plants.

This will be a birthday present that will go on and on in the future and we will all benefit from.

I also condensed my three birthday bouquets into one vase this morning.

This is not at all bad for a week and a half later and still looking lovely. I am so lucky.

I seem to have veered away from chickens lately. I thought that I should put out a group photo just to prove that the girls are still here and all doing very nicely.

The best way to get a group photo is to give the girls a treat. There have been a few occasions recently when the entire flock have all been sitting together either in the sun or later in the day in the shade but every time I go back with my camera one of the girls will have moved away from the group.

This morning I decided to give the girls two dishes of mash with plenty of cold water, as a cooling treat, to get a few group shots of them.

Back row from left to right we have Speckles, Spangle, Marmite and Flame and front row from left to right we have Ebony, Smoke and Salmon.

My lovely girls.