{"id":19913,"date":"2017-03-17T06:50:05","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T06:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/?p=19913"},"modified":"2017-03-17T06:50:05","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T06:50:05","slug":"a-mixed-afternoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/?p=19913","title":{"rendered":"A mixed afternoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a bit of time yesterday afternoon so I spent a couple of hours in with the chickens. At first I closed off the bottom half of the run by closing the hatch and the new gate and mixed the girls together. I soon realised that this wasn’t a good idea. With less space for the new girls to run they kept getting trapped in a corner.<\/p>\n

\"Cinnamon<\/a>

Cinnamon and Dandelion in the corner and Apricot has gone behind the shelter<\/p><\/div>\n

I don’t know if missing, mixing them yesterday set them back, or if it was the smaller space, but Rusty was back in full on fight mode. She went for Apricot and tried to pin her down and pulled a beak full of feathers from her back. This was no good at all. She just wouldn’t leave her alone.<\/p>\n

I quickly shut the main flock in the new girl’s section and left the new girls on their own in the now smaller section so that they could get more familiar with the patio area. I ushered them towards the patio.<\/p>\n

\"Dandelion<\/a>

Dandelion and Cinnamon finally discovered the food was here<\/p><\/div>\n

They spent the longest time yet on the patio, feeding and preening. This is a small step forward. Dandelion looks headless with her head in the dish but all the other photos had one or other of them blurred.<\/p>\n

\"As<\/a>

As usual these girls make the most of a dust bath in this area<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Apricot's<\/a>

Apricot’s close up<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Three<\/a>

Three girls in a row<\/p><\/div>\n

At this stage I decided to shut Rusty and Freckles in the bottom part of the run and let the bigger girls mix with the new girls. For a while it was only Emerald in with the new girls as the rest were still enjoying their dust bath.<\/p>\n

\"Emerald<\/a>

Emerald takes no notice of Apricot<\/p><\/div>\n

Emerald and Apricot were scratching and pecking next to each other with no problem at all.<\/p>\n

\"Rusty<\/a>

Rusty and Freckles are in chicken jail<\/p><\/div>\n

They are all fine as long as they are separated by the wire but all hell lets loose once they are together. I can’t believe the only shot of this has Dandelion headless again, preening this time.<\/p>\n

\"It's<\/a>

It’s Emerald’s turn in the dust bath<\/p><\/div>\n

The rest of the big girls left the dust bath and Emerald decided it was her turn. She reminds me of a duck on water in this photo.<\/p>\n

\"Dandelion<\/a>

Dandelion and Cinnamon are fine with Emerald too<\/p><\/div>\n

Emerald is top girl and has no need to throw her weight about. She is fine with the new girls. What is it with the headless shots, now it’s Emeralds turn!<\/p>\n

\"Cinnamon<\/a>

Cinnamon discovers the log<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Dandelion<\/a>

Dandelion is soon beside her<\/p><\/div>\n

Everything was fine as long as Rusty and Freckles were out of the equation. I let Rusty and Freckles out of jail and Rusty went straight after the new girls again. I decided that was enough for one day and separated them.<\/p>\n

The thing that seems crazy is that if we were just mixing the little girls with the bigger girls there would be no problem. I would feel confident mixing them now. It’s Rusty and Freckles that are slowing this whole process down. I got it totally wrong when I first thought that they would probably mix first.<\/p>\n

I should have known from the past that it is always the bottom girls that cause the most mayhem and I now realise that it doesn’t matter about the size. I wonder if Rusty is ever going to allow the new girls to mix.<\/p>\n

I am guessing that we will get there eventually but that it is going to take a long time. I thought that in the future I would probably always add seramas to my flock but I am now wondering if that would always make it this difficult. Time will tell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a bit of time yesterday afternoon so I spent a couple of hours in with the chickens. At first I closed off the bottom half of the run by closing the hatch and the new gate and mixed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19913"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19957,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19913\/revisions\/19957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}