Would You Like An Update?
Doesn't everyone hibernate over the winter months?
There have been a few changes in the chicken numbers that you should really catch up with. We lost Sydney a while back. It wasn't a surprise - she hadn't been in top form for a good few days. The weekend before, we went to the Gosford Forest Poultry Fair and picked up three silkies (two are bantams) and another hybrid to add to the flock but within a day or so, Sydney died.
We kept the 4 new ones separate for two weeks solid - well - that is a lie, we TRIED to keep them separate but the hybrid actually decided to make a bid for freedom and she suffered 2 or 3 pecks in the first half hour and then made it look like she had been there all her life. The other 3 are quite dainty and make the loveliest gentle clucks unlike the squawks the others make.
After having the new girls in isolation we have a second run in the big run. I stole an small unused dog house from my mum and when the new girls went in with the rest, we realised the guinea pigs could go outside for the summer. Now, with the two bantams being broody, I am starting to think about perhaps getting some hatching eggs from The Chicken Man just for the fun of having chicks. We couldn't consider this without a place to keep them apart.
One of the bantam silkies has been laying - her eggs are the smallest itty bitty things you have ever seen! I'm afraid they aren't up to much, cooking wise. We joke about having to have "6 egg omelettes" each.
Just the other day, we got home from work and found Hetty (the Rhode Island Red) looking very sorry for herself under a bush. I picked her up for a cuddle, then took her to the coop. She waddled into the non-chicken side of the shed and settled herself down. I reckoned she would have a wee rest from the others in there on her own but by morning she was dead. It was all very sudden and unexpected. She had no other symptoms (other than being dead of course!) and I started to wonder if she had been poisoned somehow - the neighbours? - a poisoned mouse she had found? - it had to be something that only affected her and not the others. . .. I have finally decided that she was the one nibbling at the sweet pea seedlings - despite the fast there were loads of sweet pea plants on the go last year when the original chickens first arrived.
Poor Hetty, she was extremely verbal and the place isn't quite the same without her. She was a large chicken and you always knew she was there, and so did the neighbours!
With there being so many chickens now there are always such a gaggle of them when I go into the garden. They meet me at the door and try their best to be the one who trips me up on the walk to the coop. One of the brown silkies is usually the winner!
The white silkie and Lacey the Wyandotte Bantam are acting all broody. They refuse to leave their nest boxes for more than a few minutes at a time and I have seen others having to sit on top of them in order to lay their eggs! other than that, they seem happy enough and Lacey is very bossy when she comes out to eat - she took a few feathers out of Izzie's back yesterday when Izzie dared to try to walk in front of her!
Jessica has taken the notion to be involved with the chickens. She regularly pops down in the morning to let them out and when I was away for a couple of days in February I showed her how to fed them and check their water. She stands with me in the evenings and we talk chicken. I am not sure if she has a natural affinity for them or she just enjoys being with me but she always has loads of wee stories to tell everyone about their personalities.
They are still roaming free every day. Over the winter it made no difference to us to let them out as we had little need to walk around the paths but now that I want to get on with planting and growing vegetables and fruit bushes, they are becoming a bit of a nuisance and we
have started to think about an extension to their run, giving them much more of an area to be in, without letting them free range all the time. We can't afford to build it at the moment but I can't plant because they are out. The garden side of life is on-hold until we get the run sorted. . .
