Emerald’s first egg of the year

Freckles laid her fifth egg this morning, she is our best layer at the moment. I thought Emerald was getting ready to lay as her comb is now a lovely red colour and she has become more vocal. She was also looking in the nest box.

A little later this morning I heard some shouting and when I inspected Emerald was just coming out of the nest box with a little heap of pine shavings on her back. There was her warm, first egg, of the year. It is also another long egg. It seems that most of the bigger girls are laying a, long shaped, first egg.

Well done Emerald. This is five days earlier than last year.

Emerald’s first egg

A medium, shop bought, egg on the left for comparison, Emerald’s egg next and three of Freckles eggs on the right. If Freckles lays again on Saturday we will have two little eggs each for Sunday breakfast.

Emerald’s egg on the egg stand

After lunch I switched the girls to opposites sides again. Peaches and Barley enjoyed having their favourite dust bathing spot back.

Peaches and Barley dust bath on the other side of the run

The new girls perch

These three are a definite pair and an odd one. Apricot likes to perch on the ladders. The other two haven’t yet discovered that they can perch but are taking the in between step of sitting on the log.

I managed to lure Apricot to the patio area with some spinach. She has got the hang of jumping on to the wooden block and up to the patio. My husband suggested putting their own, familiar food and water dishes there so that they recognise them as they haven’t sussed out the bigger ones yet. April had some water.

Apricot has got it sorted

Dandelion and Cinnamon were watching Apricot but couldn’t seem to work out how to get up to the patio. I lifted Cinnamon to the patio and put her next to the food dish. She didn’t stay long as they seem to have make there own way there. If I put them there they just want to come back down again.

I put Cinnamon next to the food dish

I decided to make some steps from the other wooden blocks in the run. As a temporary measure this should make it easier for them. I guided Dandelion up the steps.

She does look funny but you have to allow for how much better she will look when her head and neck feathers open.

I have built some steps up to the patio area

She didn’t stay there either and I relented and moved their food and water into the run. They then had a good feed. I can see it is going to take a while to get them used to the patio area.

Just before bedtime I shut the main flock behind the gate on the new girls side and closed the hatch. I used corn to get them in. I then picked up Rusty and Freckles and carried them around, to the triangle part, next to the hatch. I thought this was the easiest way to separate these two.

Then I opened the gate and let the new girls and the bigger girls mix. I had the water spray to hand. There was mayhem and I squirted the bigger girls when they went for the new girls. It was pretty stressful but more like I am used to. The bigger girls attacked and the new girls ran away. This means as long as there are escape routes it’s not too bad.

The difference with the seramas yesterday was that there was no running away or backing down, just full on, brutal attacking. I can see now that the seramas are going to be the tricky ones to mix.

I only allowed about ten minutes of this as it was stressful. I got the new girls through the gate and returned all the areas back to normal. Whew, this is hard work. This is going to take time and patience.

Tomorrow I will continue with trying to get the new girls used to the patio area as the feeding station. I can see that I will need to leave out more food dishes when the girls are mixed but that is okay. I think we made a very small amount of progress today.