An entire afternoon together for the girls

Egg production is up, with sixteen eggs on our egg rollers since last Sunday’s breakfast. Today was the first, four egg day, this year. This means I no longer need to buy eggs, so as I had two shop bought eggs left, I decided to scramble them for the girls as a treat. This is the main flock’s favourite treat of all.

Scrambled eggs for the girls

They are loving the eggs

They are not at all sure about this

The new girls just couldn’t pluck up the courage to try the egg. Once the other girls had finished their egg they were desperately going up against the wire trying to get to this dish. I gave up and gave the dish to the other girls.

After lunch I was ready to mix the girls as I had a free afternoon but Cinnamon was having such a lovely dust bath that I didn’t want to spoil it for her. Rusty and Freckles had been dust bathing on the other side of the wire.

Cinnamon makes such a deep hole considering what a tiny girl she is. She keeps on digging and when she was sitting in her hole she almost disappeared. I took one shot through the wire in case she moved on when I moved to her section.

Cinnamon makes a deep hole to dust bath in

Once through the gate Apricot put her face right up to the camera. I kept this shot as it is quite funny.

Apricot photo bombs the shot

Cinnamon stands in her hole

Apricot appears to be asking her what she is doing

These girls are so funny. It was three o’clock by the time dust bathing was finished and I opened up the gates and escape routes.

The afternoon went the best yet and I left the girls together until the bedtime corn at five o’clock. The new girls came out of their section on their own. They did end up at the top of the ladder fairly soon but I lifted them down and put them on the patio while the other girls were occupied dust bathing.

Eventually they went back to the top of the ladder. I left them a while and when I returned they had actually made their own way down from the ladder and moved up the run. This is another break through.

Rusty did most of the chasing but not all of the time. Speckles and Peaches did a little chasing. Cinnamon didn’t look stressed at any time though.

Emerald was desperate to get into the new girl’s coop so I let her in and she laid her egg there today.

I got them all back to their sections with the help of the bedtime corn and Cinnamon was scratching happily in her area without looking stressed. I felt we were finally getting somewhere with this.

I will keep giving them longer spells together and once the clocks have changed (Sunday) I will start working on getting them to bed together. The clocks changing will mean the automatic door will be opening at seven o’clock instead of six o’clock which will make it easier for me to be there to watch them come out and make sure it’s going okay. This is the next hurdle to get over but I am happy at the moment that we are making progress.