New Years Eve

It’s new Years Eve and exactly six months since I got my chickens. I can’t imagine life without them now.

The dynamics of the flock have changed for the better since Treacle became top hen upon maturity.  This changed Dotty’s behaviour (as Treacle keeps her in her place) and she no longer bullies Bluebell. With that change, I no longer use the water spray or have any need to tell Dotty off and finally she will now allow me to stroke her.

Dotty likes to jump on to my shoulder at any given opportunity, either from the ground or from the coop roof, but only recently would allow me to stroke her. Treacle and Bluebell jump on to my shoulder too but not as frequently as Dotty. Pepper always looks like she wants to jump up, but doesn’t seem to know how to, or loses her nerve at the last moment.

It’s now been a month since I took the jasmine out of the run after realising that it was the cause of the musty tasting eggs. The process of the eggs improving has been really gradual and it is only now that we feel there is no trace of the musty taste at all. Recently it was such a slight hint that we were able to eat the eggs with salt and pepper but now feel they are completely normal tasting and can start to give some out as gifts.

Treacle was the first to lay and has laid twenty eight eggs in forty five days. Bluebell was the second to lay and is now the most prolific with twenty three eggs in twenty nine days and has not missed a day in the last fifteen days. Pepper was most recent and has laid seven in eleven days. We have had five days so far with three eggs a day. Dotty is a month younger and still has no comb yet so I don’t expect her to start laying any time soon. We have now had a total of fifty eight eggs in one and a half months.

We are still constantly improving the run. We knew we needed to cover the whole of the top of the run with either weld mesh or chicken wire to keep the rats out as we discovered that they could squeeze through the chicken net. We decided this was too big a job for us and have the guys who built the run coming back in four days time to do this for us.

We also keep discovering new dig holes where the rats are still coming through next doors decking and finding a way out by the step or the boxed area. When I recently moved the slab the water was on I found a tunnel underneath it. We keep blocking each hole up as a temporary measure but as soon as we have stopped them from being able to get in from above we will do something more permanent to stop them digging in. I remove the food at night but that doesn’t seem to stop them although I haven’t actually seen a rat for a long time it’s only discovering tunnels that alerts me to their continued presence.

I also had quite a few chicken related gifts this Christmas. I had this little character from my husband:

Christmas chicken

I also had a lovely natural history chicken book from my eldest son and his girlfriend and some fine bone china tea cups featuring chickens from my youngest son and his girlfriend amongst many other gifts.

My husband also gave me some very practical chicken related gifts, an antique boot scraper for the run and a boot cleaner to go with it, plus a floodlight so that I may be able to do my morning chores earlier and my last sweep up later during these short winter days and also a wall planter to go in the run. I have been very lucky this Christmas. We are going to put all these items in the run once the rat proofing is complete.

Finally as a look back over the last six months I thought I would include some photos to show how much the girls have changed as they have grown up. This was taken in August:

We like to sit close together

It’s really tricky to get a photo of all four together these days as they are always on the move. I took these today:

Eating tomato

Scratching together

Not the best photos but they do show how much they have changed. I look forward to my New Year with the girls.