We are quite sure that Flame is deranged. When I decided to add two more game girls I was influenced by the fact that Toffee and Emerald were gentle, quiet, girls. I thought that was how game girls were and to be honest I hoped to have another Toffee and Emerald.
Ebony and Flame couldn’t be more different. They are loud and shouty and Flame seems demented. They have blended into the rest of the flock perfectly and the flock get on really well and there is no bullying. You would think that they had always been together. It was our easiest integration and they sit together in harmony.
It’s just their egg laying habits that are causing mayhem. When Ebony is in the nest box Flame shouts and when Flame is in the nest box Ebony shouts and boy is it loud. They are the loudest girls we have ever had.
Ebony has adjusted to the high nest box. She goes in and settles and then lays her egg and comes out again just like any normal chicken and just as you would expect.
Flame is a different matter. She will manically run from the chicken shed to both nest boxes. She digs and digs and throws all the shavings out of all three places. It wouldn’t be so bad if she just did this for a while before she laid her egg but she sometimes does it for an entire day!
Flame is a prolific layer with her best record, since being with us, being twelve days before taking just one day off so her egg laying antics are quite a pain. Like all girls that lay every day she lays an hour or two later each day as it takes about twenty six hours for a hen to produce and lay an egg.
Recently she laid her egg at four in the afternoon so I knew that her next egg would be due at about six o’clock. She started her manic behaviour at ten o’clock in the morning. She spent the entire day running from the shed to the nest boxes and throwing all the shavings out.
In the meantime Ebony needed to lay her egg so she went in the high nest box while Flame was in the shed. This caused Flame to shout her head off when she realised. Eventually Ebony laid her egg and Flame continued for the rest of the day with this behaviour until finally laying her egg in the high nest box at six o’clock as I had predicted. From then on she was calm and normal again.
The chicken shed
The patio nest box
The high nest box
And there is the manic Flame! I feel like this behaviour must be stressful for Flame too and I just don’t know why she is doing this. I can’t work out what she doesn’t like about any of the nest box choices. I have given up putting the shavings back in until the end of the day because it had become a never ending job.
Some days she is worse than others by which I mean that some days she does it for longer periods of time than other days. I just hope that they take their end of year break soon. I never thought I would find myself hoping they would stop laying.
I hope that after a winter break she will have forgotten whatever it was that she thought she needed before and will just accept the nest boxes we have. I intend to put the high nest box back in it’s usual position on the patio over winter and I hope in spring the game girls will find the nest boxes and accept them.
This is a problem that I could never have imagined would arise. I had hoped that over time Flame would settle down but she seems to have got worse with time. I can only hope that things will calm down over winter and that in spring these two will be used to our set up.
Click here to see the history of my flock.
They do seem to have strange laying habits.You have had your share of all kinds of girls.
All different habits.But they are all lovely looking girls, and it is so nice that they all get on together.
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We do seem to have had any different behaviour you could come across with chickens but as you say they get on and it would be so much worse if that wasn’t the case. I think we just have to ride this one out and hope she settles down next year. Speckles hasn’t laid for two weeks now and today is dropping feathers all over the run so it seems like she is having a moult of two halves. She has never laid so late in the year before so I think it was probably because she laid less earlier in the year.
Oh my goodness!!! :-0
I know!
It was going far too smoothly wasn’t it!! Hopefully as you say their laying will end soon and next year it will be better – let’s hope so!! :-0 xx
I have only just seen your comment here. It does feel like in return for a smooth integration we have to another problem instead but I know it doesn’t really work like that. I am sure they will stop laying soon and things will settle down. Speckles has stopped laying again and is moulting again so maybe the game girls will also do so soon.
Good Lord, it’s always something. You could try egg laying mats which she wouldn’t be able to kick out of the nest. It’s like fancy astro turf. You could also try nesting curtains. I wonder if her settling into a darker space would make her feel safer. It’s tough to know what goes through their little heads or what the want.
I am not sure mats would work because she seems to want it deep. She digs really deep holes and I deepened up all of the shavings because she would end up scratching at the wood and this too made Ebony shout her head off. All the boxes and shed are quite dark. I just don’t know what she wants. She should stop laying soon and we can then leave the problem until the spring. As you say we just don’t know what goes on in their little heads.
Flame has certainly established herself as a chicken who’ll never be forgotten! I get the noise (my wife said today that it’s better when Cotton is broody!), but not the shavings sent everywhere. That said, I have cut word to block the first few inches, so they’d have to be really going for it to get the bedding out. Flame, however, probably would!
She is one of a kind. I am not sure now that it’s even about egg laying at the moment. Today we had no eggs but Flame spent the entire day manically running in and out of the shed and kicked loads of shavings out. She didn’t look in the other nest boxes just ran in and out of the shed all day. I don’t know why she is doing this. My feeling is that egg laying is coming to an end and there is something else going on with her but I hope that too will come to an end. I worry it can’t be good for her but then I think she has to work it out because I don’t know what to do for her. Why do I always get the mad ones! I think I have to just wait and see how it works out as there is nothing else I can do.
Sorry – ‘wood’, not ‘word’!
Don’t worry, I look back at e-mail and text and see these mistakes and I always think people can work it out. I texted recently then noticed a wrong word and it wasn’t even similar to the intended word. I sent another text correcting it and got the reply “LOL”. We all know how easily it happens and it doesn’t matter. The fact that we interact is the important bit. x