Sugar

I am perplexed about what is going on with Sugar. She spends a lot of time sitting on the ground in the run. In between she does all the usual things that chickens do. She runs to the treats, she eats, drinks and poops and she dust baths and she perches at bedtime.

Since Sugar has been doing this she also sits on the chickens’ patio before bedtime. All our seramas have been last in at bedtime. Now we are down to two Sugar and then Salmon are always last in. Salmon has been last in for many years.

The other three girls go in and Salmon potters around and Sugar sits on the edge of the patio. I have never seen any of the girls do this apart from when they are broody and I lift them from a nest box and put them on the patio and they take a while to move off.

This has become the end of the day habit.

I have researched hens spending a lot of time sitting and there doesn’t seem very much in the way of answers. I have looked on the reddit forum and other chicken keepers have posed this problem so it’s not that uncommon. One took her girl to the vet and the vet could find nothing externally wrong and said that she could only conclude that it was something internal.

One possibility that was surmised was that it could be a reproduction problem. Given that Sugar recently laid three tiny eggs I think that could be a possibility.

The main thing is that she isn’t going down hill fast, it isn’t contagious and there isn’t anything I can do. It will be interesting to see if she lays normally next time or does the same again. If she does the same again we will know that it is something to do with her reproduction system.

As long as she is happy we will just wait and see what happens.