An update on all things recent

We have been so busy with work this week with two big functions on, that I haven’t had time to blog, so I thought I would do an update.

Firstly Honey’s eye is much better, it has healed much more quickly than I expected. It looks pretty much back to normal now.

Honey’s eye is looking much better, this was yesterday, five days after the accident

The girls have been separated for two weeks now. It’s harder work for me and I miss interacting so easily with which ever set is on the furthest side as I have to go through their gate to be with them. I am alternating which side they are on every two days.

I know the girls are happier when they are together and they have twice as much space when they are together.

Honey especially wants to be with the big girls and is always at the gate trying to slip through. She has managed a couple of times and yesterday she managed to get under the wire through the tiniest gap. I have now heaped the soil up against it.

It is such a shame as I would dearly love to have them altogether but I can’t let the little girls get plucked any more.

I know this won’t break the habit because Pepper and Dotty are still plucking each other. Pepper plucks Dotty’s head and neck and Dotty plucks Pepper’s bottom. Now that Pepper only has Dotty to pluck feathers from, Dotty’s head is suddenly looking worse. Her head feathers had started to grow back but are now disappearing again.

Dotty’s head is missing feathers

Amber’s head and neck look awful

Amber is giving me a lot of chat as usual as you can see from her open beak.

Sparkle’s bare bottom does have some black dots appearing

Topaz looks pristine

Topaz is the only girl that doesn’t look plucked but when the girls were together I did pick up some beautiful Topaz feathers. Luckily there weren’t enough plucked from her to notice.

My plan is to stick with it until the little girls are fully feathered again (even if that is after the moult) and then try them together again. If the feather plucking restarts I will then separate them again.

They have an hour in the morning together when they are occupied by feeding, drinking and snoozing or dust bathing and an hour together before bedtime when they are again occupied feeding, drinking and scratching. If they lose an odd feather during this time, like Topaz, it probably won’t make much difference. What I don’t want is them being ruined like Amber.

The other thing to update on is Topaz and her egg laying or not as is actually the case. We thought she may have laid her first egg a few weeks ago but I now know that it wasn’t her and was probably Honey’s egg.

I was out at the time and my husband noticed Topaz was missing for while then she started shouting and he looked in the nest box and found an egg so assumed it was hers. Since then she has gone into the nest box every day for about half an hour and then she comes out shouting her head off. I go and investigate and each time have been surprised to find no egg. I think she is practising and will start laying soon.

The other give away was that the egg that day was large (for a banty egg) and round which is what Honey’s eggs are like. Sparkle’s eggs are small and narrow and I would expect Topaz to lay a similar egg.

I feel sure she will start laying soon and I will know when she does.

Tomorrow we are going to start fitting the roof panels on the remaining open part of the run and I can’t wait to get it all under cover. It has been horrible poop picking in a boggy run. Once it is covered I will fork the whole run over to help it dry out which will take some time but which will be so nice once it’s dry.

I would just like to see some feathers coming through on the little girls. I think there are a few pins showing on Sparkle’s bottom and possibly one on Amber’s head but one is a bit disappointing. I suppose I must be patient.