Carol's Chickens

It always amazes me how different Speckles comb is in summer and winter.

Speckles comb in May

In summer Speckles comb is huge and bright red. In winter it is small and pink. It completely changes her look.

Speckles comb in October

Her head looks smaller and her face looks quite different. She is all pastel coloured instead of bold red. Her comb changes more than any other girl I have ever had.

In summer her magnificent comb and wattles remind of a cockerel. I never cease to be amazed how her comb can change so completely.

I think that the flock is the tightest it has ever been at the moment. It has been a really close flock since Peaches and Barley left the flock but the girls have pulled even closer since we lost Rusty.

Speckles is still playing the role of mother hen to the little girls which she has been doing since Peaches and Barley left the flock in May. Five months of being a mother hen to the little girls when real mother hens only do this for about six to eight weeks. We wonder how long she will do this. My theory is she will probably change when she starts laying again in the spring but we shall see. It may also change if more girls come into the flock.

She calls the little girls to treats and picks up bits to drop in front of them even though they are perfectly capable of finding their own bit’s. She is totally unselfish with the little girls which is not like chickens at all. On their part they accept her as a mother figure and gather around her all the time.

If there is a sudden loud noise or a loud bird noise they all close in around her. It seems that they are happy to have her as a mother figure. It’s the most odd but also endearing thing I have come across since keeping chickens.

Emerald appears to be really feeling her age and spends a lot of her time perched while the rest of the flock potter around together. At the end of the day they all perch together. I took all these photos in one day.

Emerald spends a lot of her day perched like this

Speckles has her girls gathered around her, Freckles just moved out of shot as I took this

Speckles watches over her girls as they dust bath and peck at the soil

A communal preening session

They gather again on the other side of the run

Now Emerald perches on the other ladder

All of the rest of the girls preen below Emerald’s spot

It’s a communal preening “headless chicken” session

All the girls perch on the ladder

Freckles moves up the ladder

This was my favourite picture of the day. It is heart warming to see how together the flock are.

I just love the colour of this aster right in the middle of the garden.

A splash of colour in the middle of the garden

We have a smaller version in the chicken’s strip which I photographed a while back but this one was just in bud at the time. It is quite nice sometimes that things peak at different times and today I noticed that almost all of the buds had opened on this aster.

It’s an uplifting splash of colour at the end of the gardening year.

Cinnamon often seems to stick close to Speckles and sometimes appears to be following her around.

Speckles and Cinnamon looking at something through the weld mesh

I don’t know what they were looking at but I thought this was a sweet photo. It also shows the difference in their size. It is very sweet to see how close they are.

It’s that time of year again. A few mornings ago I opened the sitting room curtains and the ghosts were in the windows. Very Halloween like!

Ghosts in the windows again

It hasn’t happened since. It must be when conditions are just right. We haven’t had our heating on yet, we always try to hold out until November. We have been having a small open fire in the sitting room in the evenings though.

Our sitting room is always a cold room even in summer. While looking at this photo my husband remarked that it must be the draught in the corners of the panes that cause this effect.

We love the beauty of the old windows in this house but that is the down side. We do have thick, lined , curtains to help keep the room warmer on winter evenings. It is odd how we always get this effect before Halloween.

Apricot has always been a bit of a loner. Part of that may be because she is so firmly at the bottom of the pecking order and we previously had an odd number of seramas. Since losing Rusty the flock dynamics have subtly changed.

Freckles has taken to perching next to Apricot. Only during the day though. At bedtime Freckles remains on the perch that was her’s and Rusty’s.

Freckles and Apricot perch together

It has made me decide that in future I will add even numbers. I was thinking of adding two more seramas in spring if my breeder has more. I am now thinking that I may add four.

Now that we only have two bigger girls our run has plenty of space for a larger number of seramas. I also think adding four new girls to an existing four may make integration easier as they will be more balanced. Of course I could be wrong and it also all depends on whether Dave has more girls in spring.

I would also like more silky feathered girls as sadly I have now lost three silky feathered girls altogether and now only have Apricot left.

I really hope my breeder has more in spring because the flock feels small without Rusty. She has left a big gap for such a little girl!

I don’t really do much in the way of baking. I like cooking savoury meals and I can produce a three course meal for a dinner party but I always go for an easy dessert. I am not really a baker even though I love watching “The Great British Bake Off” but I have recently bought Jamie Oliver’s latest book “5 Ingredients”.

I love the idea of recipes that don’t need an, arm’s length, list of ingredients. I got my copy half price with my sainburys points and told my husband I would try to cook one recipe from it each week to make it good value for money.

I started with the salmon fish cakes which were good and looked pretty much like the photo. I then decided to try the apple crumble cookies. Mine were a bit more rustic than Jamie’s because he used a food processor, which I refuse to posses in my kitchen, so my dried apples were hand chopped.

Apple crumble cookies

Cookies compared to the photo

They did actually really taste like apple crumble. Next time I would make sure there were no apple pieces on top as they burnt a bit. Over all though I was pretty pleased with them. I love the simplicity of this book and will continue to try to make one recipe a week.

Dandelion has had a problem with her eggs right from the start of laying six months ago. She has always been clueless about when she is about to lay and many of her eggs have been laid in the run.

She would sit in a nest box then later lay an egg in the run or lay an egg in the run and then sit in a nest box. All the eggs that she has laid in the run have been broken. Many of her eggs have been laid first thing in the morning in the chicken shed and most of them have been broken too.

Her egg shells are really thin. I tried giving her crushed egg shells in some mash and she laid one egg, unbroken, with a good shell then the next egg was broken again. Luckily her eggs are small, only Apricot lays smaller eggs, and she always manages to get them laid and doesn’t seem to suffer any ill effects.

However recently she has started laying more frequently. She was only laying about two eggs a week but for the last two weeks she has laid every other day so I decided to try again with the crushed egg shell in mash. As luck would have it Dandelion seems to really like this and kept returning to the mash. I used four little egg shells from the weekend breakfast and have been doing this each weekend.

At last it seems to be working and for the last two weeks her eggs have been unbroken and she has laid them in the nest box or in the chicken shed first thing in the morning. I now wonder if she has not been going to the grit and now I think about it I realise that I have never seen her go to the grit like the other girls do.

Dandelion’s eggs either side of Freckle’s egg

Maybe she likes the eggshell mash so much because she senses that she needs it. I am amazed and so pleased that this seems to be working. I was sceptical because Amber, my bantam vorwerk, had an egg laying problem right from the start of laying. Her eggs shells were really soft though. Luckily she didn’t lay more than a couple of times a week. I tried crushed egg shell with her and also limestone flour and cod liver oil to help with the absorbing of calcium but it never, ever, made a difference.

After having her for two years I found her dead in the pop hole entrance one morning. It was a shock as she had been fine at bedtime the evening before. She is buried in the chicken strip with Rusty next to her. They are the only two of my girls to have passed away at home.

I always felt that it was something to do with Amber’s egg laying problem that had caused her death. I felt that there must have been something internal that wasn’t quite right that was causing her problem.

Dandelion hasn’t been as bad as Amber was but I still worried about an egg breaking inside her as I used to worry with Amber. I will be thrilled if this has cured her problem and would be happy to do this on a weekly basis if it continues to help her.

Mash with ground egg shells added

Emerald tucks in

The little girls tuck in

As you can see Dandelion is having a good go at the mash. It is great for us to be able to eat her eggs at last.

The first night after we lost Rusty I thought I would try to train Freckles to sleep with Dandelion and Apricot. She was having none of it!

The left side of the chicken shed with Freckles now on her own

The right side of the chicken shed

I moved Freckles to the perch with Dandelion and Apricot. She looked across at them as if wondering what on earth she was doing next to this pair.

I moved Freckles who was clearly not pleased by this

I checked back ten minutes later and she was back on her own perch. I moved her again and she looked at me as if most displeased.

I moved her a second time before giving up

By now it was quite dark  and I opened the door a crack and me and my husband peered in. We saw her turn herself around, jump down and make her way back to her own perch.

I decided to leave her be. She was obviously determined that this was her perch and just because Rusty was no longer beside her she wasn’t going to change her habit and perch with that pair of girls.

I realised that I couldn’t change her habit and it wasn’t fair on her to try. I could move her after dark but that seemed pointless and would mean me always having to do that. I have decided that if we have really cold nights in winter I may perch the girls together after dark but other than that I will leave them to do as they please.

I had hoped that if Freckles would perch with Dandelion and Apricot then if we got new girls in the spring I could train them to use her perch. I am now thinking that if we get new girls in the spring they will have to choose who they perch next to and we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

I feel sad to see Freckles perching on her own but I don’t want to stress her by moving her from what she knows as her perch. She has shown us that she doesn’t want to move so that is that for now.

There are now a few signs of autumn in the garden.

The tall grass has lovely seed plumes

The ornamental cherry tree has orange leaves

There are clusters of red berries

There are interesting blue berries

This variegated creeper has the most pretty, tiny, blue and purple berries. I love the autumn colours in the garden.