Carol's Chickens

It’s difficult when we have new girls not to post about them every day. They grow up and change so quickly.

But my husband picked me these from the allotment yesterday and I thought they were so beautiful.

We also have a bumper crop of chillies from our two plants in pots on our patio. We have tried them and they are mega hot. Too hot to be manageable.

I was going to freeze them but realised that they would still be too hot to use. One of our allotment sharers suggested drying them so I googled it.

You can string them up or put them on a rack in the sun or in the oven on a very low heat. I decided that as we have sun at the moment that I would try that method.

The great thing about drying them is that you can use them three ways. You can grind them up to make chilly powder or you can use them as they are like sun dried tomatoes or you can re hydrate them in water.

I haven’t done this before so it’s experimental and I will report back at a later date. They do look pretty in the sun.

Today I decided to let the chicks mix with the flock and see how it would go. I first opened the hatch and directed the chicks out into the bigger part of the run as I didn’t want them to get cornered in their smaller part.

I took away their dishes as I knew the bigger girls would scratch soil into them. I closed the little coop as I didn’t want to risk them getting trapped in there and I opened up the corner by the patio area to give them an escape route.

Then I opened up the gate to see what would happen. Of course the flock were keen to get into the chicks area as it was suddenly new to them after being unavailable for a week.

The chicks were quite adventuress and soon explored the bigger part of the run. They then moved up to where the rest of the flock were. Most of the girls didn’t take any notice of the chicks.

Spangle was the only one who chased them a couple of times. I wasn’t too surprised at this as Spangle recently had spats with Marmite and Salmon so she already wanted to move up the pecking order. It made sense that she needed to show the chicks they were below her in the pecking order.

There was very little notice taken of the chicks and we felt it went really well. I wanted to take the opportunity to show the chicks the patio area which is always the most difficult part for new girls. I ended up picking them up and putting them on the patio.

Smoke was in the nest box and I thought that they were very brave to have a look in. Today Smoke laid her first egg since her last broody spell.

I then put their dish in front of them and sprinkled a bit of their food outside the dish. The chicks were happy enough to peck at the food.

At this point I felt that this was enough for the first day. I closed the part at the corner of the patio and I closed the hatch. I then shook the corn and sprinkled some outside the gate to get the other girls back out.

I then picked up the chicks and put them back in their area. This seemed the quickest and easiest way to get them back to their part of the run.

I am very pleased with how it went. I just want to get the chicks confident with the growers pellets before I move on to the next stage. By this afternoon they had eaten all of the chick crumb that I had mixed in the dish and just left the pellets. I think it’s going to take a bit longer to get them changed over.

It was a very encouraging start though and I don’t think it will take too long to get them all together.

The chicks have now been with us for a complete week as we collected them last Tuesday.

I open their little coup between seven and half past seven and they tumble straight down the ramp into the food dish.

I looked up when to start the chicks on growers pellets. It says at about ten weeks and I think the chicks are twelve weeks or more so I decided to give it a try. I broke the pellets up into smaller bits for the changeover and mixed in some chick crumb too. They seemed to take to it easily.

Today the chicks discovered the little perch which we put in this section when we first had chicks.

Once the chicks had discovered the little perch they kept returning to it as if they were really pleased with their new found skill.

I am really pleased with how it is all going.

I have looked back at the last serama integration and I had mixed the five new girls in five days. I am amazed that it was so quick. I think that they were a bold bunch because they had a safety in numbers. As these chicks are just a pair I feel that I would rather take it a bit more slowly.

There is no need to rush and I am at home all the time now so I have plenty of time to spend with them. I want to get them used to all the different parts of the run before I start mixing them.

This corner part of the run seems to be a good size for their size and the thought of letting roam the bigger parts feels too soon at the moment. I am happy that there is no animosity from the other girls but I think it’s better for the chicks to take our time.

Getting the chicks on growers is a step forward and they seem very happy in their own little space for now. If they are happy I am happy.

The new girls are growing before our eyes and are also growing in confidence. At first they spent a lot of time in their little coup just popping out for food, water and a quick run around.

Today the chicks have been outside all day apart from when they went inside to “dust bath”. I guess it will take a while for them to realise that they can do that outside too!

I think the good weather is encouraging to them stay outside. Yesterday they were side by side in a shaft of sunlight but I didn’t manage to get my camera quickly enough. Sunshine is also new to them.

All the older seramas have taken an interest in the water bottle and Spangle especially. Spangle has actually worked out that she can just about get her beak through the wire to the spout. It’s quite amazing because it seems that she remembers the water bottle and yet it was three years ago that the seramas had water bottles on their arrival with us.

There is another thing that has been really cute and I managed to get some photos today. Spangle will be at the water bottle on her side and the chicks will be at the water bottle on their side and they are not at all bothered by each other. They actually go and join Spangle at the water bottle or she joins them at the water bottle.

And something even more cute than that. Speckles and Spangle often stand beak to beak. They will stand perfectly still but beak to beak. It seems to be their special thing. A couple of times today Spangle and Sugar were standing perfectly still and were also beak to beak. It’s difficult to capture the exact moment but I got a shot just as they had moved slightly apart.

I am loving how adorable the chicks are and how there is no animosity between the the rest of the flock and them. I am very pleased with how it is progressing.

The new girls have got the hang of everything really quickly. On the first night I put them to bed as they hadn’t yet worked out how to find their way in to their coop.

By the next day they had got the hang of getting in their coop and were in and out all day. They come out for food and water and a run around and then go back in.

They spend a lot of time scratching and pecking in the pine shavings and at one stage I looked in and they were “dust” bathing in the shavings. This is because it is what they have been used too and it will take time to learn that there is real dust to dust bath in.

I checked on them at at six o’clock and they had gone in the coop. I decided to leave it open in case they wanted a last top up of food before bedtime. This was a mistake. They came out again and once it had got a little bit darker they couldn’t find their way back in. I guided them in at half past six.

Last night when I checked on them at six o’clock and they were in the coop I closed it. I have decided it is better to close them earlier while they able to put themselves to bed. They were snuggled up to each other in the back corner.

When I open the coop in the mornings they now come out straight away and go straight to the food and water.

They are a very tight little pair and are always very close together. From past experience I know that these two will stay as a tight pair.

The good thing is that the other girls are taking no notice of the new girls. Occasionally one of them will look at them with curiosity but nothing more than that. There is no pacing the wire.

I think that these girls are so small that they don’t pose a threat to the other girls so hopefully the integration shouldn’t be too difficult. These two will go in at the bottom of the pecking order.

Shadow is slightly bigger than Sugar but there is already no doubt that Sugar is top girl of this pair. Sugar leads and Shadow follows and every now and then Sugar runs at Shadow to let her know she is boss.

They are incredibly cute!

We have two new girls. At the beginning of August I put my name on the list with my serama breeder for new girls. She was selling them so fast that they were going out from a few days old to a week old and nothing was staying with her beyond a week. She takes back any that turn out to be boys.

I don’t want to do that and after my experience with little chicks and having Blue turn out to be a boy so I now go on her waiting list instead. This means that at the end of the year if she has any unsold that have reached about three months she lets me know.

Yesterday the breeder e-mailed me to say that she had a few older girls. I arranged to go over to her after lunch. I had put my name on her list for silkie girls too but she only had a few silkie feathered girls and someone else was in front of me on the list. She is keeping me on the list so I may get some later in the year.

There was a lovely brown and white frizzle but I have promised myself never to have another frizzle after Dandelion as I don’t think the frizzle feathered girls are hardy enough for winters outside.

There were only a few to choose from but I was happy as they were pretty colours. I chose a white one and a pale grey and white one. By the end of the day I had named them Sugar and Shadow.

The breeder sold me some chick crumb and I will keep the new girls separated until the few remaining laying girls stop laying. Then I will put all the girls on growers pellets until the new girls are ready to start laying and will gradually start integrating.

I closed off the triangular part of the run and put a nest box in there for them. I set up a dish of chick crumb and of water on some tiles as a feeding station and added two water bottles as well.

Shadow was crying out because she couldn’t find Sugar. Sugar appeared to have vanished. Eventually I lifted the nest box and found her underneath. As soon as they were together again they were quiet. I have now heaped the soil around the edge of the nest box so that they can’t get underneath. These two girls are already bonded and can’t bear to be out of sight of each other.

I had put them in the nest box and closed it for five minutes in the hope that they would then know that this is where to go at bedtime. It didn’t work and at near dusk they were still outside. I put them in and closed it.

I went out at seven o’clock this morning and opened the nest box. I went back at eight o’clock and they were still inside. I guided them down the ramp. They have since returned to the nest box a few times so I am hoping that tonight they will be able to find their way in on their own.

They soon got the hang of both the dishes of chick crumb and water and the water bottle too.

When we got back home yesterday there was a surprise for us. Speckles went into the nest box the day before and I wondered why she was in the nest box but didn’t think any more of it.

Yesterday afternoon when we got back there was a large white egg just inside the pop hole of the chicken shed. I know this is Speckles egg because Flame stopped laying a week ago and her eggs always have little clusters of calcium bubbles on. Ebony’s eggs are smaller and are beige and at the moment dusty as she had suddenly taken to laying them in the shelter instead of the nest box.

Now that the new girls have this area it will stop Ebony from laying her eggs in there. This egg was larger in size, more oval in shape and was smooth and white. There is no doubt that it is Speckles egg. It is her first egg of this year.

Well done Speckles! That was so unexpected and I can’t believe that she waited until we were out to lay it.

Only Ebony and Spangle were laying until this egg. I wonder if that will be her only one this year or if she will lay another.

I will report back tomorrow with news of whether the new girls find their own way in tonight. They have cottoned on to the food and water very quickly so I am sure that they will soon get the hang of it.

The other girls have taken no notice at all of the new arrivals so that bodes well too.

The nights are drawing in and the days are getting cooler and this has an effect on the girls. Egg laying is slowing right down.

Smoke went broody, yet again, after laying eight eggs in eleven days. But this time she wasn’t as committed as usual. I think the cooler weather helped her to come out of it more quickly. She was broody for less than a week and that was without me interfering.

Marmite hasn’t laid for over two weeks but that is a blessing because it means she isn’t looking poorly before laying.

Salmon also hasn’t laid for two weeks but that is because she is moulting. She is looking really scruffy. Her breast feathers are loose and wafting from her and she is also dropping head feathers. Every time she has a dust bath she leaves behind a cluster of feathers.

Spangle is the only little girl still laying and is in fact laying better than usual. She is laying every few days.

Ebony and Flame are still laying but have slowed down to just two or three eggs a week.

There is also a change in the little girls behaviour. The pecking order has always been Smoke in top place followed by Salmon and then Spangle and then Marmite firmly in bottom place.

While I was watching the girls from their patio I saw Spangle go at Marmite with her ruff raised. They both went breast to breast with ruffs raised until Marmite backed down. It was obvious that Spangle was making sure that Marmite was staying below her in the pecking order.

A few minutes later Spangle did the same thing to Salmon. The pair of them were jumping at each other breast to breast with their ruffs raised. This little spat looked much more brutal because salmon was not going to back down.

I was just about to reach for my water spray to try to break up this spat when Ebony went to them and quickly broke them apart. She then nonchalantly wandered back to continue pecking at a broccoli stalk.

I have seen Ebony do this in the past but it is quite something to watch how quickly and easily she breaks up a spat. You can almost add a thought bubble saying “children, stop that right now”.

I haven’t seen the little girls having spats like this since the early days of settling the pecking order. I wonder if it’s because Spangle is the only little girl laying and this has given her a newfound confidence. Egg laying does seem to bring on different behaviour at times.

The pecking order can be such a finely balanced and yet complicated thing.

Of the bigger girls Speckles is top and that has been earned by her age and being in the run the longest. Next is Ebony and then Flame at the bottom of the three.

It is also interesting because Speckles is the most frail of the three and Ebony is quite a thug and could easily take on Speckles but she doesn’t attempt to. I have seen Ebony pin Flame down to the ground and Flame is always submissive to her.

The pecking order can look quite brutal but none of the girls are ever bothered by it. It is just what chickens do. At other times the little girls will show the girl below them with a quick peck that doesn’t actually land but is just a gesture to show them their place.

It is interesting to me how this behaviour happens at the start of egg laying in the spring and then again at the end of egg laying in the Autumn.

There is never a dull moment in the chicken run.

We are still harvesting so much bounty from the allotment plots. I never expected the raspberries to produce for so long and we are all three sharers still picking them.

The plot below us was dug over at the beginning of the year and then abandoned. It hasn’t been fenced. Our wild flower seeds from our plot have seeded a huge swaithe of purple flowers on the empty plot. I decided to help myself to some and shared them with our next door neighbour too.

We have just had a letter saying that our first plot has won “best plot” for the second year running. We were really surprised to win it again and very happy with that.

With chickens nothing gets wasted. We gave the girls two of the spent broccoli stalks yesterday. They kept the girls occupied all day and by the end of the day the stalks were pecked clean.

With chickens nothing gets wasted and not only am I not buying any veg for us but I am also not buying any greens for the girls. There is plenty for the girls to enjoy.

We had a patch of corn on the cob on our first allotment plot and we also randomly planted six in our garden. I had visions of it growing tall enough to make it’s way above the surrounding plants.

It didn’t happen like that. The corn on the allotment plot grew huge and our corn in the garden never made it above the surrounding plants. It was stunted and small and pathetic.

Last weekend we visited the allotment just as T and C were checking out the corn. Some corn cobs looked good, some had not filled out to the end of the cob and a lot had dried up kernels. I think with hind sight we should have picked some of them sooner.

T and C were checking the cobs and sorted them in to good and bad piles. I said that I would take all the dry ones for the chooks so they wouldn’t be wasted. They divided the good ones into three lots so each of the three of us sharing the allotment plots would have some.

The chooks love the corn and will peck on it throughout the day. I took a couple of photos of them pecking the corn then decided to see what our garden corn was like.

I have never seen such tiny corn cobs. It had tried but not made it. I photographed them in my hand then added them to chicken run. They may be rubbish but the chooks still liked them.

The corn that hadn’t made it to the end of the cob was the most tender which coupled with the ones that were completely dried out made me think that we should have picked them sooner. A lesson for the future. The chooks loved them though and they don’t care what condition they are in.

One success in the garden, or at least in the pots, are our chilli plants. Our huge chillies are now turning red.

These are really hot and with two plants having loads of chillies I think they will have to go in the freezer. We won’t need to buy chillies for a very long time.

We went to the allotment this morning to pick some produce. There is so much of everything at the moment.

T and C were already picking produce and T picked a small posy for me from his allotment flower bed which was so sweet. He had planted dahlias around the edge of his wild flower bed.

We picked plenty of produce because we share with our next door neighbours each weekend.

We picked enough raspberries for our dessert at lunch time today and they were delicious. We also picked sweetcorn, red cabbage, carrot, beetroot, red and white potatoes, red and white onions, pumpkin, courgettes, kale, chard, tomatoes and NO beans.

C had taken beans a few days earlier and they have slowed down now. We were pleased because we have been over run with them over the last few weeks. There are plenty of flowers on the beans so more to come later and we will enjoy them again when they are growing more slowly.

My lovely husband made coleslaw with some of the red cabbage and carrot and we will have a variety of veg for Sunday dinner tomorrow. Some of the chard will go to the chooks.

Only a few sweetcorn had ripened so we shared them out between the three of us allotment sharers and all the ones that had only got a little bit of corn in them T gave me for the chooks so they are going to be in for a treat.

We have had so much more produce this year than last year. It is so good not to need to buy any veg at all and flowers in doors are an added bonus.