Blog Archives
Departed for adventures.
Gumball decided she was off to bigger pastures this morning. Never nice when they go.
Miya’s first outing.
Miya was allowed out for the first time today She took approximately twenty seconds to decipher the cat flap and flew out all guns blazing.
She then flew back in again, and out again, and in again. I have been listening to the sound of my spinning cat flap all afternoon.
Big giant clucky birds are amazing, just, amazing.
Enjoy these videos, my hens were clucking so much I went out and filmed afterwards as I thought you might enjoy meeting Miya.
Oh and by the way, I’ve spoiled us and paid to remove the advertising. Enjoy.
Mud, sweat and tears.
We get a lot of rain in Wales, an awful lot. In fact it’s pretty much chucked it down all January and we’re all sick of it.
My poor chickens are wading in mud again so I’ve spent today shovelling in wheel barrows full of sand to absorb it.
I also use wooden planks and plant pots to create little perches so they can preen themselves when the sun dares to show itself.
I’m hoping February will be kinder and the sun will show itself a bit more!
Chick chick chick chick chicken.
This is Orville, she hatched back in May from a very tiny egg. She’s a lovely friendly hen but terribly scared of everything. She is my most prolific escape artist and has escaped over ten times now.
The last time she escaped we found her furiously scratching for bugs on top of the privet hedge.
Escapee.
One of our chicks has discovered if she flies (yes she can fly) up on top of her house, she can squeeze through the hole in the chicken wire and off to freedom. I have never moved as quick as I did today to beat the dog up the garden to catch her.
Love is cheep.
Evie loves to wander down the garden when she gets home from school. She lets herself into the hen pen and has cuddles with her little brood.
The chicks at four weeks.
They’re noisy little fluff bombs. Not sure whether we have boys or girls yet, enjoying the fluffiness while it lasts.
New life.
A tragic day this morning with the devastating news of the bombing in Manchester, couldn’t help but cry when I looked at the news. Gruff offered me his sausages to cheer me up. I settled for a hug.
Two school runs in busy unforgiving traffic and dropped everyone off. I got home and mooched up he garden to clean out the hen coop and decided to check on my broody hen Ninja who is on day twenty of her incubation.
Look what greeted me, you’re early little one but most welcome.
Seven days to go…
Ninja is sitting on some eggs and they’re not hers, in fact they’re not from any of my hens. They’ve been brought in from our local community farm.
It takes twenty one days for fertile chicken eggs to incubate and we’re almost there. This time next week, we may hear cheeping again in our nursery coop.
She rarely leaves her nest, only coming out once a day to stuff her face with corn. The other hens have been cordoned off for now until we see what’s hatched.
.
Keyholder.
Evie has taken on the task of letting the hens out in the morning.
Today I noticed that the keys to the hen pen were missing. After scouring the house I gave up and decided to collect the eggs…
…and found a lovely warm set of keys under one of our hens.
Painting the chicken house.
Thought it would be a good day to touch up the chicken house with a lick of paint. Even put a lovely chicken painting on the side.
Not sure why some of my ladies are now walking around with flecks of bright blue on their feathers…
New chicks.
Meet our two latest additions to our chicken family, Bluebell and Gumball. They’re very young and won’t be laying for probably another month or so. They are very tame and don’t seem phased by all the commotion the other other chickens are raging at them through their mesh partition.
All hail.
On a brighter note I couldn’t help but notice some odd behaviour from my chickens this morning. Normally when it rains heavily, they sprint under the hen house to wait it out until it eases but today was different.
In the most torrential hail storm they seemed to be sprinting around their pen like something irresistably tasty had landed in their midst.
They were eating the little hailstones as they fell like a fresh sprinkling of corn.
It hurts to laugh at the moment but I broke the frown for that one.
Tall enough for eggs.
Gruff has grown a full inch since April this year which means he can now lift the lid to the nest boxes, reach his hand in and feel for an eggs. Hopefully he won’t get a grumpy peck!
Mini eggs.
Well the young hen who laid one of the biggest eggs I have ever seen decided to have a break from laying for a bit, (I don’t blame her).
She has resumed laying but has taken a step forward for chicken emancipation and decided I can only have tiny little minuscule eggs from now on.
They are so cute though, not sure how many I’d need to make a cake. Any guesses?
RIP Butter.
Evie discovered Butter’s body on Sunday morning. She was outside and showed no sign of attack, she’d even laid her egg. Only just a year old too. Poor Evie was really upset (and it was one of the females we’d hatched out last year).
She’ll be missed.
Broody.
No not me!
One of my chickens is broody at the moment so I have to go in at various points throughout the day, (when one of the other hens has laid her egg) and remove the poor hysterical thing away from her adopted clutch.
It’s been a month now…
Mega-egg.
One of my hens laid an enormous egg this morning. I haven’t cracked it open but I’m expecting a double yolker or a Jupiter sized yolk. Suggestions for meals are most welcome.
I laid an egg.
Ninja is one of the chicks we hatched from last year. She lives up to her name and is very tame too. She likes to tell the world when she’s laid her egg!
New chicks on the block.
Our new chickens, they’re just 16 weeks old. The kids have already named them, Chickaletta and Lady Clucky.
Chickens and me.
I even had an egg laid in gratitude for me cleaning out their house. What appreciation!
Ginger goes to school.
I took Ginger into school today to as Reception class are studying pets and animals and they wanted to meet a chicken. Ginger was very well behaved. She was quite happy to be fed corn and have her feathers stroked.
Gold, Frankenstein and something else.
It’s nativity time! A wonderful performance by all the children. Da iawn!
Moulting.
One of our chickens is having a particularly severe Autumn moult this year. Her new feathers are just growing through and she looks very pitiful indeed. It’s not a good look. Luckily she’s easily cheered up with a big handful of corn.
An update on the chicks.
Butter and Ninja, our chicks, are nearly sixteen weeks old now. Their little surrogate Mum, Matilda, is still taking the job very seriously and although they are rather quite big now, they’re very happy to follow her around all day. She also protects them from our other hens who will give them a sneaky peck now and again if Mum isn’t watching.
We did think for a bit we have one girl and one boy but as there is no signs of any male feathering on either of them and their combs are still quite pale, so it looks as though we have two lovely girls.
Just a case of waiting for those first eggs which should appear in the next couple of months.
Squeezed.
Tonight all my hens decided it was a good idea to squeeze themselves into the nest box and not roost on the roosting perch.
Chicks update.
Butter and Ninja, our chicks, are now six weeks old. They still cheep like chicks but are looking more like mini adult chickens now. They are almost fully feathered and being mixed breeds are looking quite colourful.
I’m still not too sure what we have but my guess is they are both girls. Time will tell.
Meet your mother…
That awkward chat show moment when you meet your biological mother who laid you as an egg but left you to be incubated by another…
Patience.
Evie’s moment came this afternoon when the little black chick, Ninja decided that if it was alright for mum to feed out of her hand then it was safe for it to do so too.
The smile on her face was worth ten Christmases.
Butter and Ninja.
The chicks are now two weeks old. I insisted that we don’t name these chicks until we know their sex but that seems to have fallen by the wayside because the kids have found a way around that.
I won’t insult your intelligence by pointing out who is who.
Keeping mum.
Matilda will stay in her own little house for the next few weeks as the chicks grow a little bigger, they are currently the size of golf balls!
We’ve sectioned off part of the pen so that the other hens can’t come and see them for the time being. This is so the chicks stay safe in case some of the other hens take a dislike to them.
Everyone is smitten with them, they ludicrously fluffy and very inquisitive, jumping all over poor mum. Matilda is doing a sterling job and they have had a lesson in scratching and eating today. The chicks spend most of their time hidden, folded inside Matilda’s warm feathers.
Going cheep.
I’ll put you all out of your misery, we have two chicks! One hatched yesterday afternoon and the other today, it looks as though the other egg isn’t viable.
We have one little yellow chick and one black chick both of which are very lively and very noisy, a good job too as we can’t see much of them at the moment as they’re hiding under Mam to keep warm.
Well done Matilda!
Brooding.
Matilda has been sat on three eggs for five days now so I have moved her to a separate little house as it looks as though she means business. I moved her and her eggs at night on Saturday and she hasn’t left them since. She moves them around her little house as she’s always sitting in a different spot when I check in on her.
Once a day she’s let out for about ten minutes or so to stretch her legs, she clucks hysterically while she’s scratching around like she can’t wait to get back to her eggs.
There are still three under her so we are looking at around the 8th of May for our due date if all goes well. It’s not quite the number of I would have chosen but Matilda seemed quite certain that these three eggs were quite perfect for her.
Broody.
Less than a week after losing our cockerel, He-man, Matilda has decided to brood some eggs.
She’s currently been sat on three eggs for two days now. She seems to know that it’s now or never!
We’re going to let her try to hatch them out, she’s been waiting for this opportunity for years now.
Over to you Matilda, best of luck.
Goodbye…
…He-Man. You had a great name and you lived up to it with your beady eyed stare and your enormous loud presence.
We will all miss you.
Poorly.
He-man is not himself, in fact he is currently very very ill. I’m hoping the antibiotics the vet has given me will help him but I’m not sure how I’ll find him in the morning. He’s currently in isolation as he is struggling for every breath.
Poor boy.
Feeding the chickens.
Asking chickens to form an orderly queue when there’s dandelions involved is quite an impossible task!
Inside the nest box.
We’re getting lots of eggs at the moment so it must mean spring has arrived. We’re hoping one of our ladies will brood a clutch of our own eggs this year and hopefully we’ll have some new arrivals for our flock.
Cat versus chicken.
Arnie, our cat, has worked out if he keeps still, the chickens won’t peck him and he can chicken watch to his heart’s content.
Cock-a-doodle…
..choo!
He-man has the sniffles, he’s on the mend but he’s been feeling very sorry for himself. All this rain hasn’t helped, the poor dude hasn’t had time to dry out in months.
Big daddy.
He-man, our cockerel, is getting pretty big. He’s still very gentle to handle and hopefully, we may make a father out of him next year. (If one of his ladies is willing to sit on the eggs).
He-Man.
This new hen was meant to be a female, but it decided to start crowing, (instead of laying eggs) while we were on holiday.
The kids have named him He-Man.
He is huge and very, very hen-pecked by his ladies.
Big chicken, little chicken.
We’ve had a couple of new girls and one of them is absolutely huge.
Evie is smitten and has called her Iris.
Our New recruits.
Meet our new girls, names may change around as no one can agree on who has which name at present!
Recruitment.
Look at yourselves, only one of you is laying eggs, one of you!
Shameful! I tell you! Shameful! That’s what it is!
Well you’d better sharpen up and pull your feathers up because next week I’m bringing in new recruits…
War.
Late last night, a fox with wire cutter jaws, chomped it’s way into the chicken run and went on a bloody rampage. Gizmo, our much loved cockerel and another hen died.
At this moment, we have three pitiful hens left.
At this moment we are at war.
Batten down the hatches and hammer everything down.
I’m coming for you foxy wire cutters.
Chicken Wars.
We’ve just acquired two new Pekin hens, much to the disgust of our bigger girls. We’re currently refereeing the pecking order spats which involve a lot of feather pulling and squawking.
Arnie and Blondie
This is why Arnie leaves our chickens alone. Blondie is one of our hens, she’s blonde.
Doodlemum 