This and that

This blog is just a series of little updates.

The formerly near-naked Titian now has a good covering of quite superb 1" long quills.   I noticed yesterday that little auburn tufts have appeared on the ends of a lot of them.  We think her personal philosophy is "Get rid of 'em quick, grow 'em back quick".  I also suspect that her daily dose of yoghurt has helped considerably.  She was suspicious of it initially, but is now the first to get her beak into it the moment I put the dish down.   In fact she runs over, just to make sure she is.   It's nice to see, because it's been quite some time since the lady deigned to run anywhere, for any reason.

Irene had a mini-moult about a month ago.  She lost a couple of feathers under her chin, and that was it.   She now finds that she has time to fit in another go.  The crown of her head, her cheeks and her neck are now almost featherless.  She has also lost a couple of her black flight feathers.  I can see from the coop floor and in the run that she's still losing lots of white feathers - but trying to work out quite where she's lost them from is another story.  She's managing to conceal her losses very well.

Punk still refuses to acknowledge that she's never ever going to get further up the pecking order than she is now.   The problem is that her foster-mother stands between Punk and further promotion.   Tu-Tu is now only half their size, but she still chases both Araucanas if either of them so much as enter her peripheral vision.  And they run!  She has always blamed them for her spectacular plummet from second in command, to the bottom of the pecking order.  And all because she was tucked away out of sight of everyone, looking after them.  At least now she's above Rebecca, Punk and Pom-Pom - and she ain't giving her place up for anyone, not even relatives.

Fizz does not like to be disturbed once he's fallen asleep.  This evening my son removed Pom-Pom from the cage door as usual, and popped her into the coop.  Despite there being plenty of room on the perch beside Fizz (he being the only occupant), our little cockerel woke up.  And he was cross about that.   So he pecked Pom-Pom's head and then my son's hand.  Neither peck was exactly gentle either.   Very odd behaviour when you consider what an easy-going chap he is for the rest of the day.

I haven't mentioned Maggie for a while.   Her feathers are back to their former glory - in fact Rebecca wondered why she's never noticed them before.  So she has transferred her nocturnal attentions from Irene and now buries her head in Maggie's ample feathers.  As Maggie has such a vast quantity of them, I'd be surprised if she's even noticed.

Maggie is the only one of our chickens producing eggs at the moment; she lays on alternate days, regular as clockwork.  What a star.   Everyone else has given it up as a bad job, but I'll be curious to see if the Araucanas start laying in early January, like they did this year.