Spring is here - or is it?

At the end of January Mad Irene spotted some sunshine.   It only lasted about half an hour, but that was enough to convince her that Spring had arrived, so she laid an egg.   All the girls had given up producing eggs at the back end of October, so we were delighted that Irene had gone back into production.   We hoped that the rest of them would take the hint too.

We waited and waited, but although Irene was now in top gear and presenting us with lovely offerings every other day, nobody else showed any enthusiasm whatsoever.   Then, a fortnight later, Punk dramatically produced one as described in an earlier post.   But just the one.   She now seems to have settled into a routine of laying one egg every two weeks.  The other part of her egg laying routine is to drop them just outside the coop, preferably in a bit of mud if she can find some.

A couple of days ago I remembered that last year she laid her eggs in a nest box in the spare coop, so I went off to check if she was hiding some there.  Instead, I found three Titian eggs.  She has continued to keep them at half their previous size and with a very pointy end, but at least she's laying.

Earlier in the week, I was delighted to find that Tu-Tu had joined in the egg laying bonanza.  She has always been totally reliable, laying an egg every other day from the day she arrived, except in Winter.  Now I'm beginning to wonder if she's taken a leaf out of Punk's book and intends to lay only on alternate weeks, because there's been no follow up.   We shall see.

There's no sign of Maggie even considering getting into the nestbox for any purpose other than sleeping.  I am, however, surprised that Rebecca hasn't laid yet.  Normally when Irene does something, Rebecca is hot on her heels and copies her.   Seems she's drawn the line at egg production though.  The one hen who doesn't surprise me is Pom-Pom.  She hates the whole egg laying thing and tries to avoid doing it as much as possible.   She managed to reduce her performance by half last year, and she's no doubt hoping like mad that she's gone into early henopause this year.

And then there's Fizz.   The day Irene spotted the sunshine, Fizz spotted Rebecca and chased her round the run.   He's done a bit of chasing and dancing, but not nearly as much as in past years.   Last week when they were all out in the garden munching on the lawn, Tu-Tu actually invited Fizz over by squatting before he'd even made an improper suggestion.   He gratefully accepted the invitation.   So it came as something of a surprise to him when she gave him a sharp peck post-coitus!

It's not too long before we mess around with our clocks and end up with an extra hour of daylight.  Hopefully, that will remind all the girls that their job is to produce our breakfasts.

Sitting ducks they ain't!

In January last year I passed on an hilarious story about chickens that invaded someone's house.   This time it's ducks that have caused me so much amusement.   Their escapade appeared on the Down The Lane Facebook page and is reproduced with the kind permission of their owner.

The adventurers

"Tonight, I had to do several laps of the kitchen, into the hall, into the dining room, back to the hall, into the lounge, out of the lounge, into the dining room........and so on.....following my two ducks.  Not impressed.  I had to follow them very slowly so as not to scare them.  The second they get worried....yup, splat on the floor....thank heavens its wooden.  Cat was doing the rounds with the ducks.  She even lapped them.  They took no notice.

"I had been madly busy all day, in and out of the house 5 times.  When this happened I was only home for about half an hour.  I thought - go and check on/lock up chickens.  Darned ducks.  I came through the back door, following the ducks inside.  There were 2 eggs in each cardigan pocket, 3 eggs in my hands and I holding an empty feed bucket - chasing these ducks.  Hubby sat on sofa laughing, daughter sat with headphones on, staring at PC saying "what?" while I'm flapping around trying not to drop/crush eggs in pockets.  Stress or what!   As if that wasn't enough, went out for 2 hour lecture on web design, came home to cockerel crowing (11pm) and ducks on patio shouting for dinner.  Went to investigate cockerel noise and guess what happened......

"At least they only made it into the downstairs bathroom this time.  I will remember to shut the door when I go out next time....I think...."

Temper, temper!

Punk being jolly cross

One of the reasons we could never fit an automatic pop hole closing thingy to our chicken coop is Pom-Pom.   Unless it's pouring with rain, she always roosts on the cage gate; sometimes she stays out even if it is raining.  This means one of us has to go down to the run every evening, check whether she's out or in and deposit her inside the coop with the others if necessary.  Only then can the pop hole be closed up.   That "someone" is generally No. 1 Son.

Yesterday evening he went down to lock up and Pom-Pom was comfortably hunkered down on the gate.   All the others were nicely settled inside the coop.  Maggie and Titian were snuggled up in the nest box, Tu-Tu was in solitary splendour on the back perch and everyone else had jammed themselves onto the front perch.

Then No. 1 Son opened the side door of the coop to pop Pom-Pom inside.   This annoyed Mad Irene so much that she got off the perch, leaving a convenient space for Pom-Pom.

So far, so good.  Unfortunately, that meant Pom-Pom was right next to Punk, who took strong exception to having to sit next to her ladyship.   So the Araucana decided to give Madame a good, hard peck.  Fortunately the hand is quicker than the beak and my son managed to move his between Punk's beak and Pom-Pom's head.  So she got him instead.   This made Punk even crosser and more determined to get at Pom-Pom.   So she drew herself up to her full height, stretched her neck to its greatest extent and tried to deliver her peck over the top of the offending hand.   Her effort was just that bit too much for her equilibrium;  she overbalanced and fell off the perch!

That was the last straw!  She stalked off to the other perch, delivering a totally ineffective peck to Pom-Pom's tail as she passed it.

Drama Queen's understudy

As you may remember from previous posts, our little flock's Drama Queen is Pom-Pom.   Her performance on the days she condescends to lay an egg deserves an Oscar, if not two.   Starting around 11 o'clock, when she's had time to come to a bit, she parades round and round the hen run.   This perambulation is accompanied by recitations from various Shakespeare plays, a wide selection of poetry, the famous aria from Madam Butterfly and her interpretation of Meg Ryan's 'When Harry Met Sally' performance.  You know that bit - after which an old biddy in the restaurant says, "I'll have what she's having"?  Honestly, Pom-Pom goes on and on for hours until she finally rids herself of her pesky egg at around 4 pm.

All our girls stop laying in October and refuse to start again until late February/early March time.  However, we saw the sun for a few moments last week.   That was enough to fool Mad Irene into thinking Spring had arrived, so she laid an egg.   

Not to be outdone, the next day Punk decided she'd lay one too.   When I went down to check up on everyone, she had made herself comfortable in the nestbox and had a far-away look on her face.   Unfortunately, things did not proceed as planned and when No. 1 Son went down to check them again, she was obviously not at all well.

She was tottering round the lower end of the run, wings drooping and looking very sorry for herself.   A quick look and we saw what looked like egg white dribbling down from her vent.  Her vent also didn't look right at all.   There was no egg to be found anywhere, so we were very worried that it had broken inside her.   Although it was Sunday, we knew our lovely rural vets run an emergency service.  OK, it would be expensive, but what choice did we have?  So we phoned, explained the situation and got an appointment to see her in a couple of hours.   Back we went to the chicken run to see how poor little Punk was doing.   

How was she doing?   I'll tell you how that scrawny-necked cockroach was doing.   She was absolutely fine!   She had deposited an egg in a convenient piece of mud by the cage gate and was busy tucking into some corn with the others.

We picked her up, checked her nether regions and everything was perfectly normal.   She started swearing at us (she can be a foul-mouthed fowl when she wants), so we let her return to yumming the corn.   Then we trudged back to the house to cancel the appointment with the vet.

Pom-Pom, watch out;  I suspect you have competition for that Oscar!

"When snow falls, nature listens" *

The bit of nature that decided to listen this snowy winter was a family of rats.   We've had a very wet summer, so they were no doubt flooded out of their original home.  They must have thought they were in heaven when they discovered free food was available in the chicken run, even though the supply disappeared every evening.

The chickens didn't bother them much.  During the very cold weather, when the snow was 'deep and crisp and even', Fizz and the girls ate and then poddled off back into the coop.  Much warmer in there and, like me, they hate the snow.

A couple of winters back I went to check on them and found Pom-Pom chest deep in a snowdrift.   It was a good job I found her, as she couldn't work out how to escape.   So whenever it snows now, we keep the cage door closed;  we know they are safe that way.   Not that it matters, they prefer their sleeping quarters in this freezing cold weather.

Obviously, we could not allow the rats to stay.   So we got a humane trap and began to catch them, two by two initially, then one at a time.    The prisoners were then taken half a mile away and deposited in a field on the far side of the river.   Hopefully, they will settle down nicely over there.

Yesterday the snow had gone and the chickens had once again been allowed to roam freely round their run.   At dusk No. 1 Son baited the trap with a bit of cat food and some chicken food, a combination the rats seem to enjoy enormously.   He even made a trail of layers pellets which led into the trap, just in case a bit of encouragement was needed.

Most of the flock had retired for the night, but Irene was still up and about.   Not much gets past that girl's eagle eye where food is concerned, and needless to say it took no time at all for her to spot the trail of pellets.   It took even less time for her to eat them.  She pecked her way along, reached the trap and looked distinctly disappointed to discover that she couldn't reach the rest of them.

She gave the matter a bit of thought, couldn't come up with any bright ideas, so she tootled off to join the others in the coop.

*Antoinette van Kleef

Back again!

I'm relieved to say that my carpal tunnel has now sorted itself out; I had a brief spell of RSI in the other arm, but that's now OK too.

So a quick update on Fizz and the girls.

To be honest, I haven't seen much of them over the past few days.  The snow has been thick on the ground, it's been very cold, so they've spent most of their time snuggled up in the coop.   They reluctantly come down for a mid-afternoon snack, then shoot back inside to keep warm.

Very late in the Autumn,  most of the chickens decided to moult.   Titian did the same thing as last year and went for the "oven ready" look.   Unfortunately, just as she lost the last few feathers the temperature plunged.  After a day and a half of it being really, really cold she began to look quite unwell, so we decided to bring her inside until she feathered up a bit.   So she spent a week in a huge box in our kitchen.   I knew she was beginning to feel better when she demanded sunflower seeds every time she saw me.   We kept them on our dining room table and as soon as I appeared, she would go and stand in the corner of her box nearest the table and stare up at it, then at me, then back to the table, chuntering all the time.   After a week, her feathers had regrown to the point where we felt she would be well able to cope with low temperatures again, so we put her back with the others.

It was absolutely fascinating watching her feathers grow.  I know from observing them all in past years that chicken feathers grow fast.   But being able to see progress at close quarters and from one hour to the next was amazing.   In the morning there would simply be quills sticking out, by lunchtime I'd notice that some of them were darker at the ends.  Come the evening, and you could see just a tiny line of what looked like the very tip of an auburn paintbrush.  

Chickens never cease to amaze me!   More news soon.

Just to let you all know that my doctor has banned me from typing for at least 2 weeks as I've developed carpal tunnel syndrome. See you all after my "holiday" xxx