Well, we have had our chickens a good few weeks now, and are getting to know their quirks. We have three out of the four laying; Polly was the first, followed by Pecky Sue. Henrietta just started a few days ago. Wendy, bless her feathery bum, hasn't got there yet. She seems younger than the others, with a piddly little comb and wattles, and she runs everywhere like an overexcited child, so I am not expecting much from her any time soon!
Polly and Pecky Sue are very sensible hens, who lay nice neat eggs in the nesting boxes. Henrietta, on the other hand, has a different approach. This is currently her preferred location, slap bang in the middle of a giant thistle patch! I get the feeling she doesn't want anyone interfering with her eggs...
Its been very hot for them recently. We had a heat wave last week where it was around 28 degrees C (yes, that is a heat wave for North Wales!). The peckies wisely decided to stay in their elderberry bush.
Polly enjoying the cool shade:
Polly has not been well recently. It turns out, despite being the closest living relative to the dinosaurs, chickens are remarkably badly designed and it is a miracle that they survive one day to the next. They remind me of Terry Pratchett's swamp dragons (if any of you are geeky enough to remember them). These are mythical animals that have such volatile digestive systems that merely having indigestion (a common ailment for swamp dragons), or being over-excited, tends to make them explode.
Anyhow, luckily we had no chicken explosions, but the chickens frequently get blocked crops (the little 'shopping bag' that chickens store their food in before it passes through the rest of their digestive system), due to them eating grass that is too long for them, hay, bits of wood, and generally being little greedy piggies. And sometimes this leads to 'sour crop' which is as unpleasant as it sounds. Polly has been in isolation up in the stables for a week, where we could control what she ate, to fix her crop issues, and thankfully it has worked (along with some rather unusual and disgusting natural remedies, which I will not go into here...). It was lovely to let her out again to see her friends. She took a long dustbath in one of my flowerbeds and then set about chasing butterflies, full of the joys of spring.
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