Kuikentje's little chickens

[Kuikentje]

Glad Alice and Dot are better Can I borrow an egg? Will he replace it with a SHOP BOUGHT one

Well, they are very good neighbours, so although I certainly don't need any eggs he might well bring a couple and they will be so BIG. My husband and I had brunch in Sainsbury's today and it looked as though they were giving us ostrich eggs.

[Kuikentje]

Yes, he replaced it with shop-bought eggs and I texted his wife to thank them for the ostrich eggs.

Dot's neck and tail feathers are growing back and she let me stroke her today .

My husband has been doing some work in one of the sheds (he's been rebuilding the shed where our son keeps his fishing stuff) and he had to shut the girls into their run because Sarah kept jumping onto his shoulder. She's never done anything like that for me!

[aishakali]

Glad Dots getting over her moult ok My little Molli climbed onto my shoulder yesterday, first time she's done that too

[Kuikentje]

Here is a video of four of the girls enjoying the sunshine today. The other one was in the nestbox. Either Dot is laying again or someboday has laid twice in 24 hours, because today was a five-egg day!

[sandy]

They look like jungle fowl

[Kuikentje]

They look like jungle fowl

That's what they're descended from, isn't it? They love scratching around in the undergrowth.

[Kuikentje]

We are down to one egg! We had so many last week I had to pickle a few but they suddenly seem to have stopped laying. I've had a good hunt round the garden - they free-range pretty well all day now - but haven't found any. So I got my husband to shut them into the run for a few hours this afternoon and tell them they couldn't come out unless they laid a couple of eggs. Nothing. Everything else is absolutely normal. The only change I can think of is that they aren't eating as many layers' pellets because they are getting plenty of stuff from the garden. I can't bear to shut them up too much of the time because they enjoy their freedom so much, and anyway the egg thing has only been going on for a few days.

[sandy]

My eggs are sporadic at the moment, as long as they are healthy I don't give monkeys

[Kuikentje]

Well, for anyone who hasn't followed this on Facebook - they have in fact been laying very well indeed. There were 28 of them under a plant! We have a big, low-growing, beautiful blue comfrey, which flowers early and for weeks and which the bees love, and my husband noticed one of the girls hanging round the edge of it looking shifty. He went for a look and two others exploded out of it like grouse. When he investigated he found they'd made a tunnel, which he followed to find this cache of eggs.

We ate an awful lot of eggs for the next couple of days.

After we moved all the eggs, they did lay three in the nestbox the next day (meaning 5 hens had laid 31 eggs in 9 days, not bad for Dutch bantams) and seemed to have got back into the habit, but today I noticed Sarah skulking in the ferns by the pond; one of the others was with her, Dot, I think, and not long after I found two eggs there. So we will have to keep an eye out, although they have been mostly laying in the nestbox since then.

[sandy]

Seems it is always going to be the Easter Egg Hunt with your girls

[Kuikentje]

Seems it is always going to be the Easter Egg Hunt with your girls

You are probably right, Sandy. No eggs again today and I really did look all round the garden. Of course it may just be a no-egg day because they've been laying well for the last few days so may just be having a day off. But if there are non again tomorrow I will have to assume they've found another hiding place.

[sandy]

You may need an egg sat nav? Happy Birthday

[Kuikentje]

Everybody is laying in the nestboxes again.

And Alice is broody again. What a shame we aren't going to breed them, she'd obviously be a very good sitter.

One of them, Ivy I think, has taken to making a loud sound which my husband calls a 'referee's whistle' when she spots us after an absence. I think it's a greeting because she only does it when she hasn't seen us for a while.

[sandy]

Do you think Ivy is calling for service

[Kuikentje]

Ivy has been broody for the last couple of days and I've had to fish her out from various places or she would stay out all night, tucked into the undergrowth.

I found one cache of nine eggs and another of five in a different place, as well as random ones in the nest boxes, so the others have been following her.


Sarah got through into next door's garden, and P from next door (who is lovely but I don't want to annoy him) called me to get her as he was trimming the hedge and didn't want to tread on her. I showed him how to use the Jedi pass to catch her and thought I had better give him some of the eggs. As I was taking them round to his garden I spotted Dot, who had come through from our side. I quickly tucked her under one arm so he wouldn't see the different-coloured ring and pretended I just hadn't put Sarah down yet.

They have never done this before.

Tonight there was a ring at the doorbell and it was M, the neighbour from the other side, who had found Dot halfway down the drive.

She must have gone through to P's side again (all three of us share a driveway). This is getting beyond a joke. If she'd gone onto the road that would have been the last we saw of her, I expect, especially if a big cat or a dog had seen her first. I will have to try and find all the gaps in the hedge, which is a horrible nasty privet hedge, very gappy at the bottom at this end of the garden, that P won't let us cut down. On M's side we have a wooden fence on concrete, so she hasn't got out that way.

Dot has been acting funny all day. It's only the last couple of days that they've been doing this, it's a worry about Dot going down the drive because she might forget her way back, even if she doesn't get eaten first.