New pictures of all my chickens

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I wonder why the chick is called Pebbles?

Ken and Pebbles in the bath

 This is either Daryl or Hannah.... I can't tell!

 All the fluffy bums together: George, Daryl  and Hannah

 George

Grace

New tail feathers!

Ken the hen teaches 7 day old chick to dust bathe...

... only Pebbles the chick seems to prefer the old way of preening best! They are so cute together.

All the other very full-sized chickens were unceremoniously kicked out of the dust bath for the duration of the lesson. Ken is so demanding!

Cochin/Orpington Chick has arrived!

'Junior' hatched out during the night and is a beautiful blue splash colour like Mum, but there's no guarantee it'll stay that way. It's very cute and quite brave! Click the picture to see a larger version of the image.

I had a listen to the other egg, and I think I heard a little movement. It may surprise us yet!

CHICK's COMING!

I did my check of the two eggs Ken the hen has been sat on for three weeks - pick up egg, hold to ear, tweet very loudly like you're another chick that's already hatched and saying 'Come on - it's time!' - and I heard one of them moving around in the egg!
It was a strange noise really, a sort of squelchy noise as the dormant chick came to life and started moving around within its' little shell. Next it has to work out that it has to peck its' way out of the shell - which can take up to 24 hours - and then, if we're lucky and it isn't exhausted in the process, there will be a new Orpington/Cochin cross chick. Maybe the other one will hatch too.

Chicken 'dressed' for the pot - not for the squeamish reader!

I'm just waiting for my lovely neighbour, who's a farmer, to bring me my chicken back - all prepared for the pot. Bless her cotton socks for doing that! I wasn't sure I could kill the chicken, but I was absolutely certain that I couldn't do both kill and prepare on my first attempt.

I'll put a photo up of it when it arrives :)

Erm, perhaps it'll look better when it's cooked... The chicken is fine, but as we hung the bird and didn't bleed it, (beginners mistake), the blood has collected in the chest area and it looks a little red. Next time I will make a small incision in the roof of the mouth of the bird and let the small amount of blood come out.

It's a three pound bird, which is more than I thought she would be. Jo was saying that it took her half an hour to get the feathers off, then about 15 minutes to clean out the cavity. That's quite a lot of work compared to the time it took to kill it.

I'm actually really chuffed! I'm glad my chickens are happier now that the naughty chicken has been removed; Grace seems to be fine without her buddy and is still laying and, generally, the flock has calmed down a bit. Ava was a bit of a pecker and was constantly attacking my cochins. Now Grace is on her own, the calmer cochins outnumber her and I think it's helped to quieten them all. May the peace continue!

Dispatching a chicken

Well, that was a pretty surreal and nasty experience! Not as bad as I thought, but it wasn't pleasant. My neighbour, who used to be a chef, backed me up - so at least I wasn't on my own. What I hadn't taken into account was how heavy she was. Chicken's necks feel pretty dainty - but the pull and twist method was quite difficult for me.

So Ava is now an ex-chicken after destroying yet another egg. I feel a bit odd about it. It's an almost primeval feeling of having killed my own food that I've bred, but it doesn't sit comfortably on my shoulders. Put it this way, I couldn't kill a chicken I liked! Ava was different - she was a liability, so she had to go one way or another. A lot of people don't confront this issue and either take the chickens to market or, even worse, dump them in a field and let nature take them. That's how I got George - he was dumped in a field and appeared one day.

I sort of feel mature for handling the situation, but a bit freaked out because I've never killed anything worse than a small injured bird. It's an odd feeling.

The Amazingly Indecisive Woman

Ruddy Ava. Sigh. There's been no actual egg damage since Betsey went, so I can't prove that it was her. She's off the lay - which is no crime - but she is supposed to lay 300 eggs a year and so far has laid about 60 in her first year. So I'd decided to get rid of her, but she's bessie mates with Grace and they were pootling along quite happily together today. I would feel awful depriving Grace of her friend.

So she's saved from the market, again. I think this is her fifth reprieve!

The culprit is revealed!

Now Betsey the cockerel has gone, I can now reduce the number of suspects to find the one that goes into the coop every day and destroys Hannah's eggs.

And the winner is... AVA. Honestly, after all this time and her not laying, then starting to lay, I thought she was sorted. But no, she's obviously got something wrong in her daft little head and her nine lives are now up.

So she's got to go. I was hoping to sell her and Grace as a pair, but I can't pass a known egg-destroyer onto someone I know. So, dispatching options are being considered. Sad, but it costs money to feed and keep them and if a chicken willingly ruins the fruits of that labour, then they aren't any use to me. She's an egg saboteur - I just need to finalise her sentence and/or execution.

That means I'll be down to Grace, Daryl and Hannah, George and the half-pint sized Ken the broody hen. They should produce a regular lay if three a day, which is more than enough for me.

Betsey the cockerel has gone....

....just round the corner to a MASSIVE chicken run that has 17 hens in it. He was nervous at first but within five minutes he'd made his first conquest. I think he's going to be happy. He was looking over to me and I think I saw a smile on his face!

Broodies everywhere

Damn chickens are so peculiar! Hannah decided she wanted to lay where Ken is sitting on three eggs, which she does every day. However, today ended up in a chicken argy-bargy and the egg Hannah laid got spoilt, as did one of the ones Ken was sitting on - which she then ate YUK.

I've now removed Ken to a separate nesting cage with her two remaining eggs and Hannah can lay where she likes.

Meanwhile, Ava has also gone broody. So she sits outside the kennel (cat kennel - some of the hens prefer to lay in there) until Grace or Daryl lays an egg - then she sits on it and refuses to move. MORE argy-bargy. They're all bonkers!

Damn you cockerel genes!

Despite being the biggest wuss of all time (she jumps at the slightest noise), it appears that Betsey 'The biggest chick in the World' is actually a cockerel. She hasn't crowed, but over the last week her face furniture (comb and wattle) have increased in size and last night I was shocked and appalled to see her try to shag Hannah!

S/he has to go. I can't be doing with a wasteful extra cockerel snaffling the food. But how and when he goes is yet to be decided. I'm trying to organise my first chicken cull for the pot - which is proving harder than you would think! I'll report back later with how the search for a chicken murderer is progressing...

Just saved another egg from Ken!

I don't know how the tiny broody is expecting to sit on them all and successfully hatch them, but she's determined to give it a go. Thankfully, I've marked them now so each day I have to ferret about under her and grab the egg that doesn't have a cross on it. It's going to be like this every day for three weeks!

Ken the broody hen

Ken is trying to sit on every egg that gets laid in the chicken coop. She's currently sitting on three and she's tiny! Mad old bird. I've marked the eggs and any new ones that get laid will be taken away. She'll be in there forever if she carries on like this!