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!