Egg production has slowed down dramatically, which is annoying given the amount of food eaten. The copper headed marans, pretty birds though they are, and beautiful dark brown eggs, are really not the best of layers. The cream legbar is pretty good actually, but has the occasional day off, and the buff leghorn is sitting on a clutch of eggs. Typically she is our best layer.. when not brooding.
She seems a lot happier this time round, as she is in the broody coop, shut off from the other girls. It seems mean, but the truth is they hassled her and picked on her when she rushed out for her daily hasty scoff drink and poo. When you only leave your eggs for a short while to deal with your daily needs, the last thing you need is another hen establishing the pecking order all over you. Now she has her own private garden. And we move her every couple of days.. broody hens do the biggest single one days work of poo… (too much information?)
The chicks – as were – small chickens now, are looking great. I have a suspicion they are all cockerels. Particularly the attractive golden brown one, he/she is so unafraid.. When I turn up in the afternoon to check on them and the sheep, often carrying some offering from the garden, they fly over. The beauty of having a very large covered run – No wing clipping needed, and room to fly. Smaller chickens obviously have a better muscle to weight ratio than the older ones (although they fly a tad too), and they often fly up to perch on the broody coup and fly when there might be food on offer.
They are growing up, we evicted them from the broody coup when we started another clutch of eggs, and they moved into the hen house without a backward glance, perching with the other girls. I’ve noticed too, that they have stopped making chick noises and now make chicken noises. I must take a picture.
So curently the layers pellets are going on three growing chicks (I’m not getting into trying to feed them separately with growers pellets.. prefer to have them all in together), one broody hen, two not so great layers and one hen who lays most days. And still we have too many eggs. I’m not complaining.
Yes… do take a picture. I’d love to see them 🙂