The Naming of Chicks (is a serious matter)

Well the four chicks finally have names. And just like last year, not all were exactly keen to be involved in the process!

The easiest to name was little Yellow, our Coronation Sussex. We had vaguely though that the name of a monarch would be a good option, but Victoria is already taken (by one of Nicola’s girls), and we aren’t ready to assign a variation of Elizabeth to anyone just yet (too like “Bessie”, plus we already have two hens with E names). In the end, it was quite easy – Daisy. Hoping that she is, in fact, a she. Otherwise it’ll be Donald. 

The two Dorking boys have names which seem to suit them. Blue is Ben, and Red is Robin. (Or Robyn, if he does a Gabby on me and turns out to be a she).

Little Green was harder. We decided to look at Shakespearean names for her, so wrote ourselves out a shortlist of names we liked that used letters not already assigned to our existing flock (for ease of egg marking). Then we put each name on a separate piece of sticky-note paper, and took them out to see which one she would peck first. Poppy was the first of our girls to choose her name this way.

Last year when we were trying to get Erica to pick her new name out, it seemed that everyone but Erica was willing to peck at the paper. (Hence she remained Erica.) I was hoping that little Green would be a bit more helpful.

Sigh …

First of all, Daisy grabbed a piece of paper and ran away with it, with the others in pursuit. I retrieved it, put it back with the others, and offered them to Green again.

This time Robin took one. I repeated the retrieval, snaffled Poppy (who is extremely prone to trying to take over these sorts of proceedings) and tried once more to encourage the little girl to have an opinion in the process. She hopped over the top of all of them and snuggled into my elbow, looking winsome. And while I was paying attention to her, Ben took one of the names.

Weirdly, all three chicks had picked the same name. I’d made a point of putting them back in different configurations each time, so it wasn’t that they were picking the closest one or anything like that. So in the absence of a decision from her, we decided to go with the verdict of her siblings – Imogen.

Sorted!

Gratuitous photo post – the Quartet’s first week

Poppy’s Quartet at 24 hours old

Technically little green is more like 48 hours old here, and yellow only about 12 hours old. But for simplicity’s sake, we’ll assign them all to the same day – November 12th.

Dorkings are usually easy to sex at hatching, but none of these guys have particularly strong headstripes. Which suggests that they might all be boys. (Although Gabrielle didn’t have much marking at all, and hence was able to keep me referring to her as ‘little Dorking boy’ for quite a few months. Sigh!) But I think little green might be a girl – it’s the eye markings. Going back over photos of previous Dorking clutches, chicks with eyeliner have all turned out to be girls. Fingers crossed, anyway.

We have no idea whatsoever about the sex of our single Coronation Sussex chick. Apparently tey are quite hard to sex until at least four or five months old, so it’ll be guesswork based on behaviour and growth rate that will determine the pronoun we use. We hope s/he will turn out to be a pullet …

We have a clutch! (well, Poppy does)

A lot has happened since our last update on Poppy’s brooding. The fertility of the eggs was every bit as bad as we feared, with only six out of the fifteen eggs showing any signs of viability at the fifteen day period. The difference between live and not is huge at this stage, so taking the nine dud eggs away was a no-brainer. (We’ve kept them in the fridge so we can break them open in a couple of days as see what stage they got to, or if they were infertile right from go.)

We had the first signs of pipping on Friday night. Dorking egg 4. The chick seemed to stop being able to make much progress after a couple of hours, so we decided to intervene and very carefully  pulled some of the shell away, and tore the membrane enough to let the chick get its wing out. The whole business of whether to help or not is quite controversial – there are good arguments in favour of not doing so, but with only six eggs viable we weren’t prepared to stand back and do nothing. We were very careful to not do anything more than just remove bits of shell that were already partly cracked away, and not to cause any bleeding. So we helped a bit, and then tucked the partially-hatched chick back under mum …

Next morning, we had one chick out, and two more coming along. (Woo hoo!) By late afternoon on Saturday, this was three chicks out (Dorkings 4, 1 & 2), and two more pipping (our only Coronation Sussex, plus Dorking 3). The Sussex seemed to be having trouble, so we decided to do a similar assist-job with it.

Come Sunday morning, we had three Dorking and one Sussex out and peebling around. Sadly the pipping Dorking that we left to its own devices died after hatching. The last egg – Dorking 5 – hadn’t broken the shell, but was through into the airsack and peeping loudly … but died without being able to break out of the shell.

So the tally is four live chicks – three Dorking and one Coronation Sussex. Pretty poor, given that we put fifteen eggs under Poppy.

But it’s hard to be sad when you see the little heads poking out from under Poppy’s skirts …

Ella update

Looks like Pauline was right about Ella’s impingement. We kept her inside for two days, getting broodier and grumpier. We also gave her a couple of brief sessions on the lawn, to make sure she got plenty of vitamin D. (And to give one of us the chance to clean her cage out … ) She was still a bit stiff in the leg, but showed no sign of any real problems, so we’ve put the divider back in the main run and moved her into the bach. This way she can see and talk to the others, but has a nice snug house of her own with a really low little perch to step daintily on and off. We’ll put Claire in with her at night to try and keep her a bit happier. Fingers crossed she keeps improving!