A mixed blessing: Venus is back laying

Actually she’s been back since the 11th, but with Venus you don’t want to speak too soon. She is the queen of strange laying behaviour, popping out shell-less eggs with monotonous regularity at times. And indeed the first egg she laid this month seems to have been a thin-shelled ‘involuntary overnight emission’ (as we call eggs [...]

Slightly less bionic

An update on Frida, the Bionic Chicken.
On August 17th we took her back in to see Pauline, worried about one of the small pins that joined the two metal rods together. (The top pin, the one that sits against her chest muscle.) It’s been a bit of a nuisance for a while – Pauline cut [...]

Catching up on ChookeNZ

Along with all the new pages and updates of late, we’ve added quite a few back-dated posts about happenings in July. Check out the following, if you haven’t already spotted them:

Claire returning to laying with a strange egg.
Bessie having proper moult for the first time, and in the depths of winter too.
Claire having sexuality issues.
Lily [...]

Another ChookeNZ page update

Continuing the (early) spring spruce-up of ChookeNZ, we’re pleased to announce that The Egg Pages have been updated for the first time since December last year.
Four more double yolkers have been recorded; Ella’s 26 consecutive days laying feat given its due recognition; and nearly 500 more eggs added to the chooks’ totals.
On that subject:
The total number [...]

A new feature on ChookeNZ!

Just hatched added: The ChookeNZ Research Centre!
This is where we’ll put pages that have a research or scientific flavour to them. Right now there are two pages that provide an analysis of how the weight of our four 2007 pullets (Frida, Lily, Poppy and Claire) declined and recovered during moulting.
In a few weeks we’ll add a page [...]