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!

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 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 …

As you can see, this month was a dead-heat between the Noodle Sisters, Sasha and Erica! Yay noodles! 27 eggs each, with an average weight of 57 g per egg. Next was last month’s winner, Miss Holly, with a very respectable 24 eggs averaging 63 g each. 21 eggs was a popular total, laid by Neroli, Katie and Gabrielle. Not bad! We had a total of 166 eggs laid this month, which again, is not at all shabby.

Conspicuous by her absence from the list is Claire. Mighty-Moo. She-of-the-Wattles. Who hasn’t laid an egg since the 2nd of November last year. Sigh …

And now it’s Ella’s turn to give us the heebie-jeebies.

We were away Saturday-Sunday, so the girls had been allowed to be a bit feral with going to bed. But we were home in time on Sunday night to insist that everyone slept on a perch (as opposed to Gabrielle and Katie’s preferred nestbox-option, if they come in when it’s a bit dark — which they always do if left to their own devices!) Lily and Neroli have taken to sleeping on the two newer perches, above the popholes. And on Sunday night Ella decided that the breeze from the open door while I was coaxing K and G onto a perch was just too much, so had flumphed her way across to join them. (Lily and Neroli, that is.)

When I let them out yesterday morning, there was a reasonable amount of kerfuffle. Ella and Claire quite often perform … shall we say, “involuntary perch dismounts” in the mornings, especially if they get themselves in a position where they are slightly blocking the more agile girls’s path to the door. There was a normal flap and cackle, but then Ella came out the pophole with her left leg dragging behind her. She sort of half fell, half tripped, half toppled out. But she couldn’t put any weight on the leg.

Oh god, not again.

We took her in to see Pauline straight away. I hadn’t been able to feel a break, but then I wasn’t able to feel Frida’s breaks either. The whole way in I just kept thinking that I didn’t know if I could face going through all this again. For starters, Ella is huge – she’s 5.6kg, and very tall. Add to that her age (5 years old), and the fact that she doesn’t metabolise calcium very well (hence half her eggs laid last month were BIN – Broken In Nest), and she just wasn’t going to be a candidate for the sort of surgical intervention that Frida went through.

Pauline looked almost as worried as we did. This was Ella’s third medical episode (her eye injury in 2008, and then her impacted crop a few years ago – at least, it feels like a few years ago …), or fourth if you counted the false alarm after Venus had to be put down, when I panicked that Ella’s buldge might also be a huge tumor. So Pauline has had plenty to do with her in the past. We laid her on her side, and Pauline started to investigate.

To cut a long story short, it isn’t broken. It isn’t even dislocated, thank heavens. After taking four or five X-rays (and Ella doing an enormous poo all over the X-ray machine – sigh!), she thinks its an impingement on the nerves controlling that leg. Apparently they are quite close to the surface, and the egg that Ella had on the way looked to be pressing on the area where they are. There could also be some infection in her egg tract, causing some swelling and hence also impinging on the nerves. So if Pauline’s right, Ella’s usual morning clumsiness may be due ro her morning egg-laying, and the specific issue here was the impingemnt-induced clumsiness causing her to fall off the perch and wrench her leg muscles/tendons. So she’s in the dog crate cage for a couple of days to restrict her movement, plus antibiotics for the infection and pain meds to ease the discomfort while the muscles heal. Pauline also gave her a calcium injection to help make sure she passed the egg ok and didn’t add egg binding to the other dramas.

So far things look pretty good. She’s much less stiff and sore, and has laid with no trouble. Lots of mess, but no trouble. She’s also threatening to go broody, which might not be a bad thing. Keep her quiet and calm for a while …

It’s not looking great – there are only three of the Dorking and one of the Coronation Sussex eggs that are definitely alive and growing. Of the others, four Dorking and three Coronation Sussex look to be clear, so either weren’t fertile to begin with or didn’t survive transit.The other two Dorking I’m not sure about – I think there was some movement, but there’s also a hint of a blood ring about them. Ditto one of the remaining Sussex. And while the final egg had a suspicion of movement, I’m not absolutely certain it was within the egg (as opposed to my hand).

Normally you’d remove any eggs that seemed to be infertile at this point, but I can’t quite believe their viability is as bad as it seems, so we’ll leave all the eggs under her for a few more days. Just in case …

When we first let the girls out into their new run, the thing that most occupied their attention was having one hell of a good time scritching around a clump of tussock grass. Lots of fun. Unfortunately tussock is also quite a scratchy substance, and Gabby managed to swipe herself thoroughly across the face with it. We discovered this last Tuesday. The abrasions looked unpleasant but not serious, so we left her alone, working on the basis that anything we did at this stage would probably attract dirt or make things worse.

Unfortunately things got worse on their own, and by the weekend we were getting  bit worried. Unfortunately this weekend was a public holiday here, so we had to wait until this morning to take her in. Poor girl was pretty unhappy – keeping the eye closed and sitting in one corner of the run, rubbing her eye and face on her wing (another reason why we thought the hands-off approach was the safest bet). We had an antibiotic left from Bessie’s treatment, so she got two small doses of that over the weekend, while we waited for the practice to reopen.

Pauline was initially quite worried that the eye might be a sign of something more sinister, but a check of her temperature and a listen to her lungs etc showed nothing unusual. It appears to be what we had thought – she’s essentially cut/grazed her eyelid, inside and out, and it’s gotten infected. So she’s on antibiotics for a week, and I have an ointment to apply to both her eyes twice a day. (Oh joy. Oh well.) In theory the improvement should be quite rapid, so fingers crossed …

Happy birthday, Miss Trouble.