It had to happen (again)

She spread her wings and fluffed them wide
and filled the nest from side to side.
“The urge has come upon me!” cried
Our noodle-brained Poppy.
“Get me some eggs to sit on,
and then bugger off!” said she.

(JP, with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson )

Yes, it had to happen. In considerably less time than it took me to compose the above, Poppy has gone from normal to broody fluff-monster.

Oh well. We got 92 eggs from her before going broody this time. Which is 60 more than she’s managed before. And Venus has returned to laying … (conspiracy, anyone?!)

Shrinking lumps and breaking broodies

(With gratuitous chooks-roaming-the-garden photos.)

A good day in ChookeNZ-land! (Although you might want to skip the next paragraph if you’re of a queasy disposition.)

We took Poppy to Veronica today for another check. We’re winning! She’s on her third type of antibiotics (twice daily this time), with us cleaning the caseous pus out of her mouth every evening (which involves a towel, a pair of tweezers, cotton buds and lots of swearing – human and galline) and smearing the wound site with manuka honey ointment night and morning. And yesterday we got a huge lump – about half the size of my little-finger nail – out of the top ‘chamber’ of the wound. I swear the lump went down by a good two thirds, just from that. (We were going to take it in to show to the vet, but Poppy ate it. Eeeew!) Anyway, she’s definitely improving. The pus is pretty much all surface now, so it’s just a matter of keeping everything clean and making sure the infection is well and truly cleared up before she stops her antibiotics. Woohoo!

We’ve also managed to break Venus out of her broody spell. She’s spent the days in the broody coop with the door to the nesting area shut, so she’s bored, secure, and unable to nest. It only took three days of doing that for her to snap out of it. Brilliant! (And ironic.) Because she was within sight of the girls during the day, and back with them as soon as laying was finished (when we’d shut the pophole to everyone) there was no issue of them forgetting who she was. Now we just have to wait for her to start laying again.

Reintroducing Frida to the flock is taking a bit longer than we’d hoped. We’ve moved Bessie in with her, which is going well. And Claire and Lily are fine with her too. (She’s gone above poor Lily in the pecking order, but it’s not been a traumatic adjustment.) Neoli and Poppy, however, want nothing to do with her. They all bristle and hackle and pace up and down the mesh threatening violence.  Ella’s done the odd hackle-and-bristle too, but it’s much less frequent. (Or convincing.) We’ve tried having Bessie and Frida on the lawn and giving either Poppy or Neroli some very closely supervised interaction with her, but they’re still leaping into agro-mode as soon as they realise who it is. (And yes, Frida is the instigator as often as not.) After Poppy’s infection, I’m not in any hurry to get them to sort it out. They’ll get tired of it eventually.

Living garden art

As part of Frida’s rehabilitation, we’ve been giving her access to the lawn, hedge and herb bed. It proved so popular (and surprisingly un-destructive) that we’ve started making a point of giving everyone some supervised lawn time.

It really is a gorgeous sight. Grazing the lawn is popular. But the girls seem especially keen on the sorrel and the self-sown winter purslane in my raised herb beds, so they’re both getting quite a thrashing.

And then there is the utter bliss that is scritching through the piles of decaying hay along the hedge …

A few words of wisdom for those of you who are keen to try it with your own chooks:

• Make sure the yard is secure before you let anyone out. (Obvious, I know.)
• Ideally, try to let them out late in the afternoon, when they are calm and full – your garden will survive better if this is a treat rather than the best chance for a meal.
• Have a container with some sort of treat – meat, mealworms fruit, grain, whatever – somewhere handy but out of sight so that you can easily get the girls to come to you in an emergency.
• Cover anything vulnerable or poisonous. The girls will learn pretty quickly what is out of bounds (a scolding voice and a calm but firm push away from the item in question seems to do the trick for us) but you don’t want to be worrying about too many things at once.
• Try not to let too many out at once. We find four to five pretty manageable, but it will depend on the birds in question.
• Consider flock dynamics: if you have the top of the pecking order out with one of the bottom, it’s more likely to cause trouble than if you keep to similar status birds. (You don’t want anyone being chased. Keep it calm.)
• Sit down nearby, and enjoy!

A Clutch of Laying Milestones

What with one thing and another, a few quite important laying milestones have been reached without us having a chance to post about them individually.

Firstly, Bessie clicked over 400 eggs (since we’ve owned her) on the 19th of September. She lays a bit less frequently now she’s getting older, but usually manages an egg every second day or so, and was our only chook to keep us supplied in early winter.

Then, on the 9th of October Frida hit the 300 egg mark. Pretty impressive considering what she’s been through over the last few months! Very good laying for a Dorking, but these are a good laying strain. On the same day Venus hit a milestone for the less metrically-minded: a double gross (288 eggs). And promptly went broody (although she’s come out of it now, but isn’t yet laying again).

The day after that, Poppy laid her 200th egg, and has now laid 88 without going broody. Remember that in the past she has only managed 30-odd before the broodiness kicks in. This is especially good going for her, considering that, like Frida, she has had more than her share of drama of late.

Good going those girls!

Birthday cake, broodiness, and reintroduction

We gave the girls an Omelette-cake to celebrate the Peeps and Sammies’ second birthday yesterday. (For those who wonder about such things, it was a Spanish Omelette, and used seven egg whites that we had left over from other cooking, plus one extra egg, some cubed roast potato, and some cubed roast lamb. )

It took about three minutes to completely disappear. As you can see from the photo, there was much food-running, with girls carrying chunks of omelette bigger than their own heads off to a corner where they could wolf it down (relatively) unmolested.

Having had our longest ever spell without anyone going broody, Venus has decided to return us to normality. She’s always been prone to making ungodly noises – seagull shrieks to greet us, shrieks of fury at being disturbed on the nest (accompanied by some truly vicious pecks), and more shrieks at night if we have the back door open too long for her liking, or if someone is perched where she wants to be. And these noises have been getting louder, more frequent, and more unpleasant. And now she’s added the broody bok-bok, and taken to stomping around looking like she plans to murder someone (entirely possible) when she can’t get into the nestbox.

Even if we did want to raise another batch of chicks this year, Venus is the last hen we’d use. For one thing, she’s pretty clumsy. Huge and fluffy, but clumsy – stands on her own eggs quite often. God knows how chicks would survive. And she’s the least people-friendly of all our girls. Even Ella will tolerate humans, and sometimes even seem to like being stroked. But Venus is the last one to come up, the first to back away, and the only one who has drawn blood (admittedly this only happens – so far – when she’s on the nest, but that’s the point). You have to assume that any chicks she raised would be pretty feral. So it’s a matter of keeping her away from the nestbox, and waiting for her to snap out of it. Poor girl. Hormones really do mess her around.

And to round-out our weekend, we’ve got Frida installed in one end of the Winter Garden run, with the bach house attached for her sleeping quarters. She and Poppy have spent some time pacing up and down, threatening murder and carnage (sigh), but hopefully the novelty of doing so will wear off pretty soon.