Re: How are the girls going?
- From: Ginny <glvl88@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:04:27 +0800
A _L_ P wrote:
Ginny wrote:So here we are mid winter, just getting ready to clean out the shed again. With nearly 2 weeks of showers and rainy weather everything is a bit mucky so I've procured a bale of fresh straw and I'm off to fork out the old and put in the new. My girls will like that I think.Huh, all right for some! Two of mine started laying, a brown egg and a green egg nearly every day for about 3 weeks. Then both hens went broody.
Been cutting greens from the garden as well and the eggs are lovely and yellow, now that I am finally getting some every day.
So how are yours going?
Another two--three weeks of nothing then someone started laying a brown egg every day or two, but now she's stopped again too.
The weather is poor, June in Dunedin was our coldest for -----(long time) and May our wettest, blimey was it WET! Day after day of showers, drizzle, torrential rain, heavy rain, steady rain - nothing boring about it, lots of variety. The chooks aren't well housed because of the slow progress on rebuilding their "real" house after pulling quite a lot apart to get rid of red mite sanctuaries and then finding rot and rodent accessways. The boards on the floor had been tight but not tight enough to prevent a deep layer of fine litter accumulating, and where it touched the timber it attracted and conducted damp. So I've scratched that out and hollowed out cat-sized access and hanging-out places, incidentally big enough to scrape out any further litter but there shouldn't be much because the floor is going to be 18mm plywood. Getting decent ventilation underneath and good mousing access should sort out some problems. I keep getting the pain back in my R hand from working in a confined space chipping at the hard clay now, and fire-shovelling clay and litter into buckets, rather heavy one-handed work, so then it's another couple of days of doing other things while the over-used wrist recovers. So the chooks are on an improvised perch (old ladder) in the covered run, with feed sacks stapled over the wire netting and an old door propped up against that wall to help keep the cold and wind off. Far from ideal. They can snuggle up and keep warm, and they're dry, but it's not as comfortable as they should have, not at this time of the year.
The 4 late chicks have grown beautifully - they would, being random and unintended, it's just I was so fed up with putting broodies in the naughty girl box, and trying 3 times to get chicks hatched. End of season, I think she was the last one laying, a small hen producing small eggs. I took her eggs and otherwise ignored her. She kept on sitting, and eventually I figured I could sacrifice 5 of the big eggs still indoors, it didn't really matter. So what happened? Four chicks! And one egg that sloshed when I shook it so I biffed it down the orchard. One of the chicks is a grey (aka lavender) araucana-looking one. I've got one like that, must have been her egg. Two frizzles, one softer than the other, and one black with some markings coming on the breast. So far none of them seems to have a roosterish comb or bum-feathers. But when they're that mongrelly it's hard to tell. Chick mash and dog roll, they've had since the beginning, and then chick grains added and a bit of greens but things are growing awfully slowly here this winter. Even weeds!
A L P
Hi ALP,
Sorry to hear things have been so bad down your way. We have had 4-5 lovely fine, coolish days and my hen shed has it's new layer of straw and clean nest boxes - if the girls would care to use them. Not getting a lot of eggs but I don't have heaps of chooks either. I did end up getting some ex battery hens and they have spruced up considerably and laying off and on in the last couple of weeks. Think they have just got over moulting. Even getting the odd egg from the silky but nothing has gone broody.
I expect we will be soaked again this week as more fronts are forcast and another week of wet and cold. We are so much further north than you so our winters are nowhere near as bad. Getting sheds and yards fixed in that sort of weather would be very difficult indeed but I'm sure the girls appreciate what you've done so far. Summer will be here in no time. A week of sun and everything is going crazy here. What I haven't mulched has gone to the chooks and they are getting picky now. Been mulching a heap of the back yard to extend the vegie garden. As it is solid clay and rock I had a lake at the back door last week so not much chance to dig it up. So I put down 2ft of straw along with some blood and bone and chook poo. We'll see how it rots down before I try planting anything. Probably grow a lovely crop of wheat from the straw.
The chicks sound cute. Hope they do okay and not all roosters. Haven't hatched anything for a while now but will as the weather warms up around August/September. Unless one of the silkies decides to go broody, we'll have to wait and see.
Hope you get some dry weather soon.
--
Ginny - In West Australia
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