Théo and the chickens des Sauches

[ManueB]

Having spent years holding it (before whiteboards came along - I'm that old!) I really know how it sucks the moisture out of skin, and presumably roots too.

I'm old enough to have used chalks during primary and a bit of junior high. We had weekly board erasing duty. I'm also old enough that it was a bit of a trauma at first when I had to use PowerPoints to teach as a librarian .

Hafod has started laying today - and much to my surprise it's a lovely sage green .

Congratulations! Is she your first green layer ? What color did you expect?

I have a normal bike too that I keep for short distances. But if I want to go further , against the wind or up a ‘mountain*’ my knees get painful. And since I had corona my energy level is not wat it used to be.
So I finally found it was time yo buy a e-bike. This one doesn’t need the battery to bike (I don’t know the english word for it -free turning?).

*We have no mountains and only a few hills. Silly Dutch named them mountains. I live nearby two of those. They are formed during the ice age. South from these hills is the delta of the Rhine and Meuse.

And yes you are right that digging materials for batteries is polluting landscapes. Compared to gasoline or diesel it is a better choice for the environment. Especially because we have solar panels to fill the battery (try to do that In daylight). .

I agree it's important to protect your knees, they are a vital and fragile part of our bodies.
I've had several light knee injuries from running, which led to terrible knee pain when I rode my race bike. I did a postural study and a few mm of adjustment to the pedals and the handlebars solved the problem.
I agree e-bikes are useful in some cases. But I don't think they are a sustainable transportation solution in the long term.
*****
Cannelle, Blanche and Nougat all laid an egg ; poor Nougat laid a huge anomaly, and was quite unwell most of the day.
And..I heard her screaming for the rooster to come assist her...Chipie laid again today! I'm over excited for such a tiny egg . It's just that I'm really hoping she isn't a very old hen and will stay with us another few years.
Léa and Piou-piou also laid but I bet Léa will stop now, she's screaming broody murder and her comb is turning pale.

It was incredibly warm today, so much that we all had to stay in the shade. we had lunch outside and Gaston's team was incredibly clingy to get some treats. Piou-piou even jumped on my partner's knee! All that for a few rice grains they had succeeded to catch.
I'm keen to switch them to real grains because they really don't eat the powdery stuff at all when it's dry and only a bit if I make it into a mash.
And I discovered today that Gaston is the first of my chickens that enjoys being petted . I lightly stroke his feathers just behind his comb (he had a dark speckle that I wanted to check, it was just dust) and he closed his eyes and seemed to enjoy it. I did it again later to see if it was a coincidence and he did the same .

Gaston stayed outside of Theo's yard all morning but in the afternoon he finally jumped in and began immediately flirting with the ex-batts. A fight ensued that I didn't break up : they separated on their own and stayed dustbathing out of sight one from the other. Poor Blanche is terrified of Gaston, unfortunately, and too unwell to run when she sees him.

More rice, please.

We are going to fight.

Chipie's egg, 35g, next to Nougat, 90.

The main side of the wood shed is now sheltered from the wind.

 

[BDutch]

Here the weather was nice too. But stil a bit too cold to enjoy sitting outside.

Nice that Gaston likes to be patted. Surely you are doing something well. Great to hear the relation between the roosters is getting a little better.

I'm keen to switch them to real grains because they really don't eat the powdery stuff at all when it's dry and only a bit if I make it into a mash.

If I make a mash I practically always put some extras in it. I often add: garlic and apple cider vinager. And sometimes things lke schredded fruit peels,, soy sauce from the sushi bar. …

Today my Ini mini was very communicative again. There was a kind of warning/ asked for attention. She stood on the terrace and‘shouted’ in the direction of the coop. 4 chickens on the terrace and two missing?
I checked and found the young neighbour cat in the coop near the entrance to the laying nests. Katrientje and Kraai were in the run. Looking unhappy with the situation. And probably relieved that they could join the flock through the front door.

I hope this grey tiger cat didn’t take over the habit of his black ‘sister’ to pay a visit to the chickens housing

I had 2 white small eggs today. Think I have 3 layers now: Katrientje, Janice and Kraai. Don’t expect my old Dutch from (2014 and 2015) to lay this soon in spring.

 

[Perris]

Is she your first green layer ? What color did you expect?

No Harlech laid a green egg, but just the one, sadly. I was expecting a sort of brown, because her mum has been declared (by the genetics experts on BYC) heterozygous for the blue-eggshell gene, which normally associates with the pea comb, and Hafod has a straight comb not a pea-comb, so I thought she'd got the non-blue allele from her mum. Meanwhile her dad was Phoenix, so would have been passing a brown eggshell gene. But her egg is in fact green, which must be blue+brown, so she must have inherited the blue-shell gene from her mum albeit without the P-comb. That's if I have understood the genetics aright, of course.

Chipie's egg, 35g, next to Nougat, 90.

Nougat's egg is HUGE! Poor girl. I feel sorry for them when they lay anything over 75g, though apparently some breeds do it regularly. Is that normal for her?

 

[Perris]

here's part of my egg basket at the moment - got some lovely colour now with Whitford's little white ones and now Hafod's green, to go with the SFH tinted, the browns, and the Penedesenca dark brown

 

[ManueB]

I hope this grey tiger cat didn’t take over the habit of his black ‘sister’ to pay a visit to the chickens housing

The positive side is that it would deter any eventual rodents. But I'm sure it makes your chickens nervous, mine are still weary of my cats that they have seen all their lives.

I had 2 white small eggs today. Think I have 3 layers now: Katrientje, Janice and Kraai. Don’t expect my old Dutch from (2014 and 2015) to lay this soon in spring

Well, if I got it right from Shadrach's thread Black proved you wrong ?

No Harlech laid a green egg, but just the one, sadly. I was expecting a sort of brown, because her mum has been declared (by the genetics experts on BYC) heterozygous for the blue-eggshell gene, which normally associates with the pea comb, and Hafod has a straight comb not a pea-comb, so I thought she'd got the non-blue allele from her mum. Meanwhile her dad was Phoenix, so would have been passing a brown eggshell gene. But her egg is in fact green, which must be blue+brown, so she must have inherited the blue-shell gene from her mum albeit without the P-comb. That's if I have understood the genetics aright, of course.

Yep..my mind goes completely blank when it hears that kind of talk .
I don't know why because it's completely logical!

Nougat's egg is HUGE! Poor girl. I feel sorry for them when they lay anything over 75g, though apparently some breeds do it regularly. Is that normal for her?

My kitchen scale is an old manual one so it's probably not accurate, maybe it's only 85 or 80. What's sure is her eggs are too big to allow a standard egg box to close.

here's part of my egg basket at the moment - got some lovely colour now with Whitford's little white ones and now Hafod's green, to go with the SFH tinted, the browns, and the Penedesenca dark brown
View attachment 3430116

Beautiful! I didn't realize the Penedesenca laid such dark eggs.
Sometimes I fancy getting colored layers when I'll get more chickens..but then I think I'm better off sticking to healthy resistant local mutts .

 

[ManueB]

The chickens had a very good day today. Nougat laid again a normal egg this time (that is a jumbo egg with a healthy shell) and she obviously felt better today, so I think her being unwell had to do with not laying for four days. Blanche also laid and did better than yesterday though not as well as I would like.
Merle succeeded after multiple tries to break in the coop and lay in the preferred nest box at this time, which is only 20 cm above the floor, so not protected at all! Léa and Piou-piou also laid.

Piou-piou had a fright as while she was in the nest, Grochatila who was sleeping well hidden in the straw loved and fell back asleep just at the entrance of the barn. She screamed for Gaston to come at once, which he did also screaming - poor Grochatila did not wait and ran away from this madhouse!

The rooster coexisted rather well today. Théo let Gaston come out of the coop in the morning and go to roost without chasing him and Gaston stayed a little while inside the netting. However Théo "jumped" at my leg from behind in the evening (that is, he pretended to but didn't actually touch me). He then proceeded to run away as fast as he could when I turned around to try to catch him .

I cooked some mixed rice, buckwheat, semolina, egg, lentils and kale for the chickens. They were very happy about it but Blanche let us know it was unfair that she didn't get her own precious individual scrambled egg. And Chipie, who had her own portion, left out all the green lentils though she ate the pink ones .

Tomorrow Théo's team will be very unhappy. After they went to roost we reduced their yard to the strict minimum to allow the grass a chance to grow. This should take a month to six weeks...but they won't like it.

Tonight we should have a thunderstorm and a good deal of rain. It was in the news that in the South West of France the Catholic church is organizing collective prayers for rain. Anything that works...

 

[Perris]

It was in the news that in the South West of France the Catholic church is organizing collective prayers for rain. Anything that works...

do you use shallow channels across the slopes to catch some of the rain and steer it into cisterns? It's a very simple ancient technology, but surprisingly effective. Or do the terraces work well enough to reduce runoff?

 

[MaryJanet]

@Perris when you play Wordle are you doing the NYT daily? I use an endless Wordle website and can't do better than 4 this morning. What's your favourite first word? I quite like piano because of the vowels.

Tax for introducing a non-chicken topic on Manue's thread.

 

[RoyalChick]

I do the NYT one - only one a day.

 

[Dinosaur Village Keeper]

I believe that the way we are afraid of illness and death is a disease of our society. Everyone die eventually but chickens just do it much quicker than us. I don't mind grief, it's a normal process, but I don't want to be afraid of my chicken's deaths.

You wrote this so long ago, but it is helping me today. And many posts following, including your bday post, which melted my heart. My suffering is so much like yours. I just lost my best girl, Ruby, a couple of hours ago from EYP and somehow sour crop too. I don’t understand how the two were related. I too had overlooked her past issues with laying soft eggs. I was just relieved she had never started laying again since her molt in august. Blaming myself for her loss is doing nothing but making me more miserable. My beautiful Ruby brought me so much joy the very short 3 years I had her, and I know she wouldn’t want me to spend the next 3 hurting over losing her! She wouldn’t even want me to spend 3 days.

I lost three beloved friends this year. 1 year old Rainbow to a hawk, 8 month old Eeyore to an obstruction, and now Ruby. Like you, I don’t want to live in fear of my chickens deaths. It is taking away so much of my freedom to love them as deeply. I am now fearful of them going broody and bringing more babies into the flock, even though it is the most precious thing that I look forward to each year. Feathered mamas, and their babies. *sigh* That’s just more chickens I will someday lose to death. As it is, I have 27 I have to go through.

Also, like you, my chickens are really everything to me. I have only my husband and a couple family members, and no friends. My partner doesn’t love these fluffy little dinosaurs quite like I do. No one understands that losing them is losing a part of my family.

How have you coped with the fear of losing another one? Do you feel you might handle another loss more gracefully in the future, as you hoped? After I lost 2 in just this year, I thought I would be tougher the next time (which certainly should have been a long time later!) But then it was my Ruby. Oh no, no, no, no, not my Ruby!!

Thank you for posting your thoughts and feelings.

My best girl, Ruby…