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Saturday 23 November 2013

The nest remains empty

 Most chicken keepers will know that when you walk into that coop and see it covered in feathers your first thought is that you've had a fox attack, thankfully for us it is the lovely or not so lovely moult that chickens go through after their first year of laying. My chickens have all take turns to go through moult. Zebadee our Plymouth Barred Rock was the first, she stopped laying her eggs, her comb and wattles turned pink and her lovely black and white feather begin to fall out, she had a bare bottom for around 1 week and it seemed like it took weeks for her to start looking like her old self again. Next up was our Light Sussex, Layla, she is a rather plump lady and doesn't seem to have done too badly during the moult, she is still on the scraggy side and I am hoping her tail feathers grow soon. Third to go through moult is Rosie our Czech Brindle hen, as quickly as she lost her feathers she grew them back, her moult have by far been the shortest. 
Throughout Zebadee, Rosie and Layla's moult I was getting our daily blue egg off Janny our cream legbar and an occasional egg off who I presume our Jersey Giant but with less daylight hours and the fact that Janny in the picture on the right seems to have thrown herself into moult we are now eggless! She looks like she has lost the most feathers out of all of them. I have put two pictures side by side to compare and my poor girl does look like she is getting ready to throw herself into the oven. I can not wait till her feathers grow back so she looks like she does in the left picture.
Our last chicken is a Jersey Giant who I hatched in May, she still remains nameless and is in need of a good name, feel free to share your suggestions. Her comb and wattles are an impressive red, she is bigger or as big as my hens so I can not wait to see what size she will be when she is fully grown. Back in May I hatched 7 eggs, this Jersey Giant is the only one I kept, the others all went off to new homes. I was hoping the Araucana was a female but sadly it was a boy so I was unable to keep him.
 

Five chickens and not one egg between them, I fear I might have to buy some eggs!



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