I just love that photo.I would have liked to try belly dancing (got a belly-button ring and everything!) maybe I still can.
Here’s a photo from 2013:
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and a sort-of tax as it’s kinda my headspace at the moment.
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I am inspired! I hope I can come up with something Maggie approves of.I've done that for warmth in general...heated some large cement paving stones (they were 'odd ones' lying around outside at our 'new house') I then wrapped them in some corrugated cardboard or a chicken towel and put them in the coop for added heat (later I stepped up my game and used 5 gal. buckets of HOT water...wrapped with corrugated cardboard!) I actually made cardboard 'sleeves' that the block slid into/out of with an end flab like a box. Slowed release of heat, made it okay if they decided to perch on it - wouldn't burn them - AND, best of all, It kept the poop off of it. Slide brick out, bring it in to reheat...slide it back in.Cardboard, duck tape & a pair of shears! Amazing what that will make!!!
Oh she won’t like that! I am convinced it is solitude rather than warmth that she us after.
I have noticed that mine are really unbalanced when molting. Just yesterday two of them fell off nearly 6 feet high - Brune trying to get in the nest box and then in the evening Cannelle trying to hop over Nougat to go roost. I think (maybe I'm wrong, I've never read anything about this) that just a few wing feathers missing is enough to create unbalance when they need their wings to stabilize or for momentum.I failed at the first hurdle.
I blocked off the ground level nest boxes which is where Maggie has been going. I was optimistic she would roost with everyone else if she couldn't get in there because she was quite active all day and had eaten a good load of corn before bed, and was generally behaving like a very slightly slower version of herself.
But never underestimate a chicken's ability to mess with your plans. When she couldn't get in to the ground floor she tried for the upper deck. She bounced up on the tree stump with no issue, but she failed the second leap up to the nest boxes and fell to the floor.
So of course I felt terrible and rushed to open up the lower box for her. So once again she is going to be soaking her butt in icky liquid poo all night.
I don't know if she is going into the nest box for warmth (logical but odd as it was 70F degrees today and hasn't been below the high 40s any night this week). Or whether she wants to sit rather than roost. If the latter then my Plan B will also fail. Plan B is to construct a tiny roost inside the nest box so I can elevate her butt so she doesn't bathe in all the ick.
Of course I am also worried about why she failed to get up to the upper nest box. It is a big leap, though roughly the same as the tree stump that she managed just fine. I think she doesn't have any flight feathers - but does she need that for jumping? Or is she really weak? Could molting make her really weak?
So many questions. Sorry. Just worried about my beloved Maggie.
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YES! That’s a great poster! I am going to print that one off at work tomorrowI would have liked to try belly dancing (got a belly-button ring and everything!
Here’s a photo from 2013:
View attachment 3292883
and a sort-of tax as it’s kinda my headspace at the moment.
View attachment 3292884
That’s a lovely photo, love dancing sometimes I just have to twist and shoutI would have liked to try belly dancing (got a belly-button ring and everything!
Here’s a photo from 2013:
View attachment 3292883
and a sort-of tax as it’s kinda my headspace at the moment.
View attachment 3292884
Marty was bottom of the pecking order until Mr P arrived on site. Then it just seemed that she became emboldened and started to establish some power of her own.I have noticed that mine are really unbalanced when molting. Just yesterday two of them fell off nearly 6 feet high - Brune trying to get in the nest box and then in the evening Cannelle trying to hop over Nougat to go roost. I think (maybe I'm wrong, I've never read anything about this) that just a few wing feathers missing is enough to create unbalance when they need their wings to stabilize or for momentum.
And it may also be due to age, I definitely notice mine are not as mobile as when they were under two years old.
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I was quite impressed with the poem and the video of hen fights. My six ex-batts that arrived here together never had this kind of fights, until last year when I brought in "strangers' (Théo and Chipie) which they bullied badly, but it was never fights between equals. However, I notice my younger chickens, Chipie's hatch, "play" at fighting like this all the time. It doesn't seem serious but more like to establish a pecking order. Gastounet takes part in it, and so does Chipie (who dominates them). So, I wonder why there are fights between some hens/ chickens, and not others ? Is it a natural behaviour, that my ex-batts didn't have growing their first three months in a battery ? Or is just individual temperament ? Or maybe group dynamics, as for humans ?
If I have the time tonight I will definitely read the follow up on the fight between Hattie and Aurora.
Right now my rooster Théo is bullying my cockerel Gastounet. There is no actual fighting because Gastounet is terrorized and runs like mad on his long yellow legs. I refrain myself from intervening, but I sometimes loose my temper and shout at Théo
I agree, Dorothy has been avoiding the others and sleeping in a nest box which I am sure here is for warmth and security so no one bumps her poor feathers.
Yes, the dynamics change all the time
even when they are grown. It’s one of the reason they are so interesting 
