Ribh's D'Coopage

[BY Bob]

Straight to the water dish.
Soda is out & about more again & her mere presence seems to have settled things down a lot. Our weather is already starting to cool off so I am expecting all my rotten banties to come of the nests shortly & everybody go into moult. Portia has been having a long slow moult for months but she is a frizzle & they do tend to do that.
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These two!
I'm lucky if I can get into my bed when I want to!

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There is nothing better than warn kitties on your bed.

 

[Shadrach]

Straight to the water dish.
Soda is out & about more again & her mere presence seems to have settled things down a lot. Our weather is already starting to cool off so I am expecting all my rotten banties to come of the nests shortly & everybody go into moult. Portia has been having a long slow moult for months but she is a frizzle & they do tend to do that.
View attachment 2994073
These two!
I'm lucky if I can get into my bed when I want to!

View attachment 2994074​

Caught me! I've had to give a love for a post with cats in!

 

[MaryJanet]

Lovely! I have been having a similar problem recently. A snuggle invasion!
I LOVE the blue and white goose vase on the dresser. Sorry - not meaning to snoop.

As we're snooping, the mirror frame caught my eye!

 

[Ribh]

As we're snooping, the mirror frame caught my eye!

It's a hand carved frame. One of the 1st things I ever bought.

 

[Ribh]

Caught me! I've had to give a love for a post with cats in!

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

 

[MaryJanet]

It's a hand carved frame. One of the 1st things I ever bought.

It's wonderful.

 

[LozzyR]

To be an effective quarantine the hens outside the coop should not be able to touch those inside and be kept far enough away so that dander from one lot doesn't get to the other lot.

I went for 20 metres on the couple of occasions I've had to do it. Chickens in fenced coop and a temporary fence at a 20 metre radius to keep the existing at a distance.

Yes, the quarantine coop was kept well away from the run and the big girls weren’t allowed to free-range for two weeks.

 

[LozzyR]

I could haave saved myself a bit of typing if I had read ahead.

SHRA tax?

 

[Aussie-Chookmum]

As we're snooping, the mirror frame caught my eye!

I was just about to say that the mirror was rather lovely.

 

[LozzyR]

So quarantine is over and the integration has started. We moved the new quarantine coop today closer to the run so they can have a bigger space when unsupervised and can the girls can all see each other through the wire. As we moved it, we decided to let them completely free-range with the Faverolles so the pecking order could be established.

It was one of the most chilled-out integrations I have witnessed! Both groups started out ignoring each other; the Frizzles hopped into a garden bed and started digging like mad, and the Faverolles hoovered up spilled food on the grass (River included, I was pleased to see). Then I saw some odd behaviour, so I'll outline my observations.

Tegan, who is alpha, pretty much completely ignored them the whole time, but seemed to lurk behind the raised garden beds, almost as if she was avoiding them. She's moulting at the moment so I wondered if she just wasn't up to it. She also put a fair bit of distance between herself and the Frizzles.

River jumped on top of Lottie, as did Nyssa later on when Lottie was isolated, but what was really surprising was that Penguin challenged River, ripped a feather out and chased her off! River may have lost her spot as 2IC.

Lottie and Snowy stuck very closely to Penguin, who is pretty feisty. They've all socialised together at the breeder's so they've been fine with each other since we got them.

An update on River; the last two days she has been out of bed earlier (7am as opposed to 10am) and has decided she really likes the pullet pellets, which are 18% protein. She was having a scratch around in the garden today which was great to see, but she looked like she was navigating where she was going with her right eye and her head slightly at an angle. Her feathers seem brittle, her bum looks like an echidna's; still quills sticking out of her but the feather bit seems to have broken off, rather than the whole thing having fallen out. Her ears were gummed up and I had to soften the gunk with a bit of warm water, then pick out the lumps so they weren't blocking her ears. I'm going to have another chat with Dr Nikki on Friday about her.