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Thank you for those good news ! It makes me happy that it turned out so well for Honey.Glad to hear about lily! I love the Chipie on the shoe photo.
Update on Honey
I am so amazed at this little creature. She is a magic chicken. Honey went blind on April 6th and has been a house chicken since then.
She is almost doing better than ever. She has a great appetite. We have to be constantly making meals for her.
She has the house mapped out and she navigates really well inside. We have a food station in a cage and she knows how to go there. She is almost never satisfied with the amount of food there though.View attachment 3857982
Honey is truly a food machine... she also has been very sweet and loves her snuggles. She seems to be very very happy.
About three days ago she started molting. Hopefully it will go smoothly for her.
I don't remember, was she used to be in the house before she went blind ?
Also, I think it's a bit for chickens like for people. Personality can play a big role in how one reacts to sickness or disability. She had sass and a will to live so it must have helped.
I hope her molt goes fine too
. It's early for molting. But I also have some of the hens who are giving signs of beginning light molts.Most rescues I have seen who take blind hens either put them in coops with other blind or sight impaired chickens, or have them become house chickens like Honey !
Blanche, who had lost an eye in the hawk attack, didn't do so well with her restrained vision. She could manage every day stuff but I believe she was afraid that she wasn't able to spot dangers anymore, because she very rarely ventured away from her safe places.
Are your feeders large enough that she can access them even without good aiming ?
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We have very unusual weather and so the reports keep messing up. It's been alternating desert wind with grey skies, storms, and our usual summer windy climate. The soil is still damp enough underneath that the chickens can still forage nicely in their yard.
We didn't realise that there was so many cherries in the chicken's tree but in fact we have eaten more than any other year, and both us and the chickens have gotten belly aches from too much cherries ! Now all the ones we can't harvest are rotting and attracting many winged insects that sometimes fall to the ground right for the chickens to gobble them up, they especially love the rose chafers which make very crunchy snacks. Laure goes back out once everyone is asleep to hunt for them.
I want to share a little food experiment I'm going to try. Since October I had been adding two teaspoons of hemp oil in the chicken's mash, first as a carrier oil for the essential oils I was trying for worms, then because I kept using thyme and turmeric essential oils after seeing studies that showed they had positive effects on overall immunity.
Since February the hens started laying again a lot and very nice eggs, so much that we began selling quite a few. But around mid april they began laying less, and smaller eggs, with shells not so nice. I attributed this to the fact that they were now fenced and did not free range anymore, or to the problems some have with lice. But recently I got a targeted add from a french poultry website for products to help hens keep laying with the heat, and they were selling among other things very expensive hemp seeds. I realised the moment the eggs dropped in quality and number also coincided with the moment I stopped giving them the hemp oil because I didn't have any left (I also use it for me on salad and fresh cheese). So I bought more and began giving it again three weeks ago, and taddam- more eggs.
I totally think it could be a coincidence, but long story short, I am going to try giving them 10% hemp seeds in the fermented mix. The poultry site sells them very expensive, but I've found organic producers on the web that sell them in bigger quantity much cheaper. I've learned my lesson with the peas and will try a small amount first to see if they eat it. If they don't like it I'll finish them in my yogurt, I think they are good for humans too
.I'm not trying to make them lay more of course, just trying to improve their feed !
I got a lot of crappy pictures on Saturday and Sunday because of the weather so even if my phone takes horrible night photos, I thought it would be a change to post roosting chickens.
Main roost from left to right. Laure, Nieva, Alba, Nougat, Léa, Kara and Lily in the background.
Right to Léa : Annette, Lulu, Gaston.
Front of the coop, the small chicken's roost : Merle, Théo, Piou-piou, Melisse.
In the crate for the night, front of the coop but on the other side, Chipie
Sunday I went for a long loop, my first serious mountain run. I like it because there is 4 km running on a ridge 2150 m high where you can see two totally different valleys. Weather forecast was south desert wind with white sky ...I got hail then thunder on the ridge
. Needless to say I didn't stop to look or take pictures and hurried to be safer below.Then today the sun was back with nice temperatures.
How cute are these two ? But Théo is a real pain trying to mate Piou-piou, who is indeed doing something like a summer molt. I am so happy to see her feathers growing at last and hope she is not going to pluck them all out !!
Iyi geceler Karagöz
Any clues as to what I've actually got? I do think it's a genuine product, just not the fermented tea cake I thought I was buying.
