Théo and the chickens des Sauches

[Mother of Chaos]

So good to hear from you again!

 

[Perris]

Thanks for the update Manue; it's good to see you enjoying your running, your spectacular scenery, and your lovely chickens again.

 

[Sequel]

Thank you Manue! Seeing your post just lifted my whole day! I think about you often and have wondered how you’ve been doing!

 

[lightm]

Thank you Manue! Seeing your post just lifted my whole day! I think about you often and have wondered how you’ve been doing!

This is exactly how I feel too.

I am very glad to get updates.

 

[ChicoryBlue]

Thank you Manue! Seeing your post just lifted my whole day! I think about you often and have wondered how you’ve been doing!

This is exactly how I feel too.

I am very glad to get updates.

Yes, these posts! But no pressure, Manue, just that your post was much appreciated!

 

[Labsandchickens8]

I've been wanting to post for a while to let the people who followed this thread know how the chickens and I are doing. While I don't want at this stage to start posting regularly again, I have been catching up on other threads and finding out about the changes in some of your chicken groups. It seems impolite to all of you who followed my thread regularly and gave useful advice to not give an update. This may turn out to be a very long post, I'm afraid. Well, no one is required to read all of it .

• Losses

We now have a flock of ten. Since I last posted in march, two hens have passed. Alba, who nearly died at the end of 2024 from a reproductive issue, then had seemed to pull through without really recovering, passed on the 31 may . She was not doing well the day before, and in the morning coming down from the roost she lied down in the coop, where it was still nice and cool, and stayed there until she died toward midday. I did not really like Alba, and she was terrified of me, so I left her mostly on her own. Some of the chickens came in to say goodbye. It seemed to me she was resigned and passed peacefully, and it was the first time I didn't feel awfully sad when a chicken died.
Last picture of her lying down in front on the 10th may, with Nieva and Chipie.
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I was expecting three of the nine remaining hens to not make it through summer. But the weather stayed unexpectedly cool, which made a huge difference for the chickens, and they all survived.
On the 18 October, we heard some unusual chicken alarm sounds at roost time and found Kara dead unexpectedly on the coop's doorway, she had suddenly passed going inside to roost. Kara had been abnormally tired and not laying after two months of strange eggs since october 2023, just five months after her arrival here. Two visits at the vet did not allow to find what the issue was. While there was no sign that she was going to die that specific day, we always knew there was something wrong and she would not live long. The only symptom was watery diarrhea for a few days but she was still behaving as usual. I felt sad that she was suddenly gone, but also relieved precisely because it was so sudden she did not suffer for long, and also because she managed to have many more months of a rather good life after she began being unwell when I thought she wouldn't. I liked Kara, her health issues changed her from being a bully to a shy hen, but she also became skittish with us when she hadn't been before.
These two chickens, you may remember, were among the four we bought from a bad breeder as point of lay pullets in may 2023.
Last picture of Kara alive, she's at the back with lily and Annette in front. View attachment 4249572

Now news from the rest of the flock from oldest to youngest.

• Chipie :

our senior tiny lady, is doing good. I wasn't sure how she would fare after having seizures for weeks this winter and being at least 8, but she thrived this spring. She was stubbornly broody for seven weeks and came out of it in great shape, with Gaston being completely smitten. She has been doing a slow moult since August and now sleeps permanently in a nest to avoid roosting chaos, but she is overall in good shape and still full of sass and trying to bully any hens that does not dominate her.
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• Théo :

Little Théo had a wonderful spring and summer, with Merle and Mélisse, but for two months now he has been having a very rough time. Both hens are moulting and will not come out of the chicken yard for days, so he is left alone. He is also badly moulting, has a wheeze to his breathing and his comb turning purple whenever he gets stressed, which is very often. Two nights ago for the first time ever he attacked Gaston while they were roosting, flying from his roost to his. He is now a little over four and I'm not sure if he's just having a hard time now or if he's getting weaker.

He still has nap attacks whenever the sun shines, though !
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• Gaston, Merle and Léa (hatch date 5 june 2022, hatch sister Piou-piou ±) :

All three are molting now and quite miserable though their feather loss is very gradual.
Gaston sometimes looks hunched up and eyes closed as if tired or in pain, but most of the time he is doing good. He takes care of the hens and is still dreaming to get rid of Théo. As was the case last year during his molt, he's a pain at roost time, pecking the hens that want to roost next to him away and fidgeting for 20 mn whereas he usually falls asleep instantly. None of the hens are laying right now, so there is almost no mating going on and I suppose that makes him also grouchy. He goes crazy for walnuts, unfortunately we have a squirrel this year who's been very good at stealing them both on the trees and in storage !
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Merle, the tiny devil, is utterly miserable while molting. She has always been a very hormonal chicken and for a month now she has been sulking and not wanting to see Théo. She spends most of the day under the laurel tree. She is almost top hen now, only dominated by Chipie. She tried to turn on Chipie once, which was a huge surprise, but Chipie would not concede and in the end Merle just accepted that she was still dominated by her tiny hatch mum. I have no worries for her health though, it's her usual behaviour when moulting. We are still thinking that maybe we will let her hatch chicks this spring, however her last attempts at broodiness were far less commited than the previous years.

This was ten days ago, the last time I saw her come outside the chicken yard.
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Léa is not as miserable overall though she is also quite often hiding. It is the first year Gaston is sometimes rejecting her at roost time while she is moulting, and that seems to be hard for her. Like Merle, she is also in good health, and has been throughout spring and summer regularly turning broody for two to three weeks and back to normal for the same time. Now that Kara has died, she is only dominated by Merle and Chipie, so her social posture among the hens has become quite high.
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• Lilly and Nieva, the remaining hens of the four bought in may 2023.

At the beginning of May, Lilly had a mysterious accident. I locked the chickens in their run in the morning while going for a run, and it turned out I forgot Lilly. When I came back she was completely hidden lying under the laurel tree, unable to move and shocked. For a day or two we thought she would die, but she did not. We believed she had broken a leg or a foot but the vet found nothing on imagery. She more or less recovered her health, but not the use of her foot. So she remained a limping chicken. She also has a swollen belly, but not ascites, which is why I did not expect her to survive summer. But she did, she has finished a moult and finally grown back beautiful feathers, and is now making the most of her chicken life digging around, flapping her wings to compensate for her damaged foot. She likely will not get old either but she is the kind that clings to life.
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Nieva is the other leghorn ; she has just finished a much needed moult which made her completely stop laying, whereas she had been consistently laying almost every day for two years. She was doing great before, but is now very subdued from her usual self and spends a lot of time in the nest trying but not laying. I'm not sure what to think, I am waiting to see if she starts laying again normally or if she has a reproductive issue like Alba did.
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• Annette, Lulu, Mélisse (hatch date 18 may 2023, sisters of Laure ±, Pied-beau and Petit Blanc).

Beautiful Annette has been having health issues since early-ish spring, likely reproductive. She stopped laying last winter after passing some very strange eggs, she is bloated, and she went from being a hyperactive chicken constantly flying out of the chicken yard to a cautious, more passive hen. That said, she is almost finished with moulting now and has been doing better for the last three weeks. She has also taken to sleeping in a nest, as was the case last year when she was moulting. I'm letting her be. She is the third hen I expected not to survive summer, but while I don't expect her to have a long life, she may have many more months than I thought before her.
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We were very relieved that Lulu started moulting because her feathers were totally shattered and because she's quite tiny and light I was afraid Gaston would end up hurting her. She had an amazing spring and summer, being constantly hyperactive in spite of looking like hell and laying abnormal eggs every other day. Since she has been moulting she is a lot calmer and she lays a soft shell egg once a week.
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Mélisse, the last hen in the pecking order, was also the most familiar with us, she always spent lunch with us being very food orientated. Since she has been moulting, to she lives in terror of the other chickens and hides almost all of the day. I make sure she gets a separate breakfast so she can have something to eat. I'm pretty sure she will be doing good once she is over moulting and she feels safe enough to come out of the chicken yard again, so she won't be so bullied by Lulu and Léa.
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Pied-Beau and petit Blanc, the roosters from the same hatch, are still doing good at their new homes. Still, out of four of these hens that hatched from my neighbours layer's eggs crossed with his pure bred rooster, three have had reproductive issues similar to hybrids. With the exception of Lulu who went broody once in the summer 2024, none of them has shown any inclination to sit. Either they had too much hybrid genes or there is something in our environment that makes hens get sick.

And that's it for the flock, some mixed news, but overall the last months since Laure passed have been easier than I feared. While I still feel hurt thinking about the succession of Laure and Piou-piou's death, I've built some amount of emotional distance. The summer was unexpectedly cool while most of France suffered from a heat wave, and fall has been wonderful up to now, with some beautiful days and also days of rain and the first snow on the mountains.
When I close the coop at night, ten chickens make it feel very empty, especially as three hens roost in nests, but I also realise ten is more or less the right number for our settings. So we will probably stick to our initial plan : let one hen hatch four or five chicks this spring, including some bantam eggs, and keep no more than three pullets. We hope to manage to get a second small pullet to befriend Théo. We are not completely decided yet and still wonder if we are meant to keep chickens at all.

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• And in other news ..

Aside from the chickens, I've been doing good.
Getting back to running trail races has been quite a journey with some highs and lows, but it felt like reconnecting to a very important part of me. The race I planned with my friend did not go well at all, but it was still a very good day. Then my friend learnt his cancer had relapsed and I experienced a switch in my mindset realising I had to make the most of it. I really enjoyed the three races I ran after that, so much that I signed in for a mountain 100 km next summer. And my friend is now healed after three difficult months of chemo.
This does mean I'm spending a lot more time training and less with the chickens ; I'm trying to reach the right balance so that my partner still has time for him.
We're thinking of downsizing our garden, as we weren't completely happy with the outcome this year. We had a zillion bugs because last winter wasn't cold enough and the summer kept switching from warm to cool rainy days, so most of our tomato plants were sick, and so were the greens and the beans to a lesser degree. Three of the polytunnel hoops broke at the end of summer during a wind storm and we will not get another. And it's getting harder to keep out the boars and stags, there are so many of them.
We did harvest 1/2 a ton of potatoes so we won't be starving for ww3...
On the positive side, the hives have thrived and swarmed, so we had more honey than expected and went from two hives to six.
And we have finally begun renovations inside. My partner is doing it bit by bit, working for two or three days once a month and then cleaning up everything, which takes much longer but allows us to continue living normally and do other things.

I'm done for the news. If you made it up to there, thank you for reading . Good thoughts for you and the chickens in your life, and some random running pics to enjoy.
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It was great to read your update. I read your posts on Shadrach's thread and always enjoyed your gorgeous pictures so much.
Glad to hear you're achieving a great balance. We all need that.