Thistlewick Smallholding - Chickens & Sheep (for now)

[Mother of Chaos]

That definitely looks like molting. Those are fresh feathers coming in. Almost all my young pullets molted this year and they hatched in February too.

Maybe my older three (hatched in January) are having a mini-molt. Tons of feathers and down, but I still don’t see any bare patches.

 

[Skyeknight]

2 of my pullets from March have started laying, the exception is the brahma pullet. One pullet born at the end of June has als started laying. I do have artificial light, so that's probably why. But all my older hens are molting right now

 

[thistlewick]

Happy Christmas and Merry New Year to everyone!

Just a small update; everything is super boring here. Trucking along. The hawks seem to have given up, they got all the dumb chickens lol haven't had any losses in weeks and weeks now, that I can tell.

Though my entire flock is hella traumatized and they don't forage anymore, they stay near the coop and run, even though they have free access to outside.

It is also winter, and everything is dormant. But that didn't stop them last year. So I'm rather disappointed in them all. Cracker is a much more subdued and conservative Cockerel and he keeps them near the hen house. It IS keeping them alive so, there is that.

I have massive amounts of chicken ennui, 50~ chickens is too many because of poop. It's POUNDS of poop a day, my poor arms and my ADHD aren't interested in handling that lol

I do realize it's valuable composting fertilizer but I don't give a fig about that, I just dump it in a pile in the pasture in some weeds we let go to seed.

I either downsize to ~20 chickens or, we take out the poop tables and re-do the roosts. I need to clean the hen house as well, but molting is never freaking ending!! It's SO GROSS IN THERE.

The issue is I love all the chickens, I really do - we have 3 absolutely lovely cockerels who are all lovely.

Also look; I bred an olive egger

One of my pullets that is Chuck (EE) over Sophia (FBCM) that we hatched and kept started laying about 5 days ago <3

EEs are freakin cute as heck come on

Kitten doing well

Sheep doing well