Marmalade, our lone Silkie girl, laid her very first egg at about 25 weeks of age. A perfectly formed tiny 30 g pearly-cream coloured egg. She had been squatting over the last week but honestly though I wasn't sure at first if she was even squatting given her fluffiness and the fact that her breed is already low to the ground! I might have underestimated Marmalade's intelligence as she laid her egg in the Little Coop's nest box without any 'training'- I didn't show her the nest box or even place the plastic egg as I usually do.
After staring at the slightly angled central yellow post from my kitchen window, I had a moment of higher brain function! I realised that I really did not need a central post to hold up the chicken wire. Chicken wire really isn't very heavy. So I cut away the cable ties and re-homed the site post. By repositioning the post, I actually made the end post and stake more secure and now it no longer looks like a leaning tower. And now I have an unobstructed view of the chickens and coop.
Our gorgeous black silkie Midnight has died. She had been losing weight over the last few weeks but had no other symptoms. She had been eating really well and only more recently seemed to have gone off her food. I had separated her from the flock and kept her nice and warm near the heater in her own cage with feed and water. Had been hand feeding her as much as possible but realized in the last 2 weeks that it was not making any difference. I had given her probiotics, lots of honey and scrambled eggs. Even wormed her as well. But she just kept losing weight. She died overnight and we said our good byes to her today. It is always sad time when we lose a chicken and this is the second Silkie we have lost for mysterious reasons. :-( Yay! At about 20 weeks of age, Biscuit is the first of our two Pekins to lay her egg. I found it in the dirt patch under their coop! I knew she had been doing the SQUAT but had been too sick (or looking after sick kids) to train her to use the nest box in the Cottage coop (she sleeps in the Little Coop). Two days after finding the egg in the dirt I found Biscuit squawking and appearing to be searching for something/somewhere so I picked her up and put in into the nest box. She stayed put and layed in there so hopefully she will start catching on.
Her eggs (from the three I have collected thus far) have been about 33 g in size, a light cream tinged with brown coloured egg. I think not a bad size for a tiny chicken. This also means that I can move my Pekins into the Cottage Coop as they can all eat Layer feed. Tilly, the other pekin is also the same age so its okay to move her to the Layer feed as well. Well Nina and Ella have decided that they are bored of their much smaller patch of grass since the fence went up. They have now started to dig out the soil in my raised veg beds and potted plants. This afternoon I found my poor potted apple tree's roots under attack by Nina. Ella was busy unearthing something in the vege bed. Looks like I created a problem for myself by sectioning them off. I now think I will have to redo the fence line to exclude the beds and pots or somehow build a greenhouse type structure over them to keep the chickens out. Yikes! more work! :)
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AuthorBased in Canberra, Australia, I am a mother of two gorgeous little girls. I would describe myself as a 'retired' molecular and cell biologist, now a full time mum, part-time student, lover of cute cakes, builder of one chicken coop and possibly also a crazy chicken lady in the making. Categories
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April 2016
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