November in the Chicken Coop

This month our hens have been....

... not laying. That's right, not one single egg all month. It started with the moulting which should cause them to have a short break (making feathers and eggs is hard work on a hen) but we're coming to the conclusion that the shorter days and the cold weather might be influencing things as well. They seem otherwise healthy and we didn't get any eggs this time last year either.

Some breeds of chicken will lay pretty much all year round, but unfortunately ours don't fall into that category and are quite likely to take a break over the winter months. Last week we bought supermarket eggs for the first time in ten months, it was a sad day.

Red Lions lining up on our egg rack once more...

... moulting. Frogs turn now to shed her feathers. She's decided to go for the "all-in-one" method of moulting and consequently looked freshly plucked for a couple of weeks. She timed this really badly as the cold weather really kicked in and she spent a lot of time hiding in the coop shivering. We felt very sorry for her, but not sorry enough to do this. They've all now finished and are ready for winter with very soft, thick, coats of feathers.

... sleeping. The clocks have gone back and that means we see a lot less of our flock. By the time we get home from work its pitch black, they've already tucked themselves up for the night and happily snooze through until the rather late sunrise the following day (today it was 7.49am). On a plus note they're not waking us up at 5.30am!

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September in the Chicken Coop

This month in the chicken coop the hens have been....

...enjoying windfall apples by the beak-full. They love anything sweet and have been delighted this month to find such large quantities of treats just landing at their feet. I'm not sure how many apples they got through, but it certainly inspired us to go and pick all the ripe fruit every few days!

...moulting. I know I said Fizzy was last month, but she's made a pretty poor show of it compared to Pepper who has been looking decidedly scruffy for the last few weeks.

Refusing to pose for photos!

...dodging the neighbourhood pets. We were eating breakfast in the conservatory last week and there was a sudden kerfuffle outside. Often this is just a case of someone reasserting the pecking order, but to our horror we saw our hens scattering in all directions as a cat made an attempt to grab one. The hens were far too quick, and Joe soon saw off the cat, but this is the first time we've seen a cat brave enough to do this - normally they steer well clear of them as our larger hens can be quite assertive.

Until now our garden has seemed remarkably predator free, leaving us with a rather blasé approach to our hens security, but time has come to reassess. They won't like it, but I think we'll be going back to only giving them freedom of the garden while we're at home to keep an eye on things. We'll just have to put up with their indignant clucks!

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August in the Chicken Coop

To celebrate the arrival of the hens on The Urban Cottage - and because we've now been chicken keepers for one whole year - we're declaring this to be Chicken and Egg week. Today we're also starting off a new series of chicken related posts called "This month in the chicken coop".

This month our hens have been:

Standing on top of coop proclaiming it's morning. At 5am. Not impressed. Well, Joe's not impressed anyway - Jenny is much better at sleeping through these things than Joe is. There are lots of mutterings of sending them to the big farm in the hills on these mornings; though this isn't as much of a threat as it seems as the farm in the hills is a real place just quarter of hours drive from us where they would be very happy hens!

Frog in her customary "I'm the King of the Castle" pose!

Breaking into the vegetable patch. It seems no hole is too small for Frog who is rather nimble. Reinforcements are now in place on both the gate and the fence.

String stopping the sticks from moving side to side.

Extra sticks running horizontally to fill in the gaps

Starting to moult. Fizzy has started her annual moult - a little early in the year I'll admit, but Fizzy has never been one to do things on schedule.

She's not in a particularly bare phase at the moment,
but you can see all the small new feathers growing on her neck.

And that's about it for August. 

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