Weird things that come out of my chickens

After a few days of not eating and generally moping about, we started to treat one of our ex-bats, Heidi, for suspected sour crop as whatever was in her crop was clearly starting to ferment.

Heidi, like all of our chickens, hates being syringed, but this is way easier than making a chicken vomit.

Having syringe flushed her crop daily with warm water and re-filled her with pro-biotic yogurt, garlic, ginger and pureed feed, for five days, she still wasn't passing.

In desperation we filled her crop with vegetable oil and checked on her when we got home.

I've never been so overjoyed to see my bathroom decimated with lakes of stinky pooh !

Half an hour of cleaning later, I found this. A 5 cm long lump of compacted fermenting grass, soaked in brown bile which her body had started to encapsulate.

Looking forward to seeing my little girl scoffing again this evening when I get home !

Call this an egg !

It's the annual moult, no eggs for three weeks and the hen house looks like there has been a pillow fight every morning.

In a pathetic attempt at egg laying, one of my welsummers popped out a tiny egg.

I checked, it's the world's second smallest egg, and not worth a call to either Guinness or attempting an omlette.

Still, it's the thought that counts.....!

Potty Perch !!!

What goes in must come out.

Although if you have chickens you already know that what comes out is disproportionately greater than what went in in the first place, so it'll come as no surprise that having a chicken sleeping nightly in your bathroom can mean an unpleasant start to your morning.

And this is where the Potty Perch comes in ! Ingenious, yet effective.

Now if I could only teach her to flush...

(and in case you're wondering, this is not set up, she really does sleep in my bathroom and she really does use my loo. Fortunately the whole thing lifts off when not in use so I can have my morning ablutions. I just wish I'd thought of this months ago)

Call this an Adventure Playground ? Where the heck are the swings ?!

The thing about chickens is that they like to climbs on things.

Give them a wall and they'll be lined up on top of it, a branch to sit on and they'll be squabbling over who gets the highest point.

Sit down, and they'll be on your knee - although that's partly because knees generally mean tables and tables generally mean there's tea and toast within a beak's reach, and that generally means I get mugged for my breakfast unless I am quicker than they are, which is rare.

Hurry up and take the photo, my arms are killing me

OK, so this is Tracy, and she's scared of chickens. She'd like to like chickens, but can't cope with the thought of the flapping, not to mention the claws, the beaks and the general screeching.

So to start her off with some chicken therapy, I chose the largest one, the one that looks like a beach ball that's been rolled in feathers, the one that weighs the same as a toddler. In other words Tilly.

Now Tilly is deceptive. Sure she's massive and with one beat of her wings could knock you out and disembowel you at the same time (I thought it unwise to mention this to Tracy) but, despite her size, she's as graceful as a ballerina. Plus I'd just fed her and she was drunk on a surfeit of corn and as a placid as a kitten.

So if you'd like to like chickens, give it a go and cuddle the biggest one you can find.

The place where chickens soar

It is with the deepest regret that today my beautiful Daisy Doo passed away.

To be fair she is three and a half which is old for an ex-bat, and she has had the loveliest time for the two years she's been with me, but is doesn't stop my heart from breaking each time everyone of them leaves.

So she's now lying in state in my bathroom (where else) for my husband to get home so we can bury her.

She had been looking peaky for the past three weeks, and tube feeding her had kept her going long enough to enjoy a few more weeks of sunshine, albeit, she's not been at her liveliest and so I was tearful this morning when my husband announced she had passed away in the night, but not all together surprised.

What did surprise the heck out of me was when fussing over a dead Daisy, she opened a bleary eye at me and shook her head, prompting me to make a mental note to tell my husband that if he ever finds me dead to get a second opinion before burying me.

Alas however, after a couple of hours laid on the grass, protected from the other chickens, who sat next to her fence in the sunshine, she opened one of her eyes for the final time, slowly closed it again and passed on to the place where chickens soar.

Life's not so nice when you have lice

Another day, another chicken in my bath tub.

The reason I know my chickens have been invaded with lice is because I picked one of my girls up, as I often do, and felt that tell tale tickle of lice running up my arm.

Now the lice don't bite, they don't live on humans, but they do like feathers and dead skin to nibble on and the tickle of just one louse on my arm must be nothing compared to the infestation I found on Pickle.

Now lice aren't that hard to spot, it's just that they don't live on a part of the chicken that you'd normally choose to spend your time on, but get up close and personal with the business end of a chicken and you'll see dozens of them running for cover.

So it's into the bathtub with some mite powder for all twenty this evening. Wow, my Friday night's rock.