Hippy Chicks

The girls are really coming into their personalities now and they are very different.

Mabel - Mabel is the more demure of the three girls. When feeding them some corn yesterday, the gorgeous one had to take her off and feed her separately because she isn't as forthcoming as the other two. I still think she's "special".

Omelette - She's the funny one. She's the one who runs up the garden and will chase the gorgeous one around the garden. She's also the one who doesn't normally get a nesting box at night (not that they are supposed to sleep in their nesting boxes, but try telling chickens that).

Yoko - I'm afraid that she is the bully. She'll push the other two out of the way to get to the food and will peck them to keep them away from the food. Yesterday we had to take her away from the food to let Mabel and Omelette have some!

The gorgeous one picked her up and brought her over to where we were sat and held her on his lap for a bit. She looked at him very strangely but didn't seem too fussed to be on his lap. I did give her some corn and it was very funny because I was sat and she was literally jumping up to take the corn from my hands! Chickens jumping is a very amusing thing to see.

I've got up and let them out of their run this morning and they are all in their run still. The gorgeous one is going to clean them out now, maybe this will help with our lack of eggs - oo he's just got an egg! We bought them some special tonic yesterday that is supposed to stimulate egg production, Cider Apple Vinegar it's made of. Thing is, on the label for the tonic it doesn't tell you how to use it - a bit daft eh? Anyway, I went on tinternet and found several sites and one that explained how to dilute it with their drinking water. Perhaps it's started to do it's job already?

We also looked at buying them some mealworms and have discovered (again on tinternet)that chickens really like them and they are very nutritious for them, next purchase now for them I think. There's a lot of very helpful information on tinternet, including how to grow your own mealworms (I don't think I'll be going quite that far!), keeping chickens seems to be a good hobby for a lot of people. We have also got several books - "Chickens as pets", "you and your chickens", "hens in the garden - poo on the decking".

The girls are also growing back the feathers that they lost when they were battery hens, both Mabel and Yoko have these soft, downy, fluffy white feathers coming through, Yokos are on her neck and Mabel looks like she's changing colour completely as the new feathers on her legs are white!

Aside from all the poo, they really are very rewarding, I could watch them all day and the gorgeous one has never been so happy with a Christmas present as he is with these girls! I hope he doesn't think that means he has a chance for a goat...