There’s no excuse for not having posted for some time (literally years!) … life just gets in the way sometimes. No point trying to catch up with all the news of the flock, so let’s just start again.
June 2021 … the four girls we acquired in 2018 are the only remaining hens we have … Emily and Evangeline (Mille Fleur Bantams) and Esther and Elsie (Light Sussex Bantams). It’s been fun trying to source supplies through the pandemic, but we’ve kept going. Our supply of eggs is a little erratic, but I’ve rarely had to supplement them by buying eggs … we just go without!
In December 2020, alongside the Coronavirus pandemic, there was also an Avian Flu epidemic, and tight restrictions – much tighter than we’ve know before as we were required to keep the girls under cover. We tried. We bought a poly tunnel, but it hadn’t been up a week when it was destroyed by an overnight storm. We were unable to find a replacement cover, so OH cobbled together netting from our original run which we discovered behind the garden shed (it’s not that our garden is so big we just lose things, but that we’re untidy gardeners in the first place). It was sufficient to separate them from the wild garden birds that we feed (didn’t seem fair to stop), and just about big enough for our four girls.
Throughout that time, as an additional bio-security measure, only OH went into the enclosure … he is now the main carer for our hens – I can’t find my way round the jumble of supplies he keeps in the garage, in any case.
Restrictions ended sometime in April 2021, and once the girls had the freedom of the electric fence, it seemed quite a large space for just the four of them. so meet …
We have two Wyandotte Bantams … but they look alike and we’ve no idea how to tell them apart – yet.
We’ve had them just over a week, and are taking things slowly .. introducing them to the brood a little at a time. They are currently in a fenced off section within the electric fence. Elsie and Esther are both broody just now, so I took the opportunity to put the fence aside to see what would happen. I scattered some corn across both sections of the run, which seemed to startle the Dots (as they are known – they are quite nervous and shy) … though Flo knew just what to do. Emily simply invaded the newbies’ patch and threw her weight around, while Evangeline concentrated on hoovering up as much corn as she could 🙂 Flo tried to carry on as normal, and was content to submit to Emily as required. The Dots simply kept out of everyone’s way.
It’s a start, but there is a long way to go with the introductions before we fully integrate them.
No eggs yet. Flo looks ready, but I’m fairly certain the Dots are younger … perhaps 12 weeks (they are considered to be point-of-lay – POL – at 16 weeks). We can wait.
The Hen Garden 