The Girls- 2 weeks on

We've been hen owners for 2 weeks today! Not long you might think, but I feel like I've leant so much about them in this short space of time.
They all have very different personalities and have become so tame in such a short space of time, even knocking on the kitchen door last night expecting to be let in, cheeky lot!!

Betty (L) & Delilah (R)

We don't seem to have a definite 'Head Girl' yet. Betty and Tina seem to share the role. Betty was the one who came out of the crate shouting! The other three were pretty quiet but she was, and still is, the most vocal. She sometimes pecks at the others when they're trying to feed and seems to prefer to scrape the pellets out of the feeder and then eat them off of the floor.
Delilah gave us real cause for concern last weekend. Mr P mentioned that one of the hens was sleeping by the tree and we didn't think anything of it. Later R came in and said that one of the hens wouldn't move, again I thought nothing of it and told him to leave the hens be. It was only later when the children came in saying she still hadn't moved I thought I'd better go and check. Poor Delilah, she was curled up and her tail was down, almost tucked underneath her, the poor thing really looked sorry for herself. I went to pick her up and she didn't move an inch, which for Delilah is unheard of as she's the timid one of the bunch. We decided to bring her into the house to keep a watch on her and housed her in Bruno's travel crate overnight. She wouldn't eat or drink and we really thought that we'd be down to three hens by the morning. I found a poultry forum, signed up and got some advice. The comments gave a variety of possible causes and ideas of things we could do. Thankfully Delilah was still with us the next morning and I thought it best to return her to the flock so that they wouldn't treat her like a new hen. We were spending the day in the garden so we kept a close eye on her and syringe fed her tiny amounts of water through the day. Betty stayed close to her throughout the day and was nestling into her in the run and nudging her as if to say "you'll be ok". It was very endearing.  By teatime she had started to scratch around in the ground with the others, but her tail was still down. I'm delighted to say she now seems to have a made a full recovery and through being handled has become a much more confident hen, in fact she was the first one to try and come into the kitchen after knocking on the door!

Tina the terror!

Tina, is our other candidate for head girl, and I think she's the one laying, however she is, as it says above, a terror! She is incredibly curious, so much so that M & I had to go and retrieve her from the gardens at the back of ours. Luckily the owner found it highly amusing having the pair of us trying to catch a chicken in his back garden! When I clean out the hen house she watches my every move and even tried to push me out of the way at the weekend and the minute I'm finished she goes straight in a rearranges it all! Oh and then there's the corn that they have for their afternoon treat. It's a handful for Tina and a handful for the other three to share, as long as Tina doesn't finish hers first!

Cheeky Chickarito

Yes, it was Chi-charito, like the football player but that didn't last long at all! Chickarito is fearless she chases Bruno and even attempted to take a stick off of him in the garden at the weekend, she was a close second behind Delilah on trying to get into the kitchen and can often be seen legging up the garden, wings flapping causing the others to do the same. I'm sure she just does it for fun!

And the eggs, yes we've had a few. I think Delilah's troubles might have been down to a soft shelled egg as we've found about six in the hen house. We've also had three small but perfectly formed eggs and two whoppers, both with double yolks.

Little and Large

All in all the last two weeks have been great. I'm really attached to the hens and could watch them all day long, they really are very funny characters and a constant source of entertainment. I was asking a very dear friend for lots of advice about keeping hens, as she's had hers for some years now. I think the best bit of advice she gave me was to dive in, and I'm so pleased we did.