She’s actually very intelligent, quite sporty and reasonable attractive but poor Camilla…she’ll never be Queen!

SHE'S A LITTLE PRINCESS

I’m talking about my gorgeous 5 month old Light Sussex x Maran chicken of course. My poor little chickedee Camilla, has a hard life at the very bottom of the pecking order of my 5 little hens.

THERE'S THREE OF THEM IN THIS MARRIAGE!

She’s not the smallest or even the youngest of my five chooks, but she get’s a really hard time from the two top chickens, Tatiana and Red (pictured above). They peck her away when there’s food there and give her gip in the coop at night when they’re all settling down to sleep.

DON'T YOU WISH YOUR CHICKENS WERE HOT LIKE MINE!

I always make sure Camilla gets plenty of food and I’d give her cuddles too if she wasn’t so nervous. I had to clip her wings last week but as catching her is a nightmare, I had to lay in wait as they all came out of their coop in the morning, and grabbed her majesty, much to her displeasure.

Hencam.co.uk says It can be upsetting for an owner if they think their chickens are fighting or are unhappy, however sometimes what looks like nasty behaviour can actually be mother nature’s way of keeping the peace. If you think about what it actually means, “pecking order” is a chickens way of ensuring the communal harmony of your flock, and helps prevent constant fights to be “top dog”.

Only had my 5 little chickens for a couple of months but do spend a lot of time worrying about them. I’m used to dogs and cats and rabbits etc but the world of poultry husbandry is all new to me! I closed up their coop 5 minutes ago and noticed they were making funny noises, are they coughing or sneezing perhaps? Shone the torch in and can see two of them (the youngest) have what looks like snotty or wet noses. So straight to google to check out chicken ailments or chicken care and diseases.

The top result for ‘chicken illnesses’ was www.urbanchickens.org who gave the following advice, saying that….

Prevention is key to keeping your flock healthy.

• Keep water dishes clean and food dry and contained.
• Manage you coop in such a way to minimize health risks (sanitation and number of chickens).
• Although chickens love your kitchen scraps, beware of what you give them. Do not feed moldy or rotten foods.
• Spend time with your flock and observe their behaviors, poop, and physical characteristics. If there is a problem, catching it early is key! If you find a sick bird, be sure to isolate it from the flock.
• Some possible symptoms to look for indicating injury/illness/disease include: Coughing, wheezing, labored breathing, warts/scabs, swollen joints, loss of feathers, reduced egg production, thin egg shells, fever, abscesses or open wounds, paralysis, twisting of neck/head, discharge from nose/mouth, diarrhea/blood in stool, not eating/drinking, weight loss, retarded growth, lack of coordination, enlarged abdomen.

There was a link on there to the University of Florida’s list of chicken diseases – but there were so very many, I got a bit bamboozled so off to another site to find something more in laymans terms.

I was reassured on the Omlet site to read that “Chickens can have minor ailments, like colds and runny noses but these are easily treated with a bit of good old-fashioned TLC.”

Possible illnesses are:

Infectious Bronchitis: Symptoms: Drop in egg production and thin, rough and wrinkley egg shells. Sneezing and gaspy birds with a discharge from the nose. Your chickens will be very unlikely to catch this airborne disease if they were vaccinated before you got them, but it is still possible. The illness should only last for a couple of weeks. Egg production will improve again but will probably never be as good as before, with more occasional dodgy eggs.

Aspergillosis: Symptoms: Thirsty, wheezy, lethargic. Avoid this by making sure you clean the dropping tray regularly. Young birds are most vulnerable, but adult birds can be infected. It is caught by breathing in spores from mouldy matter. Unfortunately there is no cure! The best thing for the chicken would be to put it out of its misery, or get a vet to do it for you.

Omlet advises

Chickens can catch infections from wild birds and to prevent this you can add a natural antibiotic to their water. It is called Citrocidal and is made from grapefruit seeds. Available from health food shops it is very effective at clearing up any respiratory difficulties such as sneezing, coughing or rasping breathing.Often if the chickens poo is runny and yellow this is a sign of just such an infection and should be treated as described, the symptoms should clear up in a week. You can continue eating the eggs, because Citrocidal is 100% natural.

My chickens are due a clean out tomorrow anyway, so hopefully this will help. Might also go try find some of that Citrocidal and been looking for apple cider vinegar as heard that’s good as well. Hopefully the chickens just have a chicken cold (like I do this week) and will be better soon.

One little speckled ggg sat in my speckled coop….waiting to be turned into delicious grub, yum yum!

New speckled egg on right, normal light brown egg on left

We’ve had our five chickens for about two months now, two of them were at the 18 – 20 weeks point of lay or ready to start laying when we bought them, three of the hens were much younger. We started seeing eggs after about three weeks once they’d settled in and felt comfortable enough to relax and start laying. The two older layers are Rhode Island Red crossed with Columbian Blacktails. They are extremely attractive and very friendly chickens. They lay an egg each pretty much every day, some days only one of them lays. One lays small sized eggs, the other medium! We theorise that the top girl, Queen Hen ‘Red’ as we call her, must lay the largest eggs as she is the boss of the flock!

Red is Top Chick...the Queen of our little flock

Today we found two eggs, and one of the shells was speckled, totally unlike the light brown eggs we’ve been receiving courtesy of our feathered friends for weeks. We are wondering if this could be the first egg from our nervous little Camilla (in the centre of the photo below), who has had quite a growth spurt lately and is suddenly very tall. She must be about 18 weeks now. I’ve read that cuckoo marans can have speckled eggs and Camilla is a cross Cuckoo Maran (with a Light Sussex). We also have a pure Cuckoo Maran but I don’t think she is old enough to lay yet although this blogger on rurality.blogspot.com has an image of a marans egg which looks similar to mine above and her Maran is quite young still.

Cuckoo Maran at rear and 2 Light Sussex v Maran babies

Katie Thear says that “The colour of eggshells is the result of pigments being deposited during egg formation within the oviduct. The type of pigment depends upon the breed and is genetically determined.”

Thear adds that “children are often fascinated to learn that you can rub off the eggshell colour if you get to the egg as it is laid and while it is still damp. Once dried, no amount of rubbing or washing will remove it. Some producers of brown speckled eggs prefer not to use wood shavings as a nest box liner because they smear the markings before they have a chance to set.”

The poultrysite.com forums have a discussion on speckled eggs with one reply saying that the specks might be blood caused by external mites!!! The writer advises another poultry keeper to have a close look between the feathers of the hens and if they are infested, to clean out the coop and give all the hens ivomec (ivermectin) dewormer, as that (given orally) will kill blood sucking external parasites and many internal parasites as well.

The Handy-Dandy Chicken Chart has a useful list of over 60 breeds and lists all the egg shell colours.

Second week of the summer hols is over and the kids seem more tired if anything, I guess they are winding down from a hectic last term at school. We have had a busy week though so they deserve to put their feet up this weekend.

We’ve been in our new home in Devon about two months now so Tash & Aleck had some of their friends over for a housewarming party on Tuesday. Despite the lack of sunshine, they all donned their swimsuits and jumped into the 12 ft pool their granny and granddad treated them to this month. After a bit of shivering and shaking, all the kids had a really good splash about and the sun even poked out of the clouds for a while!

Then on Friday, after two weeks of avidly watching the weather forecasts on the BBC and Met Office, we finally managed to get out to Burrow Farm Gardens (pictured above) to do our photo shoot for the new Tish Tash Toys catalogue. All the models were amazing, and very patient and a big thank you to all the Mums and Dads too for taking the time to come and help us out. I can’t wait to see the photos next week, and choose the ones we will use in the catalogue. Thanks to Russ from Freeline who took the pics and has the unenviable job of editing them all and whipping our catalogue into shape to go off to the printers soon.

It’s been a busy week for orders with our summer sale in full swing, some toys are already going out of stock! I’ve also been having lots of fun with my new little vintage venture. The website Bonne Vintage will be coming soon, but in the meantime I’m selling a few items (like this gorgeous art nouveau jug below) on a store I’ve set up on etsy www.Bonnevintage.etsy.com

Do you like the photo? We invested in a new camera this week for business and family, a Panasonic Lumix something or other, which makes the most satisfying crunchy noise when you click to take a picture. Great for close ups and a much much better zoom than our old camera. Still got to have the right light though but I’m enjoying experimenting to find the best product shots, especially as these vintage items are all so lovely and need showing off to their best advantage, if you know what I mean. Anyway…enough rambling and back to telling you about etsy….

If you’ve not come across etsy before, you are in for such a treat. It’s a fabulous online marketplace made up of hundreds if not thousands of stores. It’s a bit like ebay but it’s not an auction. They only allow handmade items, wholesale and vintage products. Go check it out – these earrings below are to die for and I’ll be adding more gorgeous vintage and antique items to the store as the weeks go by. Bonne Vintage blog coming soon too.

And finally to round the week off very satisfactorily, after three and a half weeks our new chickens have laid their first egg! They’ve settled in nicely and decided to repay me for all those lovely afternoon snacks (cake, corn, pasta!) I’ve been lovingly taking up to their run. It’s quite a small first egg, but good enough for me! Thanks ladies, I’ll be enjoying that egg with my Sunday brunch! Not sure if it was Tatiana or Red who laid it, but you’re both superstars!