It wasn't without dramas. About three days after they started chipping I went down as usual to check my two hens and their chicks and I found my big white splash hen on her last legs, drooping on the ground with her chickens gathered under her head and body. What the!! I figured she must have been bitten by a spider, as she had no other signs of illness - just flaked out, and dead within a short period of time. Poor old girl. I had to gather up her chickens and give them to my other tiny mille fleur hen - she now has charge of a dozen healthy chickens.
They ripple her undercarriage as they jostle to fit under her body, and she spreads her wings wide to accommodate them all. I ended up with five mille fleurs - their 'mother' is the only surviving mille fleur from the fox attack. And I have seven araucana chickens in a mix of colours. After all these disasters I am not taking any chances and have brought them up to the house. I can hear the conversations between hen and chicks from where I sit typing - just outside on our dichrondra lawn on the edge of the verandah.
Oh! she is so beautiful!
ReplyDeleteHave you any marshmallow in your chookpen or pulled it out of the garden and chucked it into the chookpen? It kills chickens, quite fast too. They know to avoid it if it is growing in the pen but sometimes eat it in a pile of garden weeds.
They are gorgeous - I keep mille fleurs just because they are pretty (& they are good mums).
ReplyDeleteThe dead hen only had kikuyu in her pen - so it wasn't marshmallow. I didn't know it could kill chooks.