Possibly the smallest hen's egg ever...

This evening middle son collected the tiniest hen's egg I have ever seen!

It was soooo cute! I've photographed it in between a 2p piece & a normal sized hen's egg so you can get an idea of just how little it was. I'm guessing it's one of our pullet's first attempts.

The pullets have all been enjoying free-ranging with the bigger hens since we released them into the flock. They were excepted into the ranks without any bother, much to my relief. They have remained extremely friendly, in fact they can be down right kamikaze at times as they run right under your feet when you're carrying heavy feed or water buckets! It was brought to our attention recently that they may not all be pullets as we'd assumed.... they weren't sexed so some may be cockerels. Which, since the sad demise of our bantam rooster, is not necessarily a problem, but I'm watching them closely trying to fathom out which are definitely hens & which may not be. Some of them do seem to be darker coloured, with a more upright gait & with longer, kind of straggly tail feathers. I have no idea how you are supposed to tell for sure, until they find a voice that is - then we'd know! They are very approximately 17 weeks or so old so maybe it should be more obvious by now if any were cockerels? I'm paying close attention as I want to make sure that if it proves necessary we have the correct ratio of hens to cockerels to preempt any fighting. I'm not 100% sure what that ratio should be, but from advice that's been given to me about 5 hens per cockerel seems to be the suggested number. If anyone could help me out with this I'd be ever so grateful.

We now have 20 chickens in total, as shortly after Rodney passed away our oldest hen Belter also died. At first I was really anxious in case something more sinister was going on here. But both had shown no sign of illness e.g. pale comb, nasal discharge, etc. & had just simply slowed down & then gone to sleep. I always use Poultry Shield once a week in 'Chateau Des Oeufs' so I was as sure as I could be that red mite was not to blame here. The rest of the flock all look vigorous thankfully, so I'm now assuming it was coincidence that they both come to the end so close together. Or perhaps she pined? Is that too fanciful a thought?

Anyway, on a more pleasurable note, I started off some Elderflower Champagne using Holly the Land Girl's recipe from Newhouse Farm.

The elder flowers infuse in a mixture of sugar, vinegar, lemon & water

I'll let you know how it turns out!

Here come the girls!

As the cage they were in, inside the chicken house, was getting a little small for them it was time to let our pullets out with the rest of the hens. It was a bit nerve racking as we weren't sure how it was going to go, but first one little head popped out...

One of the 'Dolly Birds' peers out into the big wide world

Then a few emerged.....

Here come the girls!

Then after a little patient waiting they were all out into the evening sunlight, exploring this big new world of grass & wide open space replacing wood shavings & cage bars. They were quite skittish to start with & if one was spooked they would all scatter in all directions. But as they calmed down they proved to be friendly little things, gathering around me as I sat on the grass & letting me pat their backs like little puppy dogs! They are about 14 to 15 weeks old now we think. All eight of them are cross breeds and as they are hard to tell apart they are collectively known as the 'Dolly Birds'. Only one of them stands out as her rear is a lot paler than the rest, so she has been named 'Dolly Parton'.

'Dolly Parton'

The other hens were distracted with bread crumbs by my middle son whilst the little ones were released, but so far the older birds have shown little interest in them. The only problem we had was that when we tried to put the ducks away for the night the 'Dolly Birds' had all gathered by the pop hole blocking their way, so we literally had to shove them up to get the ducks in. Today the young 'uns have spent half their time inside the chicken house & half out with the rest of the birds & fingers crossed the only squabbling has been between themselves.

Here are the rest of the hens that they share the house with:

'Hattie' the Rhode Rock, lowest in the pecking order before the pullets

'Bella' the Bluebelle hen

'Chicken Licken' the Black Rock

'Mother Hen' the Lohmann Brown

'Dottie' the Speckledy hen

'Fanny' the Welsummer hen - the prettiest

'Annie' the Amber Star

'Belter' (front of picture - crossbreed), currently top of the pecking order

'Clara' the Light Sussex hen

'Chicken Tikka' (cruelly named by hubby!) the Cuckoo Maran

'Ginger' the Goldline hen

'Twinkle' the Speckled Star

'Ellie' the Light Sussex Star

And looking after all these girls is Rodney, our bantam cockerel, who has seen the number of hens increase rapidly since we bought a larger hen house recently (nick-named 'Chateau Des Oeufs'). He is about 6 or 7 years old now & starting to look weary so we are letting him see his time out before buying a new cockerel as we don't think he could face up to the competition.

Chateau Des Oeufs (note the roofing felt has been removed from one corner of the nesting boxes by very naughty goats!!)

I do love my chickens - there's something really homely about them. We get an average 10 eggs a day from them, which will increase as the pullets reach point of lay, but to me that is just an added bonus of keeping them. Being a bit of a mad old bird myself, I would have hens as pets even if they didn't lay!