Chickens !

This week we've collected out first hens, given to us by a friend who is moving away from the area and can't take them with her. They are 9 year old show-variety bantams and have lived in the same chicken-house and run for the last 7 years, so moving them at all was going to be a big shock to them. To make matters worse they're not used to being handled and our first job was to catch them and put them all together in a box for the ride home to our home, all in a temperature of about 29°C (84°F) so they were all a bit stressed. However we got them home safely and moved them into their new hen-house, that I converted from an old dog-kennel that the previous owners of our house had used.  

Here they are just after they arrived. Clockwise from the front, they are Geraldine, a Poland; Yvette, a Buff Pekin; Lily, a White Pekin; Wendy, a Buff-Laced Wyandotte, and Beryl, a Belgian. We were advised to leave them in their new house over the first night, to let them settle and get used to their 'home' surroundings, hence the grain and water in the house with them. The perches are so low because these hens are so small and old. We let them out into their new run on Monday morning and they've been exploring and having a good scratch about. On Monday evening they had to be ushered back into the house for the night, but yesterday and today they went in by themselves just before twilight.

Tonight when I went out to close up the hen house I found that one of them had laid an egg during the day!  I know that's what hens are supposed to do, but these hens are the human equivalent of 90 years old.   In this picture the egg on the left is a standard medium free-range egg from the local supermarket, and the one on the right is our surprise egg from one of our chickens. I don't think it's going to make much of a breakfast on its own though. As it's a white egg it's most likely from Geraldine, possibly from Beryl, though we don't know exactly what sort of Belgian she is and many bantams eggs are white or near-white. Pekins' are cream/white so probably not them. And it's definitely not from Wendy, as Wyandotte's eggs should be brown.