Moulting Hens & Mucky Drakes

Two of my lovely ex-barn girls have gone into moult leaving the garden and hen house covered in feathers and their bums a rather bare affair. Thankfully I don’t seem to be having any pecking problems which can often happen when one goes through a moult and bits of skin show through. I do however always have some purple equine spray at hand to cover the bare areas and to deter any pecking by the other girls. The spray can be bought at most “horsey” shops and online and is also an antiseptic so if any pecking does occur it helps to stop any infections in the pecked area.

My two usually handsome drakes Bumble & Bee are looking far from their best at the moment. The mud in the garden has become their favourite place to play and dib all day meaning the lovely white feathers are now a very mucky brown. I’ve tried refreshing their ponds a couple of times a day and spraying them down with the hosepipe yet by bedtime they are again mucky little terrors! At least the ducks are enjoying the wet weather whereas the chook girls seem to spend most of the day looking gloomily out of the dog house come rain shelter in the garden waiting for meal worm and bed time.

It will soon be time to plan the veg beds in the garden and that means the ducks start to be confined to their run and the netting comes out to protect the seedlings from the chooks. The run for the ducks has over 3sqm space per duck, two ponds and a big tree that provides plenty of sun shelter for when the warmer weather returns. The chooks really don’t like confinement and since they are slightly spoiled oaps this spring and summer they are being allowed to stay in the garden. With some tough bird netting and plenty of treats I’m hoping to manage to keep some of the home grown veg for myself, although they do seem to manage to steal the crops no matter how well I think I have chook-proofed the beds!