Last pictures of Maud

These photos were taken on 21st April, so I've dated this post to that date. I love the one of Maud listening to my Dad's old radio. Sadly, Maud passed away just days after this photo was taken. She had reached the grand old age of 6yrs and 9 months. My oldest chicken to date. She always was a character. Lovely hen.

Beautiful Hens

I'm getting a regular 3 eggs per day from my bantams. Lyra is broody so this is from Vera, Lulu and Velvet. Velvet (black bantam silkie) and Vera (gold laced bantam wyandotte) have always been the most stand-offish of the hens. I have only once managed to have Velvet eating out of my hand - she generally waits for the slippage from the other greedy girls to fall to the floor and hoovers that up. This means that it is particularly difficult to get a good photo of Velvet and Vera. However on a lovely sunny Sunday in the garden, I spotted the sun slanting through the late afternoon sky into their pen so I went in with then and waited patiently for them to look photogenic. I think I succeeded. Here are the results:

Maud, imperious as ever

A rare photo of Velvet

Vera, my last bantam wyandotte - gold-laced and handsome

Lulu looking fluffy

Maud and Nutmeg

I have just downloaded a blogger app to my iPad mini, so I hope to start posting more regularly to all my blogs. Once you have several, like when you have several twitter accounts, it becomes essential to have some way of switching quickly between them or you done use them. My wordpress app means that I blog readily to my work related wordpress blog Research Essentials. Hopefully this blogger app will redress the balance between that and my many blogger blogs.

Maud is not yet two years old. She was laying beautiful blue eggs up until March this year when she just stopped. Christmas she suddenly began laying again and already has laid 3 eggs! Wierd.

Nutmeat meanwhile must be at least 5 years old. She moulted recently, and I noticed her comb was looking very pale, as was Agatha, another recent moulter. I therefore started lacing their feed with poultry spice. It has been about a week and I have noticed a difference. Nutmeg is very much more red, tho still with some pale bits. I shall carry on.

Meanwhile, I'm a bit worried about Nutmeg. Although she is still behaving normally, her ears/cheeks seem swollen or sticking out. One side is worse than the other. I need to check my old photos of her to see if this is usual for her as I just don't remember.