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Meet Gabrielle (she has a slightly not-quite-right bottom eyelid) one of our three new chickens. We said that we wouldn’t have a favourite, or even name the new additions to our flock, but she immediately pulled at our heart strings. We collected Gabrielle and her two ginger friends yesterday afternoon from Kirsty in Felstead (our older hens Barbara, Gerry and Margot all came from Hens4Homes, too), and although we rejected the three Black Rocks that had been put aside for collection, we’re glad we changed our minds and went for the more prolific egg layers.

Nik remembers there being Rhode Island Reds (or Rhode Rangers) on his grandparents’ farm when he was a small boy, and so it was always destined to be that we would get them at some point. Friendly, pretty, and seemingly good-natured, they seem to be the perfect choice. Giving them names and becoming attached to them wasn’t part of the plan (so we can be more ruthless when they stop laying) but, because we can tell them apart from one another, it was doomed to failure.

That they’re being picked on only adds to the bonding process. Our older three just don’t like the idea that they have a trio of interlopers in their midst, and are, quite rightly, defending their territory with a series of herding, pecking, and squawking. It’s got to happen, but it’s not fun to watch. We popped them in the Eglu Cube last night when our older three were asleep and they’ve had a tough day. That was telling tonight when we went to close them up; one was in the plastic house with her tail sticking out into the cold dark air, one was perched on the wheel underneath and poor old Gabrielle was sat on top of the Cube itself.

It would appear that they don’t like their older coop mates as much as Barbara, Gerry and Margot don’t like them. I don’t know how long the in-fighting will go on for, but a pecking order will have to be established. It might not be pretty and we’ll have to keep an eye on them at closing up time, but we can’t stop it – it is nature’s way after all.

One thing about spending the day at home is that we can keep an occasional eye on the chickens. Our flock of three can be a constant source of amusement, amazement and distraction. They’ve all been going through some changes over the last few months, too. The annual moult started in earnest at the tail-end of the summer and although all our laying ladies have been going through it to some degree, Barbara and Margot have definitely suffered the most.

Both of them have lost handfuls (or wingfuls) of feathers – at times it looked like there’d been a chicken feather pillow fight in the coop – but they both seem to be over the worst of it now. Which is just as well. With plummeting temperatures, now is not the time to go featherless and bald. They need to grow them back fast, and although their heads are at last recovering (and they don’t look like old grey-haired ladies any more due to the grey colour of the feather shafts), they still have a way to go until they’re back to the glossy birds we remember.

One thing the moulting does is to affect the egg laying. The tally has been dropping steadily since September and the onset of autumn, but November saw a record low, with just 37 eggs collected from the bottom of the garden (compared to 91 in August). That’s barely enough for us, let alone parents and neighbours who watch them while we’re away. Once the annual moult has finished, normal service should be resumed, though. At the moment Gerry (above) is the hardest worker of the threesome and while she’s lost a few of her ginger-flecked feathers, she seems to be oblivious to the fact that it’s happening.

Our plans for getting more birds has fallen by the wayside somewhat and with Christmas almost upon us, it may not happen in the next couple of weeks either. We’re probably going to focus our efforts on more hybrid hens as opposed to rehoming battery birds, but even if we got them now, there’d still be no more eggs; they don’t start laying until at least 24 weeks old, arriving with new owners seven weeks before that. And, with six birds in total, we could have a problem. We may need even more vegetable scraps, as our three love them so much. It might also be a little harder to keep any on them all…