Thank you for your help and advice, Rick, it’s good to share your experience.
Today I took Willow on a one-way trip to the vet, who agreed that sometimes rest can help a young bird heal lameness, but where there is a bad tendon injury this is not a realistic hope. So Willow has been pts. I’m sad about this but feel it was the right thing to do - it’s no life for a young bird, to be hobbling around, in pain, unable to get up into the coop to lay her egg, and possibly being pushed around by another hen.
However, something else weird has happened. I told you that for about 2 weeks Ash, the bossy one, has been sleeping in a nest box on her own and not pooing at all overnight, and then laying her immaculate white leghorn-type egg very early in the morning, including last Saturday.
And that Piper laid her first blue egg on Saturday, having been crouching for 2-3 weeks.
And that there was a third, broken, eaten, white egg in the box on Saturday afternoon, which I presumed was from Amber, who is supposedly a Skyline, and thus blue or green eggs might have been expected. But she just looks like a brown leghorn, so white was possible.
On Sunday there was a white one from Ash, first thing, that I removed. I know it was from Ash because the other two were shut in with Willow overnight and had no access to the coop until I came down to let them through and collect Ash’s egg.
Then after lunch, a blue one from Piper.
Then Amber was fussing around noisily, in and out of the coop and nest box for most of the afternoon. I went away for a short time and found a white leghorn-colour egg in the nest box, and Amber had calmed down and was back to normal. So I was glad that a) Amber had laid an egg and B) that she hadn’t eaten it.
Well, today there was no white egg from Ash. Instead there was a blue one from Piper - and a mysterious brown one from somebody else.
I can only conclude that on Saturday and Sunday Ash laid two eggs each day and had a rest today, and that the brown one today is either from Amber or Piper. Piper is supposed to be a Marans x CLB, hence her little tufty crest and barred plumage. So I suppose a brown egg is possible, from the marans parentage, and the blue ones have been from Amber the Skyline. But Piper has been crouching so ostentatiously for so long that I was expecting her to lay first. And Amber was fussing around in and out of the box yesterday afternoon, when the blue egg had already been laid earlier.
What do you think?
Chickens are constantly surprising, aren’t they? Now Willow has gone I’ve put a high perch back up, and put flower pots in the nest boxes. Will go down after dark and see what they have chosen to do about roosting. Must remember to remove the flower pots!
