It is very, very cold right now. The water in our bird bath is freezing at night and it’s only October. On Tuesday night we had the first October snow in London for 70 years. Yet that morning when I’d been cleaning out the chickens’ coop it had been warm enough to work without a coat, and that was at half seven.
This is the start of the chickens’ first winter and I had been worried how they’d take it. From the looks of things, though, I needn’t have bothered. They’re all malting, with Gerry’s plumage coming out the fastest – particularly around her neck. That’s a worry, as it means they’ll re-grow it all and we’ll have to steel ourselves for clipping their wing feathers. That might turn out to be a two-person job.
And the colder, shorter, darker days have done nothing to slow egg production. On Wednesday – the first full day after the icy winds blew in with a curtain of sleet and snow – they popped out four over the course of one night. With only three chickens in the flock, that’s very impressive, and something of a record on our little home farm.
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