Thursday 11 September 2008

Happy together at last!

Smokey, Snowdrop and Dopey have been living in the divided run since my last post. We tried another attempt at getting them to live together by Dopey still chased the other two mercilessly, pulling out feathers, standing on their backs, and so we decided they would need to be separated for longer, or even permanently. Graham built a little house for Dopey on the end, and this seemed to work well.

Last week Smokey came into lay, and possibly Snowdrop too (it is hard to tell who is laying what, but Smokey has very developed comb and wattles, and Snowdrop is reddening up too.

This morning we heard squawking (I hadn't shut their popholes last night so they were up early), and Graham discovered that Snowdrop had managed to knock out one of the canes and get through to Dopey's side. But they were not fighting - they seemed happy. We took out a few more canes, and they didn't fight at all. Looking out of the window, they are all standing together, preening happily. A success story!