Wednesday 24 September 2008

Nesting

Hindoo is still grey but has been accepted back into the flock, Bully bonked her as a welcome home present! Lily and Huffy are madly building what they think might pass for a nest in the upper floor of the doo cote. It consists of a few miserable twigs and the odd leaf. I don't know when or if they will lay an egg but there is enough rumpy pumpy going on so I hope we will get at least one egg. I have ordered some tobacco stalks which is , I believe, the order of the day for pigeon nests, it keep the lice and mites at bay apparently. The courtship rtuals are very interesting, the males puff up their chests and strut around looking very important and the girl doos just ignore them, then is a bit of kissing goes on and the odd peck and then the female squats down, raises her rear and it is all over in about twenty seconds, after that they both fly off and wobble a bit on the power cables. Quite funny to see expecially as the favoured bonking place is on top of the finial post on top of the doo cote!

The new hens seem happy enough, very calm and handleable, the others are ignoring them totally. They are still apart and will remain so for a couple of weeks but right now I anticipate no problems at all with the integration.

2 comments:

blogmaster said...

The new girls are looking good. Herb must be bored with all these females around but at least his outside 'bar' is looking very inviting.
Mary and Eric xxx

Jillus said...

We will delay the official opening until you return, meanwhile we have ordered a small forest worth of felled and chopped trees to fill it!