Scaly Leg Mite - after second treatment. Plus Peepers - Day 4

Sunshine is a handsome bird, and she knows it. She is bossy and demanding. She can fly high and is a expert at chicken ballet.

Since the big chooks showed such progress after one application of vaseline to combat their scaly leg mites, I gave them another treatment last night (two nights after their first treatment). Here are some photos showing the progress. Sparrow especially is looking lots better. Both of them continue to lay their eggs happily.

Ballerinas need good legs, eh Sunshine.

Sparrow contests Sunshine's title of lead ballerina. Naturally. (Sunshine has the bossy-pants-ness to be top of the pecking order. Except for the small detail which is Sparrows enormous size! Lol!)

Now there is a beautiful chicken!

And here are Sparrow the chickens feet 1 day after her second vaseline treatment for scaly leg mites. You can see clean skin coming through yay!

Because it's not often that I am down below chicken-level, I didn't know that Sparrow had this featherless patch on her breast. (Looks like it's been rubbed on the 30cm lip of the chook run, I will have to make it easier for her to jump in and out, perhaps with a ramp?) It doesn't appear to be bothering her and she's not pecking at it, it's not bleeding or infected or anything nasty like that so I will keep an eye on it for now.

The Peepers don't care how many photos I take anymore. They are not frightened by the clicking of the camera anymore.

They are, however, quite frightened of Sunshine. She's worked out that there is food on the ground just inside the peepers hutch, and that she can fit her head through the mesh. I don't think she cares about the peepers one way or the other at the moment.

Barbara hunting for tasty treats. The peepers are no longer so afraid of me, and they definitely know not to be afraid of the blue food shovel!

Dred Rock (nicknames maybe: Rocky? Rockabilly?)

Barbara:

Manu. I swear she gets bigger every day. You can literally see them growing.

They got tired from all the photo-shoot business, and settled in for a cosy nap:

All tucked in for their afternoon siesta. Baby chicks sleep a lot it seems. Too cute!

Sunshine, once again, does not like to be outdone. On cuteness or anything else. Here she is posing with a wild blackbird at the bird (cat) bath and chook (cat) drinking station:

Summer Treasures

A monarch butterfly feasting on nectar from a white dahlia.

Summer in my our garden is a bit of a mixture. Nothing is really designed, it all just gets chucked in the ground all together. Flowers in together with the veges. Herbs anywhere they will fit. Cuttings growing next to strawberries.

A blue hydrangea which I've grown from a cutting. The original shrub is out in the front garden. It belonged to my grandmother.

Lavender. Bought on the garden-shopping trip with my Mum to populate this garden when we moved in.

Carrot flowers. I like to let a few go to seed because they are so pretty and ethereal. Plus, I might just get free carrots!

Sweet William Dianthus, going to seed.

The white dahlia that belongs to the butterfly. I dug this up from the back vege patch. Suspect it may also have belonged to my Nana,

Not raspberries. Blackberries! And definitely too sour to eat just yet.

Nasturtiums growing wild over the compost heap. I couldn't get rid of these if I tried.

Marigolds planted this season in the back vege garden. A good companion plant to help keep the veges happy.

This magenta dahlia is about neck high, growing next to the chook house door. It was given to me by my Mum (thanks Mum!) and came to her from my Nana... so it's done a bit of a round-trip.

More carrot flower. Check out the gorgeous colours of the fly sitting on the white.

Sunshine thinks she is the prettiest flower of all...

Except she is quite obviously filthy. A dust bathe will do that for you.

I think she's gonna moult again this autumn; her tail feathers are looking quite worn out.

She's lost one of her leg bracelets. The yellow one came off during the first greasing treatment with vaseline. Sunshine is named as such because when the first four chooks arrived she had a sister, another Silver Spangled Hamburg. Gemini died just after New Year 2013 at the age of 2 (or maybe older). She had blue and black rings, while Sunshine had blue and yellow rings. Gemini = black ring = starry night sky. Sunshine = yellow = opposite of Gemini.