Hollybush Chickens

Monday 19th April

We arrived at what was to become our new home snuggled up inside 7 eggs. We were placed in an incubator to keep us warm while we finished growing. Lots of people came to look at us but we were not ready to hatch just yet.

Tuesday 20th April

It's lovely and warm inside our eggs but we can hear the excited chatter of children and are very keen to meet them.

We start to use our egg tooth's and slowly make tiny holes in our eggs.

Wednesday 21st April

Hatching is exhausting, slowly but surely we make bigger and bigger holes. We have to keep resting inside our eggs as we are very small and not very strong yet.

Thursday 22nd April

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US

We finally hatched. You can watch us hatching in the video section. We are very tired and need to rest outside our eggs until we dry out and become fluffy. Lots of people come to see us and they all seem very happy we are here. We are looking forward to when we are able to come out and play. So far there are 3 of us but we hope more friend s join us soon.

Friday 23rd April

Now there are 5 of us. two more friends hatched overnight. Some very kind grown ups removed us from our incubator now we are dry and fluffy. We are in a cage in a warm room, we have water and food and a brooder to keep us warm. The brooder acts like our Mum and we huddle together underneath to keep warm. We are resting and sleeping a lot of the time, some children have come to visit and give us cuddles but we can't stay out for long at the moment.

Miss Byrne is taking us home for the weekend to look after us.

Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th April

We spent the weekend at Miss Byrne's house. She made sure we always had fresh water and food. We were given lots of cuddles by her and her family.

Monday 26th April - Friday 30th April

Sadly 2 of our friends were not strong enough to hatch so for now we will be the Hollybush 5.

What an exciting first week we have had at Hollybush. We love cuddles and luckily all the children have been to visit us and given us lovely cuddles. We have been to visit some of the classrooms and all the children have enjoyed writing and drawing about us.

As we are going to be living at Hollybush it has been decided that we should have names. A competition is being held and our names will be drawn from a hat (well envelope) Look out for that news next week.

Mrs Noon has brought us an Eglu cube to live in when we are bigger and a lovely big run that means we can live outside without the foxes getting us. We are so pleased that we have made so many new friends.

On Thursday something very exciting happened, we gained a new chicken friend. The lovely man that brought us to Hollybush as eggs came to pick up our incubator as we don't need it anymore. He had some chick's in his car that he was taking back to the farm so Miss Byrne asked if we could have one and he said yes.

Our new friend is another female cream leghorn. 

This weekend we are going to stay at Mrs Noon's house. She is going to introduce us to Truffle. Mrs Noon say's that Truffle is a dog. We hope he is as friendly as all the children.

Saturday 1st May - Monday 3rd May

We had a lovely weekend at Mrs Noon's house. Her children gave us lots of cuddles.

Truffle wasn't scary at all, he wasn't very keen on us though as we liked to peck him on the nose.

Tuesday 4th May - Friday 7th May

Now we are bigger we have started to grow feathers. They are mainly on our wings at the moment but soon we will have them all over. Some of us are growing different coloured feathers to the colour of our baby chick fluff.

When we are not visiting the children in class we like to hang out in the office with Miss Byrne and Miss Tilbury. We also have lots of visitors at lunchtime.

We now have names

Rhode Island Red - Male - Brian

Rhode Island Red - Female - Waddle

Cream Legbar - Male - Bob

Cream Legbar - Female - Penny

Cream Legbar - Female - Primrose

Lavender Pekin - Mavis

Have a look at our photo's we posed with the children who chose our names.

Saturday 8th May - Sunday 9th May

We spent the weekend at Miss Byrne's house. She kept us warm and gave us food.

We had lots of cuddles and Brian liked to watch the TV (Top Gear was his favourite). We have a bigger cage now and many more feathers.

Once we have grown all our feathers we will be allowed to go outside.

10th May - 28th May

We are loving life at Hollybush. Everyone is so kind to us and we have many visitors throughout the day. We like to be held and will often sit on peoples shoulders (maybe we are really parrots).

We stay at school now at the weekend as we are getting very big. Miss Byrne and Mrs Noon come at the weekends to look after us and clean us out (we do make a lot of mess).

We are going to be staying at school during half term but someone will come everyday to make sure we have food and water.

We don't need our brooder anymore as we are so much bigger and we have nearly all our feathers. Next week our outside house and run are arriving and we will be moving to the great outdoors. We will be able to watch the children while they play. Our outside area will be near the wildlife area and we can't wait to be out in the sunshine.

A Chicken update

The Hollybush 6 are now the Hollybush 4.

As many of you know we ended up with 3 males and 3 females. Sadly we were only able to keep 1 male so just before the Summer holiday's Bob went off to live on a free range farm in Kent.

Today we sadly had to say goodbye to Mavis (who is indeed a boy) but we are happy to say he has been rehomed by one of our Hollybush students.

Mavis now called Gangsta is now living his best life at a stables and even has a new girlfriend.