Chicks Hatched

Three new chicks to add to our flock!

This hen almost got her neck pulled the other night as I'm fairly sure she killed the first two chicks that hatched and then I had to dispatch a third that had a bad leg, luckily three more have hatched and seem healthy so the hen lives on, I won;t let her hatch eggs again though.

I certainly don't hatch enough chicks to be self sufficient in chickens but it is a great thing to do for the children, they love going to see them and watching them. Maybe when I have more time I'll start hatching and breeding chickens a bit more, it's something I'd like to do and I think it could be a good paying hobby, but at the moment I've got far too much going on. 

Who else has been hatching eggs this year?

"Weaning" The Chicks

Thursday night I took the mother hen out from the chicks that we hatched back at the beginning of May. 

I'm never quite sure when to take the hen away from the chicks, last year I just left the hen in with them but this year there's been lots of fighting and bickering. These chicks are six weeks old and the hen had started to lay again, a sure sign she's not interested. To prove the point when I took her out and put her back with the other laying hens she made no fuss at all. 

The chicks seem relieved and are enjoying a quieter few days where they're not being bullied or pecked. They all look really healthy and are growing well, but much much slower than a commercial breed that would be killed at 8 weeks old (check out Sunnybrook farms post here and see the picture of one of his commercial breed chicks at 8 weeks, even though they've been brought up outside).

When does everyone else remove the hen that hatched the chicks or do you leave the older bird in with them?

Broody Hen

Sorry no updates over the last week or so. I've been so busy with work and everything else that I haven't had time. I plan to have a good catch up on blogs sometime soon, so sorry for my lack of comments!

Clucking hen

 And as a follow on from my last post, no sooner had I moved the two silkies out of their arc, another hen went broody. She kept it up for a few days so I decided to separate her off from the others and put some eggs underneath her. The eggs are just from my chickens here, so no pure breeds, but it will be interesting what they turn out like!

Only seven eggs but she's only a small hen

Not a happy hen when I chuck her off her eggs for a drink and a feed for 5 mins a day!

Nearly two weeks in so hopefully my little girl will have some chicks to play with soon.

Chicken Weeder

I've been wanting to get my bantams out of their little ark for a while now. I want to have the ark in reserve in case I get a hen that goes broody, it also needs some maintenance and a new coat of wood stain. So I decided to build them another little coop.

My new "chicken weeder"

 I made most of it out of the old shed I housed my ex caged birds in over the winter so the cost were next to nothing. I had great ideas of making a "chicken weeder" that I could put between my rows of brassicas or fruit bushes and the two little chickens would weed them for me. Because of this I built the run and the coop separately so I could move them on my own easier.

Fenced off area for the bantams

In reality the outside run is too narrow for my liking and it would be awkward to get between plants, so instead I've fenced off a weedy area of the veg garden that I was leaving fallow this year for them to have a scratch about in. The coop is still an alright size for these little chickens (and there's a nest box area at the back) I think they'll be fairly happy in their new area and when the soft fruit is over they can go in there and keep the bugs down for me.
Not what I was thinking of doing originally but it seems to have worked out (like many best laid plans!)

Cockerel Refugee

My wife was somewhat unimpressed when I came home from work on Saturday with another cockerel. "We don't need any more" she said, I'm not even sure we need the two we've already got .

Buff Orpington Cockerel

This guy is big and tough though. The only survivor from a workmates fox massacre.

I figure we'd give him a chance to see how he gets alone with some of our hens. If he's too big for them or gives them too much of a hard time, then he has to go. But in the meantime I quite like the way he's so big and waddles about.

Altering A Chicken Coop

Last year I made a large chicken coop for some laying hens. It's been great but there is a problem with it.

They won't lay in the nest box. In fact they tend to perch by the nest box and then use it to poo into. Not great if you want clean eggs.
I decided last weekend to alter it. I think the problem was that there wasn't much difference in height between the perches and the nest box. I decided that the best course of action was to drop the nest box lower. Of course this didn't turn out to be as easy as I thought it would be!


The chickens didn't like my first idea for where the nest box should go...

I had to remove the side cladding from the nest box to get at the screws to take the thing off. most of those little bits of cladding then split so I had to find some more wood (their ramp got a little bit shorter if I'm honest). 


Proof in the pudding...

 I also divided up their nest box into four compartments as I'd been  meaning to do this for ages as I think the chickens prefer it and it helps keep their nest clean.


 

Spot the difference?

So if your building a chicken coop make sure the nest box is well below the perch (Mine was 4 inches lower before and this wasn't enough). The first night after I made the alterations all seven chickens were on the perches and there was four eggs in the nest box clean as anything. Job done.

Ex Caged Birds A Couple Of Months On

Well it's not quite a couple of months but I'm really pleased with how well they're doing.

We did loose two in the first week when it dropped really cold but other than that they've been fine, they've even been laying in this cold snap we've been having! We've been having around 3 a eggs a day off nine birds and in this weather I don't think that's too bad!

 

I've put these pictures on so long as no one comments on how messy my garden is!

They're also doing a great job of getting rid of the weeds for me.

Some happy chickens.

3 Silkies From Work

What a bunch of bumpkins we are at the building site I'm currently working on. Every "bait" (breakfast and dinner time to normal people) the conversation normally ends up talking about chickens, shooting, fishing, wild food, pigeons, rabbits, etc. And yesterday the one lad told me he wanted to get rid of his slikie trio as they weren't very good layers.

The chickens brought in next to where I eat my "bait". Rustic lunch room eh?

Well I've never heard of anyone thinking they would be good layers!

But I said I'd take them off his hands and although my policy on the small holding is everything has to earn it's keep, becoming a father has turned me a bit of a soft touch. All I could think was what wonderful pets these will make for my 6 month old daughter, she already gets transfixed by the chickens so these tame little bantams should be ideal. Also I've read that slikies make great broody hens so I might be able to use them for hatching out a few chicks in the future.

Nice little trio of bantams

I've put them in my spare chicken arc for now (you guys in the states call them chicken tractor - thanks to the lazy farmer for that translation), and hopefully once they're settled in they should be allowed to have a wonder around the garden and just use the arc as base until I can build something bigger.

In their chicken arc in the rain

I built this arc for a broody hen with chicks about 5 years ago, we lived at our old house then and only had a garden which the hens slowly turned into a mud bath, digging a new hole everyday when I moved the pen! In the end it looked like an exploded mine field, still the chickens seemed happy!