The chickens in winter
I had to crack the ice on the chickens drinkers a few times last week but yesterday, overnight, they froze completely solid. That, more than the inch or so of snow on the ground, drove home to me the fact it’s winter now.
Since the temperatures started dropping last week, I’ve reinstated my first thing runs down to see them in the mornings – since we fitted the automatic door, we hadn’t needed to prioritise them in the morning chores list but now I’m back to it. I go down to the run with a kettle full of boiling water now – to melt the ice and to warm up the over all temperature of the water in the drinkers.
After The Compost Lady recommended it, they’ve had a warm layers pellets porridge too. Also, like The Compost Lady, I’m liberally sprinkling corn around at lunchtime as a treat since they can’t scratch in the dirt as normal.
They thanked me for these comforts with a 100% laying rate over the weekend. The new ones still haven’t started laying but the four existing ones produced an egg each, each day – pretty good for snowy November!
In related news, I had to scrap lumps of frozen poo off the coop floor yesterday. Which was fun. I’m on the look out for ways to insulate it. I’m thinking maybe a fake floor (with insulation underneath and an easy-clean top) and a layer of insulation on the roof too. Just got to keep an eye out for materials…
Read MoreQuick new chicken update
Quick chicken update: the new girls seem well settled in. Things aren’t perfectly friendly yet but a pecking order seems well established and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as much bullying/intimidation.
The blacker Black Rock (above) – who was initially too afraid to leave the coop – is now probably the outgoing of them, but the other Black Rock is also pretty friendly. The Buff Leghorn is a bit more flighty but that’s to be expected.
The others are still as confident and clucky as ever.
Chickens are *ace*.
Read MoreChicken egg shells more fragile in winter?
Just a passing observation – both yesterday and today, when I’ve collected the eggs from the girls, I’ve managed to crack one of the shells on the way back up to the house.
I’m not sure what happened yesterday but today, the crack happened when two eggs bumped into each other – not too heavily, just a little jostling-together-in-my-pouch bump. I’m sure they will have bumped together that heavily all year but it’s only now that we’re seeing cracking. The shells aren’t soft and squishy; they’re hard shell but just seem a little more fragile than normal.
Anyone else seeing anything similar?
I don’t think it’s a calcium deficiency per se as they’re getting good quantities of balanced layers pellets, have access to plenty of shell in the grit store, and have also had “poultry spice” mineral supplement in their food this week.
I know human bodies need Vitamin D to help absorb calcium – so maybe it’s the same for them and the short days are reducing their uptake.
It’s not a big problem – in fact, Lily will be very happy about it because she’ll get it if we don’t think we’ll use it today – just an observation. Would love to hear other chickeneers thoughts on this…
Read MoreAnother new shelter for the chickens
We made another shelter for the chickens yesterday. My mum calls them “smoking shelters” and I guess the principle is the same – although if I find out our little girls are smoking in there*, there will be hell to pay ;)
My original idea of duplicating the first shelter just using bigger pallets didn’t work out. Cut in half horizontally, the full size pallets wouldn’t be quite tall enough for our girls; cut in half vertically, it would be way too high. Instead we used one of the smaller size pallets and the crate that our greenhouse glass was delivered in for the sides and found some misc wood (an old table top? a gate?) for the roof. It’s not completely water tight at the moment, but I’ll fix that soon. As you can see, it’s already poop worthy.
The existing structure of the crate thing provides extra stability and also the sides of it should help protect the feeder from at least some horizontal rain. I might move the feeder and completely encase the crate bit actually – it might make an al fresco nest box for when they want to lay somewhere different.
I’m not as happy with this one as I was the first one – I have a feeling this is turning into a bit of a Goldilocks thing – the last one was a bit too small for the bigger birds, this one is probably a bit too tall, the next one should be just right though!
(Oh and in some more chicken related news, I think we’ve got our first rats down there – when John went down to check the girls were all in bed last night (they were), he heard a noise and when he turned the light on, the feeder was swaying all by itself. We’ve also found a little hole that could be a tunnel. It’s not a surprise really, given the run/coop is near a waterway and there is always spare food in the feeder. We put a lot of work into fox proofing the run but I guess we need to work on rat proofing it as well now.)
* More bad chicken puns. Top five cigarette brands that chickens would smoke: Clucky Strike, Beakson & Hendges, John Layer Specials, Reggal, Silk Cluck. (sorry.)
Read MoreFrugal, cooking, growing and making link love
It’s super foggy here this morning so I need some ace inspiration to get going – and I thought you might need some too. Here are some of my favourite reads from the last few weeks…
- Ana White makes things that always excite me – demystifying woodwork and creating fab bits of furniture cheaply and easily. I think her old Knock Off Wood blog was the site that most inspired me to pick up a saw and screwdriver – and I just love her most recent side-table – and her “paint it bright” philosophy!
- One thing I was missing when I made my meal from just things I’d grown/caught/foraged was salt – now thanks to ManUpATree, I’m inspired to try making some myself – just got to find some clean enough sea water…
- Gillian of My Tiny Plot neatly summarised Which? Gardening’s heritage versus hybrid veg article – very useful info, thanks Gillian!
- Damn the Broccoli gave us some useful tips on staying warm but keeping the heating bills low…
- Compostwoman of The Compost Bin has been writing about… composting. Specifically, how she does it – and a very seasonal post on how to make leaf mould.
- And finally, Little House in the Suburbs recently ran a seven part series asking their community about lots of aspects of chicken keeping. I’ve contributed a number of times and loved reading what other people had to say – lots of very good advice and suggestions.
(For anyone who cares, the first is from the top of our garden, looking into the woods next door/at the bottom of the garden – and our chicken coop is in the bottom right; the second is the bandy trees at the bottom of our garden, just behind the chicken run; and the third is over our wood pile to the north, we can’t see our neighbour in that direction in the summer – or when it’s foggy!)
Read MoreNew chickens settling in
The remaining three of our new intake seem to be doing ok – and are already showing themselves to be funny little chicks. Add your own captions/voiceovers for these pics ;)
When I went down first thing, they were running around outside and when I went back after lunch, they were trying out the coop perches (they slept in the nest boxes last night so hopefully they’re building up to perching). Admittedly, I think part of the reason they were up there was to have a break from the others – I was down there for about an hour, only one peck happened but there was certainly some intimidation. But it has also been chuffing cold today so I don’t blame them for heading back inside. (The frost lingered in parts of the garden/woods all day, despite it being pretty sunny, brrr! I thought I’d have to break the ice on the drinkers this morning – as I had to do on the outside dog bowl – but someone with a beak had beat me to it.)
While I know pecking has been taking place, these girls don’t seem to have any visible feather loss. All three of them ate corn out of my hand and while I was in the run, the two Black Rocks stretched their legs outside for a bit and both let me stroke them. As I said yesterday, it took the ISA Browns a week until they’d eat out of ours hands or stroke them/easily pick them up, so the new girls are ahead of the curve in some ways.
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