Where chickens go shopping for clothes

Posted by louisa on Monday 15 November 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

From an IM chat with my friend Katherine…

1. New Cluck
2. Debenhens
3. Clucci
4. Henley’s
5. Hennes (old school name for H&M)
6. Cropshop
7. John Flewis
8. Marks and Hencers

And for their underwear:

1. Bwarkissimo (for big breasted birds)
2. La Henza

(I’m sorry.)

(Mrs Mauve can’t even look at me any more.)

One down – Minnie the Black Minorca chicken died overnight :(

Posted by louisa on Sunday 14 November 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

As I mentioned on Twitter earlier, we had our first* chicken death here on Saturday night/Sunday morning. It was the little Black Minorca, who we only brought home on Friday. Sigh.

When I went down to see them on Saturday, she was hiding under the little shelter I’d built and wasn’t interested in coming out – she was next to the drinker and I left her a little pile of food nearby. It was damp and she’d had a scary couple of days so I wasn’t going to rush her. When we got back from Southport though, she was still under there. All the others had put themselves to bed but she hadn’t.

She didn’t try to run away when I picked her up from under there – which in hindsight should have been a sign something wasn’t right. I took her to the coop and tried to place her on a perch – but she was holding her legs strangely and wouldn’t grasp it, so I placed her on the coop floor instead. I went back into the house and told John I was worried about her because she seemed really weak – and it turns out I was right to be worried: this morning, we found her dead very near where I left her.

Expanding the tribe: four new chickens!

Posted by louisa on Saturday 13 November 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

After thinking about it then not getting around to it for a good while, we finally got around to expanding our chicken tribe yesterday.

We knew we wanted some more variety but didn’t know what – we went to see the wonderful Edward Boothman up near Silsden again, and he showed us all the options — it was very hard to choose!

In the end, we went for two Black Rocks – Edward Boothman is renowned for his Black Rocks so we thought we should get some. They’re photographed here getting up close and personal with Blue, one of our existing ISA Browns:

And we also got two pure breeds, who will give less eggs but are fun – a Buff Leghorn (who shall be imaginative known as Buffy):

And Minnie, the Black Minorca:

Minnie is hiding until the shelter I built them from pallets the other day – glad to see someone using it! Minnie looks unremarkable at this point – about 16 weeks old – but as she grows, her comb will get a lot bigger and redder, and her white lobes will grow huge — she’ll be a very interesting looking bird!

Chicken shelter from two old pallets

Posted by louisa on Monday 8 November 2010 in chickens, DIY, making | 6 comments

I finally built my long-awaited shelter for the chicken run on Saturday – hurrah! It will provide more stomping space (since they can stomp around underneath and on top), more shelter for the rain and somewhere sheltered to hang another drinker.

My original plan had been very fancy – involving a sloped solid platform (to be a shelter, with the water draining into a mini-gutter) topped with perches. The actual version is simpler – two small pallets (about half the size of normal pallet), one cut in half to be the legs, one left intact to be the platform, then finished off with scrap wood.

Since I was using already pretty solid pallets, it came together really quickly – three little bits of sawing (through the support struts of the pallet to be the legs) and a few screws, and I had a strong platform, which I could use as a work bench for cutting the scrap planks to size.

The raised bit in the middle has three purposes:

1) I couldn’t find any wood to fit the gap between the two middle slats – everything was either just too big or way too small – so I fitted a too-big piece across the top (it’s supported underneath by some little pieces on the support joists);

2) The raised sides are a bit narrow for the purpose really but could be perched on if a chicken felt that way inclined; and,

3) It gives a neat bribery trough for corn and similar treats.

It’s a little low really — they can get under there and stand up, but not stretch properly.

But I’m really glad I made this one – it showed me how easy it was and because it was smaller, it was easier for me to manage on my own without having resort to Long-Armed John’s assistance. It’s a useful prototype really – and aside from the cost of a few screws, completely free!

I’m going to make another version with two full sizes pallets next weekend – that should be more than tall enough for them. Once I’ve made that, I’m going to secure more perches going to and from the platforms and their existing perches so they can play “floor is hot lava” around the run :)

Zero waste pets: the chickens

Posted by louisa on Friday 22 October 2010 in chickens, green, zero waste | 0 comments

Back in July, I wrote about our efforts to make our pets zero waste, starting with the dog. Switching between food types recently has made me think about the chickens and waste.

Food
We buy layers pellets in 20kg or 25kg bags. These are usually plastic sacks, which can, for now be reused around the garden for weed barriers, storage etc. I suspect we’ll reach saturation point on that though, so we’ll have to find some other way to reuse or recycle the bags. (Some food, for example, the Golden Yolk stuff I mentioned in the consumption post, comes in thick paper sacks. That is obviously better from a zero waste point of view, although I’d worry about it in the damper months.)

Treats
At the moment, now the garden is mostly sleeping, their main treats are corn (20kg plastic sacks, which last for ages and ages) and kitchen scraps.

The latter is interesting from a zero waste point of view – they’re actually helping reduce our waste by eating scraps and leftovers. Admittedly most of the stuff they’re getting would normally go into the compost so it’s not reducing landfill, but it’s making better use of it.

Chicken food consumption observation

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 12 October 2010 in chickens | 2 comments

(Just a note to myself really – but if anyone has had a similar experience/any advice/thoughts, I’d love to hear about them.)

Our four girls get through 20kg of layers pellets a month. For the first few months, we got the same each month (Farmgate, I believe) then last month, we got some different stuff, from a different shop (“Golden Yolk” – not sure if that was the make). This month, they’ve moved onto a third sort (Crowthers) – from the same feed shop as the second one but more like the first ones in appearance.

The Golden Yolk pellets were green in colour, like the grass nuggets for feeding to sheep and goats at hands-on educational farms. I remember someone saying at some point in my chicken learnin’ that chlorophyll makes the yolks extra yellow, so that makes sense – food packed with green bits = golden yolk. In an “exactly what is says on the tin” manner, the yolks were very rich in colour – but the chickens ate considerably more per day (20g per day extra) than they did the previous stuff — and they pooped a lot more too.

(She’s alarmed because I’m talking about her poo on the internetz.)