Frozen days

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 17 January 2012 in chickens, growing | 1 comment

I took these photos yesterday but between one thing (Strowger ;)) and another (getting obsessed about doing something pointless & time-consuming that wasn’t on my to-do list), I didn’t get around to posting them. However, thankfully it looks just the same out there today – just less sunny and more icy – so I can post them today without it being incongruous ;)

Along with most of the UK, we had our first properly frozen days of winter over the weekend. It’s been so mild for the last month that they came as a bit of a shock to the system really. Because it’s been so mild, the garden is still quite green in parts, albeit mostly weedy green ;) If I was taking part in the Salad 52 Challenge, it would be mostly bittercress at the moment – icy bittercress:

Further down the garden, all the moss tendrils on the stone raised bed walls have their own white highlights and the blackberry bush reminds me it needs cutting back:

Last year, with all the snow, we didn’t have a just-icy period so this is the first time I’ve seen the greenhouse iced up. It’s also the first time I’ve seen frost looking really like patterned window glass.

Of course, the only reason I’m really venturing out into the garden at all is to do chicken things – chilly jobs in this weather. The gate into the run has swollen and is frosty so I have to give it a good wack with my bum to open it, especially when I’m carrying things. I’m glad that I have put so much time, effort and food into developing a bum with sufficient girth to achieve such a task over the last few years ;)

All the structure of the run – including my new roof – is coated in glassy white crystals. It looks so cold:

But the chickens themselves are fine. After four frozen days, I’ve got into a good routine for defrosting their big new drinker so I can do it nice and efficiently before my hands drop off from frostbite. I’m very glad they got a new batch of woodchips at the start of the year though – they don’t freeze as solidly as mud/the ground did last year and so they can still have dirt baths in their favourite spot under the coop and scratch around plenty too:

Looking up from the chickens, the sky was a lovely soft blue yesterday but the sun surprisingly strong (for winter):

It was certainly enough to i) lure Boron-cat from the house and ii) reveal he’s secretly ginger ;)

Is it icy where you are? How are you/your animals & garden dealing with it? And those in the Southern hemisphere: come on, make us jealous by telling us how lovely & warm it is where you are :)

She knows and is judging you

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 11 January 2012 in chickens | 0 comments

In a similar vein to the silliness earlier in the week….

#ChickenOwnerProblems

Posted by louisa on Monday 9 January 2012 in chickens | 2 comments

(A chicken-related parody of #FirstWorldProblems inspired by boiling too fresh eggs for our egg mayo lunch.)

My eggs are too fresh to make good-hard boiled eggs today. #ChickenOwnerProblems

The recipe calls for one medium egg but I only have extra-large and larger. #ChickenOwnerProblems

I have too many eggs to fit in my egg holder. #ChickenOwnerProblems

We don’t have any egg boxes to start seedlings in. #ChickenOwnerProblems

Our compost heap fills up too quickly. #ChickenOwnerProblems

I have to walk laps around the garden to clock up a food mile. #ChickenOwnerProblems

Our lemon curd ends up as yellow curd because the yolks are too golden. #ChickenOwnerProblems

Can you think of any more silly #ChickenOwnerProblems? ;)

No storm damage but a fluffy bottom

Posted by louisa on Thursday 5 January 2012 in chickens, house | 7 comments

My Twitter feed today has been full of nearly squished chickens, roofs flying off sheds, greenhouses half blown away and house roof damage but despite living near a lot of very tall trees, this was the extent of the damage we experienced in yesterday/last night’s gales:

Because we live next to woodland, wind always sounds much worse than it is around here – even light winds create a constant roar through the trees – and every morning after windy nights, I wake up expecting three trees to be smashed through the greenhouse, half our roof tiles on the floor and the chicken coop have blown away to the marvellous land of Oz. It’s always a relief when I see that hasn’t happened.

The bird feeder isn’t even broken – just the twine that was holding it up – and I’ll get the chickens up to that level of the garden tomorrow (when it’s supposed to be sunny) for seed clear up. I’m sure they’ll love that chore.

Speaking of the chickens – four small things:

• John’s dad surprised us with a trailer load of woodchips yesterday so they have a nice fat layer in the run – lots of fun to scratch around in and much better for draining a storm’s worth of rain. The woodchips always smell great – usually like a pleasantly woody men’s aftershave but today they (or at least the garden) smelled like raita/yoghurt and mint sauce. Not like mint but specifically like yoghurt and mint sauce. I don’t know why but I’m not complaining.
• I mentioned this on Twitter earlier but for those not on that mighty social media timesink, the partial roof I put on the run last month survived the winds just fine, therefore I am ace and a master craftswoman. And/or the chicken run is in a sheltered dip and I got lucky.
• Rain/mud issues aside, this winter (so far) has been much better than last winter for our girls – I’ve not had to defrost their drinkers at all (I was doing it twice a day during the coldest bit of last winter) and they’ve kept laying well – we got four eggs (from six girls) just about every day in December despite the short days, them getting older and the fact it’s been moult season.
• Blue the chicken has been the last to moult and since the others are all refreshed & perky, she’s dropped right down in the pecking order these last few weeks. As my new joint favourite chicken, I’ve felt sorry for her so I’m pleased to see her bottom is getting nice and fluffy again. Hurrah for fluffy bottoms.

Have you suffered any weather-related damage to your house or garden this winter? Do you have any ideas why the new woodchips smell like raita? How do you feel about fluffy bottoms? All important issues of the day! :)

Chicken meets sprout

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 21 December 2011 in chickens | 3 comments

Since we’re not big sprout eaters in this house, our chickens hadn’t tried them before this week. I got a big bag of them reduced to just pennies at the supermarket nearly closing time the other day and thought I’d offer them up to the girls as a leafy treat.

“Hmmm? What is that crazy green thing? A mini cabbage?”

“Noooooooooooooooooo! Iccccccccccccck!”

“Dude! What the heck!?”

The black rock chickens liked them at least but the ginger girls, particularly this one (Green) like me a little less now ;)

New (partial) roof for the chicken run

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 20 December 2011 in chickens | 2 comments

Since we’d offed one of their species on Saturday, I decided to do a nice thing for our chickens on Sunday – I roofed part of their run.

I’d been meaning to do it for a while and had earmarked the polycarbonate sheets that had been the roof of our porch for the project – but when we had the porch replaced in the late summer, I wasn’t fast enough and the sheets were whisked away before I could grab them. Boo. I’ve kept my eyes open for the last few months for another possible roof but as nothing else turned up and it has been getting very muddy down there, I decided to buy some plastic sheeting instead.

The whole run has always been covered in chicken-wire to keep the foxes out, which made fitting the plastic sheeting rather difficult, especially in the spot I had in mind. The run is on “reclaimed” land – levelling up a steep hill – and on either side, it’s still the original hill. I’m not going to say how I got them into place because I think it would make John & my mum cry (especially as Sunday was icy and so possibly not the best day for clambering around). I’m surprised this blog post isn’t about how I added to my bruise collection*: the really bruised life.

Anyway, my original plan had been to carefully drill holes through the plastic so it wouldn’t crack, then screw them into place. I had an elaborate idea in mind of raising one end to make sure the rain drained away from the run rather than into it but when push came to shove and I was hanging off a tree, I realised that was unrealistic. On John’s suggestion, I ended up tying them onto the chicken wire – and around support beams where appropriate – and that seems to have worked pretty well. If it snows a lot, I’ll have to get into the habit of clearing it off the roofed bit so it doesn’t get too heavy – but snow gathered on the chicken wire too so it was something I had to do last year anyway. I’m not sure how much it’ll hold up in high winds and whether or not the rain will drain in the right way by luck rather than by design but we’ll see – it’s a start. And if it is a giant failure, given the way I’ve tied them on, it’ll be reasonably easy to remove them if needs be and try again.

Between the new roof, the shelters I made last year and the raised coop, they have about 6m2 of covered space in their run now (not including inside the coop) and there is another nearly 4m2 space covered in pallets/trellis so they should have plenty of non-muddy wandering space this winter – which should hopefully keep any mud-related foot problems at bay. I just wish I’d got around to doing it before the mega rain earlier in the month!

* I bruised my knee on a stage combat course last week, then slipped on the ice on Friday, banging my bruised knee again and falling heavily on the top of my foot. I’m rather clumsy – which is another reason why I shouldn’t have been clambering around on an icy day ;)