Autumn morning

Posted by louisa on Thursday 20 October 2011 in chickens | 2 comments

It was so lovely this morning that I rewarded myself for finalising my accounts (October mini-goal, tick!) with some garden play time with my furred and feathered friends. The cats were sunbathing on the top of the wood store, the chickens were digging through fallen leaves, the dog was making sure everything smelled ok in the garden & the field next door and I started cutting up some logs for the stove.

It wasn’t long though before I had visitors in the woodstore. Fluffy bummed visitors.

Saw horse, I HAVE CONQUERED YOU.

But as soon as she’d surveyed one level, she craved more exploration….

That part of the woodstore doesn’t have a roof and it’s under a thick holly tree, so I had visions of her jumping up and scampering through the branches — and me getting very scratched trying to get her back out again. So I lured her & the others to the other side of the patio, to do a little weeding for me while I got on with cutting some kindling.

I left them under the watchful eye of Carla-cat (who had relocated from the woodstore to another equally sunny spot away from the noise/dust) …

But they didn’t respect her authoritah and were soon off exploring again. Blue didn’t think much to John’s coop – too few perches, not enough nest boxes – but did poo on the window sill to leave her mark.

They also explored the greenhouse and were rather excited to find a few dropped tomatoes:

I do hope we get a few more of these sunny and fresh mornings before muggy winter kicks in :)

My kindling cutting “helpers”

Posted by louisa on Sunday 2 October 2011 in chickens, wood stuff | 3 comments

I had some company while cutting the kindling this morning.

Lily was taste-testing each stick as it came off the axe.

“Mmm, bit of a woody flavour.”

And a few minutes later, after Lily had gone into a sulk because she’d heard the fake camera click of my phone (she HATES all cameras for some reason), Lime the chicken came to see what was going on too — the first time she, or any of the chickens, have visited the top level of the garden, which is three flights of stairs away from the chicken coop/run.

She watched me chopping some kindling for a bit but she was more interested in John cutting wood in the woodstore though and spent ages stood behind him, head cocked to one side and making the occasional clucking noise, as he sawed up some logs. She seemed to have no interest in any of the many edibles on that level, just wondering what us crazy humans were up to. :)

(Appalling camera phone pics, sorry for the quality.)

Actually, make that nine edible things

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 27 September 2011 in chickens, growing | 6 comments

After writing the last post about all the edible stuff still in the garden, I let the chickens out for a play in the garden in the sunshine.

I now no longer have any swiss chard.

I better get some bloomin’ great eggs tomorrow.

Sunday morning chores

Posted by louisa on Sunday 11 September 2011 in chickens | 5 comments

(Blogging the little things to help inspire meh-me to doing both the little and big things!)

I’ve felt the same start of autumn/winter’s a-coming feeling that many of my favourite bloggers have touched on recently.

After the great red mite infestation of 2011, our chickens spent most of the summer sleeping outside – they clearly slept in the coop occasionally when it was raining or whatever but they got a taste for outdoor (presumably cooler) snoozing and since they were safe in the run, I got over my initial panic about it. I’ve been keeping an eye on the coop (for red mites and to make sure nothing else was afoot) but not had to clean it out as much. Now it’s getting darker/chillier/wetter though, they’ve moved back inside which means a return to Sunday morning poop-scooping for me. (With a good layer of wood shavings on the floor, it only needs cleaning out once a week at the moment but will need a mid-week freshener in the winter, when the nights are longer and they’re in the coop more than out.)

The chickens do like seeing what I’m doing to their house:

Except for Blue and the ever cheeky Lime who knew they could escape through the open nest box door to play out in the garden. Blue has been on a bit of a mission of late – whenever I leave open the chicken chest, she jumps onto the rim to look around. I think she knows the motherlode – the open 20kg bag of treat seed – is in there but can’t work out how to get down into it.

(Btw, the chicken chest – an old metal chest, about 3ft high by 3ft wide and about 1.5ft deep, has been one of my best purchases for the garden. It was £10 secondhand on eBay, picked up from just the other side of Bradford and it holds our bale of wood shavings, our nest box straw, the treat seed and sometimes a spare bag of layers pellets – all water-tight and pest-free. It looks rusty – one day I’ll paint it – but is very solid. The metal also gets pleasantly warm (but not hot) in the sun so the cats like sunbathing on the top of it. Win for everyone.)

Last winter, after my poop-scooping, my next job was always to fill up the kindling baskets in the living room & office so I did that today as well – we’ve used the stoves in both rooms over the last few weeks and used up the last dregs of last year’s supplies.

I also started to replenish the dustbin of kindling-size bits in the woodstore (it’s now a third full) so we’ve got some surplus if needed – if it’s too cold to work out there or if future Louisa can’t be bothered. I would have cut some logs as well if there hadn’t been an old sauna bench on the sawhorse (a lame excuse I know but an original one, yes?).

As chore-like as poop-scooping and kindling cutting are, I do quite enjoy them – fresh air, fun chickens and axes, what’s not to like? ;)

The latest beauty treatment

Posted by louisa on Friday 5 August 2011 in chickens | 1 comment

Have you heard about fish pedicures, the “beauty” “treatment” of the moment, where hundreds of little carp suck away the dead skin from your feet?

I have a homegrown alternative:

The chickens’ new rocket ship, um, I mean drinker

Posted by louisa on Friday 5 August 2011 in chickens | 3 comments

Earlier this week, the chickens had a new feature installed in their run – a 30litre (6.5gallons) drinker.

It’s a somewhat excessive for six chickens really (they get through about 3-4 litres a day between them) but I’m sick of buying small drinkers and then wishing I’d bought a bigger one (that’s happened twice now), and this one was about the same price as one about half the size so I thought it’s easier to half fill this one than double-fill a smaller one, if you know what I mean ;). Given there is a plan to expand the team slightly next year, and at some point (although probably not imminently) expand into having chickens-for-meat too, I’ll consider this too-big purchase an act of futureproofing.

And it’s not just about future benefits: their feeders hold about four days worth of food and this drinker will easily hold that much water too, even if I only half fill it — I’m not planning on neglecting them by any means, but it’ll lessen the burden on anyone looking after them if we want to go away for a long weekend (the chicken-sitter will only have to check on them and collect eggs). Now, to start planning a weekend away somewhere…! :)