A year of keeping chickens – 12 things I’ve learnt

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 28 June 2011 in chickens | 11 comments

As I mentioned in my blog birthday post the other day, it’s just about a year since we got chickens too – it’ll be a year on Thursday to be exact but what’s a day or two between friends? ;)

Before we went to buy the red four, I hadn’t had much hands-on experience with chickens – I’d read a lot of course, and gone on a LILI course (which was very good – although I think I asked about ten times as many questions as everyone else), but aside from that, I was new to birds.

Things I’ve learnt in the last year

1. ISA Browns are awesome for first time chicken owners

We got the girls from Edward Boothman near Silsden – he advised us to get the ISA Browns as they were good first-timer birds, and how right he was. Sure, they’re not the most exciting birds to look at but aside from Lime’s badly timed moult last winter, they’ve been incredibly easy to manage, are friendly and very productive. If we had more space, I’d prefer more variety but here I’m tempted to stick with good old ISAs – even their fellow hybrids, the Black Rocks have been more temperamental: Blacks here is pretty friendly most of the time but together, her and Ginger bicker like sugar-rushing eight year olds.

2. In comparison, the pure breeds are a PITA

I am very prepared to accept that we had bad luck, or did something wrong, but compared to the ISAs, the two pure breeds we’ve had – a Minorcan and a Leghorn – have been pains in the bum. The Minorcan died during her second night here (although I do think I did a lot of things wrong) and Buff the Leghorn was very flighty (so hard to health check etc), took ages to start laying (albeit possibly because she came of age over winter) and was noisy (because she was easily stressed) before her untimely demise earlier this month.

They were both very pretty and I do like the idea of supporting traditional breeds rather than the generic egg machines we have now, but they were a lot more expensive, more effort and not an efficient member of a small team.

3. Chickens poo all sorts of different shapes & colours of poo

This is one of my favourite/most visited sites on the internet these days. Oh the variety!

The chickens don’t like it when I talk about their poop on the internetz.

4. Our coop is a bit too big for our space/requirements

Payment for eggs? Or homegrown veg / homemade crafts?

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 21 June 2011 in chickens, growing | 12 comments

Last week when John’s mum was visiting, she mentioned that she had been wondering about paying us for the eggs we give the family. I think we gave her/John’s dad effectively three half-dozens last week – which would cost about £5 in the shops, but cost us just under £2*. She tried to give us some money but John refused to accept it on principle, and bundled her out of the door before she could argue — it did lead us to talk about it afterwards though.

When we got the extra girls last year and it made it easier for us to regularly give away boxes of eggs, John & I talked about taking a nominal charge for them to pay for the extra feed and that sort of thing – but never actually got around to doing it. With the six girls now, we are really just giving away our spares; I think if we had enough chickens to warrant doing a “garden gate” stand to sell them (or sold them at our workplaces), we’d be more inclined to take money from friends but for us right now, while we’re ok for money and it’s just a casual thing, it feels a bit petty to ask good friends and family for £1 here and there.

Even if we were selling them though, John said he wouldn’t accept any money from his mum and dad because they’ve given, and continue to give, us so much – over the last fortnight, John’s dad has put up a fence for us, supplying all the wood (some free; some paid for) as well as labour — that is surely worth a few eggs!

Expanding from that, we realised that at least half of the people we regularly give eggs to frequently give us they’ve made/do something for us in return – and we like that idea of unofficial/unspoken bartering because it stops it being just about money and becomes about time/effort instead. There are a few people to whom we regularly give eggs that don’t really give us anything in return – and we’re not bothered about that (if we cared, we wouldn’t give them eggs so often!), but if they ask to give money towards feed now, we’re more likely to say “bake us a cake sometime instead”.

Something related: last year or so, I realised that I’m always more inclined to give produce or crafty things to other growers & crafters etc. Perhaps I wouldn’t be so bothered if I had a mega glut of things – but at the moment while my output is more limited, if I have to choice between giving stuff to a grower/maker or a non-grower, I’d almost always lean towards the grower. They realise that homegrown/homemade things aren’t necessarily always aesthetically perfect and they know the effort that goes into producing the finished fruit or project.

Someone who doesn’t grow their own veg may see as courgette as something worth (say) 60p, which may be a few minutes of their working time, the same price as a Mars bar or can of Coke, but a grower (or someone who has grown in the past) sees the ongoing care and attention that went into growing it, and that’s far more valuable. (I think that’s why people who grow/cook/make etc are generally less wasteful too – it’s easier for them to see/imagine the effort.)

What do you think? Do you sell your surplus at a “garden gate” or to friends and family? Or do you give everything away for free? How does it work for you?

* our per egg cost is usually around 9p, so £1.62, but has been a little more lately because of expenses to do with the red mite infestation last month; I’m putting it at around 11p or 12p an egg at the moment.

Monday & Tuesday

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 14 June 2011 in chickens, frugal, growing | 2 comments

There were some ox-eye daisies (yes?) in the horses’ field yesterday – they confused John, made him think he’d shrunk or was suddenly in the land of the giants. He picked one and carried it home for me.

The garden looked very fresh and green after Sunday’s rain; the chickens, on the other hand, looked slightly bedraggled in the drizzle yesterday morning. They have three dry places that they can go when it’s wet but what do they do? they stand out in the rain. Also, Ginger the chicken seems to be thinking about going broody AGAIN. She only came out of being broody at the start of May. Apparently it’s not unheard of for chickens to go broody again if they didn’t set any eggs the first time round. I’ve poked her out the nest boxes two days in a row now, bah.

We’ve had very little slug damage this year – presumably because it’s been so dry – but the bloomin’ things have found our ripening strawberries. *shakes fist* Strawberries have now been relocated to the balcony and I’ll steal some of the chickens’ bedding straw to use if the attacks continue.

Yesterday, I ordered us a monthly meat box from Swillington Organic Farm. They’re not cheap but they tick a lot of the important sustainable/organic/local boxes for us. We should receive our box at the end of the month – can’t wait.

And I actually did two mini-goal things today: got a new phone deal (which was a May mini-goal – only 13 days late) and got a new gas/electricity arrangement too. On the former, I got a new phone & new inclusive mobile internet allowance just by asking – didn’t have to play any “I’m leaving, convince me to stay games”, which was nice. The gas & elec isn’t going to be quite as cheap as it was last year (when it was very cheap) but we decided to go for an 18-month fixed price arrangement – we don’t usually like fixed price things but it was barely any more than the variable so seemed worth it. I did think about play the cashback game – swapping suppliers every six weeks or so, and picking up the cashback deals each time – a friend of mine (who may not want to be named..?) pays for more than half of his yearly energy costs doing that – but decided that I’m a bit too disorganised to do it and I’d probably mess it up by getting locked into a more expensive deal etc, so it wasn’t worth the effort/risk for me.

How has the start of your week been?

RIP Buff the Chicken

Posted by louisa on Friday 10 June 2011 in chickens | 10 comments

Buff, our buff Leghorn chicken, died overnight last night.

It wasn’t unexpected – every day for the last week I’ve gone down to the run and been surprised that she was still alive.

On Wednesday, after a good few days in isolation with her own protected food supply, she did look a bit brighter but yesterday seemed to fade again. When I checked on her yesterday evening, she looked like she’d gone but when I touched her, her still bright eyes bounced open and she bwarked a bit to let me know she still didn’t like me, no matter how much time I’ve spent looking after her and giving her treats over the last few days.

Buff wasn’t the friendliest chicken, in fact she was a bit of a pain in the bum – not laying for ages and being noisy – but it’s still sad that’s she’s died. She was a pretty pure breed leghorn, with a fabulous floppy comb and her eggs, when she deigned to lay, were pure white.

She’s buried in the wooded bit of the garden.

Ten things

Posted by louisa on Monday 6 June 2011 in chickens, cooking, DIY, frugal, growing, soap | 2 comments

1. Buff the chicken has been in isolation since last Wednesday since the others started really *viciously* bullying her (as I said on Twitter, it’s disturbing how vicious chickens can be). I think there have been pecking order issues over the last few weeks and it’s stopped her being able to eat properly. She feels very bony (even for a pure breed) and is weak as a result – looking back at old photos of her, the difference is stark. I’m hoping some time by herself and some special food will turn her around but I wouldn’t be surprised to go down one morning to find she’d died overnight. Sigh.
2. We painted the bathroom on Sunday – not the woodwork yet but the second coat of the walls, ahead of the cupboards being fitted tomorrow. One June mini goal down (nearly)!
3. In other housey news, last year we found a hidden coal hole at the front of our house and over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been having it damp-proofed and turned into a utility room. It’s not been cheap but now has a proper full height doorway and is a proper extra room for the house – it’ll free up room in the kitchen too. It should be finished this week, hurrah!
4. While that’s going on at great expense inside, John’s DIY-mad dad is fitting a fence for us outside — to help contain the dog and the chickens a bit more. The fence is going to be rather frugal for a new fence as the lumberyard John’s dad goes to was throwing away about 20 horizontal fencing beams and some posts, because they’d got slightly bleached in the sun so couldn’t be sold “as new” any more. Madness! But useful timing for us!
5. And speaking of freebies, someone was taking a seemingly brand new electric staple gun in its case at the tip last time John’s dad was visiting – they told him it was “broken” but he took it home and found they’d just inserted the staplers in the wrong place. We now have a brand new working electric staple gun for free ;)
6. I never used to use bar soap to wash anywhere other than my hands – it left a film and dried my skin, causing my face in particular to get greasier in compensation. But my olive oil soap leaves my skin clean and soft – and it stays feeling that way for 12+ hours unlike just about every other cleaning method I’ve tried. I very much like it.
7. I made the ugliest soda bread I’ve ever made today – I don’t know what went wrong but it grew really unevenly. Still tasted lovely with soup for lunch though :)
8. Some of my rapini has gone to seed – the heads weren’t big enough to warrant harvesting. Damn the hot spring!
9. Do you make your own quiches? I’m looking for (frugal) store-cupboard recipe quiche ingredient ideas for when we’ve not got much else in — Viksterbean on Twitter suggested antipasti such as olives and artichokes, and that made me think about adding a swirl of pesto too. Any other ideas?
10. Boron would like it to be known that I did not write this post alone. Apologies for the poor quality of my webcam – I only ever use it for these type of pics ;)



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I really hate red mites

Posted by louisa on Thursday 12 May 2011 in chickens | 7 comments

Last night, our chickens gave us a bit of a scare.

The chickens are generally very good at taking themselves to bed in good time. I think with the exception of a hen or two on one or two occasions when there has been a disruption late in the day, they all tuck themselves away well before dusk. They’re so good that we generally don’t feel the need to check on them every night. (If they are left out, they’re relatively safe in the reasonably fox-resistant run anyway.)

So, anyway, last night. As I was going to bed, I heard a chicken clucking considerably louder than I should have done – she was clearly out of the coop and a more than a little perturbed. Remembering a story from my chicken keeping course, my first thought was “fox!” — had one got into the coop and scared them out? We ran down and looked around but couldn’t see any problems. We put the (mostly asleep) chickens back into the coop and then went to bed ourselves – but I was worried that I’d wake up to the aftermath of a fox attack – a night of anxious dreams. Now though, I suspect the culprit was equally red but a lot smaller.

In the same way the chickens are good at taking themselves to bed, I consider myself pretty good at keeping on top of red mites. I dust the chickens with powder regularly and keep a close eye on the coop – checking & cleaning all the regular spots just about every day. The problem is that I focused on “the regular spots”… When I got down there this morning, the chickens were all mingling in the run as happy as normal but when I started to poke around the coop, I realised there was quite a red mite infestation — in the regular spots, in the litter, in the nest boxes (which hadn’t been a problem before). Not a good situation at all.