What's a worm do?

Its that time again. Lots of pets need regular worming and chickens are no different. In the case of our feathered friends, they need to be wormed every 6 months. We did them when we first got them, and time has flown.

We use Flubenvet. You can buy it at places like Countrywide and then its just a case of spiking their feed with it for a week or so. Since our enormous feeder holds over a weeks food for our flock anyway its a case of taking what we'd normally put in each weekend and adding the requisite amount of drug - in this case about a scoop. Simple.

Mash 'em up

About a month ago I regaled you with my thoughts on looking after our hens in frosty weather. I mentioned that one way to help them stay warm is to mix their food with hot water, and promised that once we had tried it I would come back and tell you all about it. Following that post the weather became increasingly mild, which rather put the idea on the back-burner for a while.

This week, however, all has changed. We had 6 inches of snow on Friday and another inch on Tuesday and the temperature hasn't been higher than 1C for many days. The time had come to put the plan into action.

First things first though - the fruit netting that we use as a roof to the run was bending dangerously under the weight of the snow and threatening to drag the whole run down with it (sorry, no pictures). We removed it. We'd have to take the risk for a few days, and hope that chickens wouldn't get out and foxes wouldn't get in (so far, so good).

Now we could get in and out, we mixed up some layers mash (a finely ground mix of chicken food for adult hens) with some hot water to make a porridge like mixture and popped it in an old bowl. They have tucked in with gusto, and have done so each morning. It has been a massive hit. Hurrah!

Unfortunately its been about the only thing they have enjoyed this week. The girls have not been impressed with all this cold weather. They've been tending to spend most of their time tucked up in the coop to keep warm and have avoided walking on snow if they can help it.
In contrast, we've been having great fun and turned a large portion of the snow in our garden into a snow chicken. I mean, why not?

How has everyone else been finding the snow? 

An icy day

Winter has definitely arrived in Wales. Some parts of the country have had snow - we haven't been that (un)lucky yet. We have had an abundance of frosty mornings though.

My understanding is that chickens aren't too bothered by temperatures around freezing. They'll live in areas that drop to -20 centigrade (certainly not something we have here). They'll happily huddle together at night for warmth and don't seem bothered by frozen ground in the day. There are just one or two little things that we have to be careful about while the weather is like this.

The main problem is that their water container has a tendency to freeze over. Some days this just means cracking the ring of ice around the bottom and flicking it out so that the fresh water from inside can flow out again. Other days the ice has been more widespread and has meant we've been bringing the whole thing in and sitting it under a warm tap in order to get it all back to normal again.

Another cold weather thing we've been thinking about is a change to their food. When topping up our supplies of pellets for the girls, we noticed they were on multi-buy with mash. As far as I know pellets and mash are exactly the same food - its just that one sort has been formed into pellets to make it easier to handle. You can treat them the same and feed either as dry food, but you can also mix the mash with water for a porridge-like consistency. Several other chicken bloggers have said they make up warm mash on particularly cold mornings and we thought that sounded like a good but potentially messy idea. As yet we haven't found time to give it a go though. Maybe as we're home more over the Christmas holidays we'll give it a try - I'll let you know how we get on.

Corn, glorious corn!

Photo courtesy of: yeagleya

I was spending some time with the hens last week, giving them a treat of some mixed corn. After a while, I decided that I should spend some time specifically with Pepper to continue training her to be handled. I caught her with relatively little fuss and was settling her onto my knee when I turned to look at the rest of the pen. I was shocked, though not really surprised, at what I saw.

Lemon and Fizzy both had their heads in the corn pot, eating as fast as they could. I'd not clipped the lid shut, and these mischievous hens are always ready to take advantage of such a situation!

They have recently become a lot more aware of the fact that corn doesn't just fall from the sky, but always comes from the same pot. Fizzy has taken to jumping up and pecking at the pot as I climb into their run - her way of saying "please, please, some of that please" (and yes, I do mean jumping). She will also now squawk at you until you give her the treat she can see - she really is becoming very demanding.

This also helped considerably when Lemon was wandering the garden recently. A quick rattle of the tin and she came running over to see what was on offer. Unfortunately Joe was attempting to photograph her escape at the time and ended up with some rather blurred chicken photos, oops!

In other news, after two weeks of limping, Pepper seems to be back to her old self again. The limp never slowed her down particularly, but it does seem to have gone away of its own accord *sighs with relief*.

Eat your greens!

As the weather gets colder, wetter and windier, the amount of greenery available for our chickens to eat and play in has reduced considerably. They've been starting to look bored. I'd heard that a good way to keep chickens occupied is to hang up a cabbage in the run that can swing freely for them to peck at. One Tesco Basics cabbage, some screws, wire, string and sticks later and Joe had set up a contraption to do just that.

Unfortunately, it turns out that we have fussy hens. On our return from holiday the cabbage was untouched and being resolutely ignored by the girls. A few torn-off bits that we'd tried to encourage them with were still sitting on the mud. All in all, an unmitigated failure!

In an attempt to see if the swinging food idea would work, we removed the cabbage and replaced it with an apple. We know the girls love apple - in fact they will wolf down any fruit. It took them a day or two to work it out, but once they did they loved it. It provided us with great amusement to see them bobbing their heads back and forth in an attempt to judge the movement of the fruit before making a jab. All four of them were crowded around it making the apple twist and swing - hopefully they were enjoying it as much as we were! It should have been only a matter of time before one of them got an apple to the face - but it turns out they are better at ducking than I gave them credit for. In no time at all the apple was demolished.

The following day we were amazed to see that they were starting to peck at the cabbage. In a fit of laziness we had left the whole cabbage on the run floor, and slowly each bird was giving it a go and finding it wasn't so bad after all. We hung it up again and this time they're going for it, although with less enthusiasm than the apple caused. Typical!

Food for all? The return of the chickens

By jove, I think they've got it!

I'm sure you're all wondering about the outcome of our feeder training program. Five days after Fizzy mastered the art of eating from the rat-proof feeder, she was still the only one. She could have helped the others to master the feeder, but no, that's not Fizzy's style. Instead, she continued to try to confirm her position near the top of the pecking order by dominating the feeder. If any of the other girls went to eat, there Fizzy would go too. The result being that if any other chicken started to get the hang of the moving platform Fizzy would put them off further investigation.

In order to force the situation we added a kink to our run wall; the feeder was surrounded on three sides. No more reaching in from the side now! This certainly changed the group dynamics and within 24 hours we spotted all four birds eating together - all stood on the platform. Frog quickly gathered courage after this change-over. Like Fizzy, she could no longer reach the food without standing on the platform and she was spotted using the feeder without any help just a couple of days after the move. Lemon, whether  by design or accident, was also seen standing on the platform to eat (albeit with one foot still on the ground) at about the same time. We hadn't yet seen Pepper use the feeder properly, but she was eating heartily while the others were holding the platform still so we declared a success and removed the training bolts completely.

Fizzy, again, didn't seem phased by this at all (she does seem to have the brains - or maybe the brawn - of the flock). The platform sits at about her chest height now, but a run and a jump and up she goes. The others may take a little longer, but with Fizzy able to open the lid for them all we won't be having any hungry chickens yet. All in all, a successful training program.

What do you think we should get them to learn next?


The End



Update: Another week or so passes and Fizzy is still the only one who can open it properly. Lemon sort of does so without realising she is at which point Frog or Pepper will see the food and pile in, inadvertently standing on the platform and holding it open. We may have been a little premature shutting it completely, but no ones going hungry yet so we have decided to persevere. Chickens aren't known for their huge brains after all...

Food for all? Fizzy strikes back.

Last week I started to tell you the story of training the hens to use the feeder. Frustratingly, they had all learnt how to avoid stepping on the platform but still get to the food. The drama continues...

While they were eating they seemed to forget about that big bad platform and would step on to it, causing the dreaded movement. Over several days, the distance they fled from it got shorter and shorter. Fizzy seemed least scared and soon learnt that if she didn't run away, but just lifted her foot, she could continued eating. Still not quite what we were after but definitely progress.

Four days after we moved the training screws we had a mini celebration. Fizzy was happily eating while stood square in the middle of the platform - she'd done it! One down, three to go. The others were still quite jumpy. Pepper and Lemon's longer necks gave them an advantage. They were finding it more comfortable to reach from the side than the smaller two, and therefore were a lot less motivated to try to get closer. We hoped that more time would be enough to do the trick.

Maybe Fizzy could show the others how it is done? Maybe...

Food for all?

One of our worries about introducing livestock into our garden was which pests we might also be inviting in. We decided from the start we would make a stand against such things, and ordered a rat-proof feeder for our girls.

The premise is simple: the feeder comes with a lid. When a hen approaches the feeder they stand on a platform, this in turn uses a series of levers to open the lid which reveals the food and allows the hen to eat. Even our two bantams should be much heavier than a large rat (a team of large rats might be a different issue - but we would cross that bridge if we ever came to it!).

The manufacturers advise a training schedule for the hens which initially involves holding the lid completely open with some screws so that the chickens learn where to find their food. This was nice and simple, and the chickens thought so too. After a few days they would charge out of the coop each morning and go straight to the feeder for breakfast. On to stage two - and this is where the fun starts!

We moved the screws a little bit lower. The lid is still mostly open, they can still see the food, they can still get to the food, but now when they step on the platform it will move. Not much, maybe a centimetre or two,but enough. This clearly was plenty... the first hen to give it a go jumped a mile! Each one tried it in turn and lots of flapping, the occasional squawk, and plenty of practice running away commenced.

Yet, as the day continued, hunger and necessity kicked in and our clever little girls learnt that if they stand to one side of the platform and stretched their necks enough then they could still eat without any unnecessary panic. Clever? Yes. Useful? No.

Patience was clearly going to be required. To be continued...