A door problem

I mentioned last week that we've started to release our hens to free-range over the garden when we get home each evening. I also mentioned that they are brilliant at getting themselves back into the coop at the end of the day.

And then we confused them.

The old run, looking all crumpled.

We spent nearly all weekend building a new run for them. We wanted something sturdier and taller. We also wanted something with a door to make it easier for both us and them to get in and out - currently we climb over the fence, and they have a little door that we have to tie up with string and was rapidly showing signs of wear.

Phase one of the new run went really well. We set 5 fence posts into the ground, moved the coop sideways a little to allow them a larger space, and dug three quarters of a trench to allow us to bury the mesh six inches down. In order to get it back into a working run ready for the week we re-fitted the old mesh in the gap that we hadn't dug the trench for yet. The piece of mesh was too long, but instead of cutting it we just sat the excess to one side and used it to fill the hole that is currently the door during the day. The hole that is the door hasn't moved - but the big bundle of mesh sitting to one side does make it less clear.

The new run at the end of phase one

This, I think, is the problem. The girls can't find the door - particularly when trying to get to the coop. One night this week three hens managed to navigate to their way in, but I found Pepper wandering round and round the excess mesh trying to work it out. I gave her a helping hand.

Two nights this week our two bantams - Frog and Fizzy - have clearly just given up. They opted for the next best thing. They've decided to sleep on top of the coop instead!

BST and a new sort of freedom

Three cheers for British Summer Time!

It may not have got much above freezing yet, but the hour of extra sunlight in the evenings is still very much appreciated. It makes such a difference to the feel of the day to get home from work and have a few hours of sunlight still left to enjoy - even if I need a hat and scarf to do so!

For the hens this means a change of routine too. Giving them the freedom of the garden under close supervision at the weekends has given us the confidence to decide that we will do so more often. It gets them out of the mud bath that is their run and gives them access to greens, bugs, dry soil and a bit of space to run and flap.

We'd also noticed that the last few times we'd released them that they would happily wander back into the run to get to water, or to the nest boxes which convinced us that they were settled and that they knew where home was which makes the whole thing a lot easier.

So, from now on the plan is to let them out when we get home from work until they decide that it's bed time. We've done this each night this week and it's worked like a treat. We let them out at about six, they enjoy themselves greatly and then at about eight go back to their coop and settle down for the night. Bingo.

Checking out the odds I have corn hidden behind my camera...

Everyone enjoying preening in the late evening sun

A tale of two pests

Sorry for my absence last week: A relatively sunny bank holiday weekend seemed to take me away from my computer for the most part. A most pleasant experience. Did everyone else have a good long weekend?

I must admit though, I have a confession to make. Well, two confessions really. Deep breaths and here we go:

Confession number one
The first concerns last weeks worming. For a while now we've noticed that Fizzy has seemed a little under the weather. She seemed to be eating fine which is one thing to check, and she's never laid an egg which makes it hard to notice that she might have stopped laying, yet she stopped being her normal boisterous self. We'd assumed that this was because she'd slipped down a place or two in the pecking order. As each of the other hens has started to lay that seems to have given them a higher status, leaving poor Fizzy as a bit of an outsider.

However, a week after giving them wormer and she seems to have perked up again. She's still not really part of the group with the others but she's seeming a bit more full of life, and has started to tell us off again if we dare not give her a treat when we go out into the garden.

This is really good to see, but makes me feel bad that we hadn't spotted the problems earlier - and reminds me that at the end of the day we're still novices at this. We'll continue to keep an eye on her (and the others) to make sure that she doesn't pick them up again - and maybe she'll start laying soon if she's feeling better.

Confession number two
We were spending some time with them on Saturday and noticed that Pepper was looking a bit scragglier than normal. Digging around under her wings into the softer downier feathers I spotted a louse scurrying for cover. I only ever saw the one no matter how hard I looked, so we're hoping this isn't a bad infestation, but we gave all four hens a hefty dose of lice powder and disinfected the coop. Again, this is going to be one to keep an eye on and make sure that we've sorted now.

I'll tell you one thing though - I'm so glad that we've make a point of learning how to handle our hens, and getting them used to regular handling. They certainly don't come to us voluntarily, but the process of catching each hen and administering the lice powder was so much simpler than it would have been six months ago. The hens stayed fairly calm, and the whole fiasco was done in a matter of minutes. Phew!

p.s. Sorry for the lack of photos for this one, we acted first and thought about photos second!

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.

What a palaver!

Our hens are very good at laying their eggs in the next boxes. Once they get the hang of egg laying they don't lay them anywhere else - which is great for us - it means we don't end up scrabbling around trying to work out where they've put them now.

There is one exception to this good news and that is when we need to clean out the coop. This weekend we were due a lot of rain, so I decided to take advantage of a couple of sunny hours on Saturday morning to get the coop all clean and tidy and ship shape ready for another week. We let the hens loose in the garden which is usually quite enough distraction and took apart the hen house.

The coop we bought is really useful as the floor of the main coop removes completely, as do the perches, but it means that once we start cleaning the nest boxes are inaccessible. Lemon decided that this was the moment that she needed to lay an egg. Now. When Pepper or Frog is in this position they tend to hover near the coop with their legs crossed until they can get inside again. Lemon is not this subtle about life. She made a racket and a half. Initially I ignored her, egg laying is not as quick as you'd think and I wanted to get the coop sorted before the rain came. But she kept squawking and squawking and squawking. In the end we quickly sorted the nest boxes and reassembled the not-yet-clean coop to allow her access.

To be fair to her, she did pop straight inside, was quiet, and came out again a couple of minutes later. But she hadn't laid an egg. A moment later she was back inside, and then back out again, and she still hadn't laid an egg. This went on for 20 minutes. In the end it took midwife Pepper to pop in and talk her through it. Finally I thought. Except that they didn't then come back out to enjoy the grass, but decided to both sit in the same nest box on top of the egg. I really hope that this isn't the early sign of a broody hen.

In the end I chucked the two of them out, collected the egg and finally got the rest of the coop clean. What a palaver!

Mud, mud, glorious mud!

Most of the time of late the chicken run has been a rather squelchy affair. Our soil could sometimes pass for clay fit for sculptors to use and certainly isn't well drained. We have grand plans to change this in the near future by building them a run with several inches of wood chip flooring as this will be better all round, but for the mean time we have to put up with the mud.

Given the sort of winter we've had, I would anticipate our hens having muddy feet - and possibly even slightly muddy feathers. What I didn't realise is that they would end up caked in the stuff. Pepper has not been a pure white bird for many months, and while Frog's chocolate brown feathers can hide the full extent of the muck she too can build up a good layer.

Fizzy however, tops them all. Maybe she's not so good at preening as the others but I can only assume she regularly drags her belly through the muddiest puddles she can find - just for the fun of it.

Fizzy sporting this years fashion of "muddy tummy"

Just one more minute. Please?

Checking that Joe's new vegetable plot is
in the right place before he starts to dig.

It's becoming a bit of a habit to let the hens loose in the garden for some time each weekend. It's great fun to see them enjoying freedom from their muddy enclosure. The first time we tried it, they barely took in how much garden was available to them but now they're much more familiar with the space and tend to go straight for the grass under the bird feeders which gets covered with seed. Yum yum yum.

Getting the girls back into their run after such an excursion isn't as hard as you'd think due to their great weakness for corn. They're well trained to come running at the rattle of the corn tin and so we can lead them across the garden like the pied piper. A few handfuls of corn thrown into the run area and they're straight inside to get their beaks on such goodies. Easy.

This Saturday however I had no such luck. They'd been loose all morning, but we wanted to go out for the afternoon. I went out armed with the tin of corn and gave it a good shake. Three chickens came running. I led them across the garden planning to round up the stray later and threw a handful of corn into the run. Two chickens went in to investigate. Typical.

So, with Lemon and Pepper busy stuffing their faces, I turned my attention to Frog. Frog seemed to have twigged that this whole corn malarkey was a trick, and much as she wanted to have her share there was no way she was going through the door to get at it! We're starting to get well practised at herding hens and the trick is to keep your arms outstretched - they will run away from both hands at once and so by bringing one hand or the other closer in you can direct them where you want to go. A couple of runs back and forth with little Frog and I finally persuaded her to join the larger two. Now, where had Fizzy got to?

Fizzy was having a bath - a dust bath to be precise - and wanted to finish it before going home if I didn't mind. I did mind. I wanted my lunch and I wasn't going to wait around for Fizzy to finish her bath. Knowing that Fizzy can be the most flighty of the flock I started to move slowly towards her hoping she'd get up and start to run away from me and towards the coop. She ignored me completely.

I got a little closer. She gave me a reproachful look and then continued her bath. This must be a really good bit of dust I thought as I took another step closer. Still she just watched me. So I picked her up to a very disgruntled squawk, carried her across the garden, popped her into the run, and shut the door quickly before they got any clever ideas of escaping again.