Introducing....

So here they are, our new girls. They're young (too young to lay yet) Warrens. They were selected by Abi and her good friends Rosie and Harvey, who duly named them Goldie (one has a band of feathers around her neck which have a definite golden shimmer to them) and Pecky (so named because as I bent down to take a closer look at Goldie, the other chicken started pecking my bottom! In actual fact the children wanted to call the second chicken Pecker.....but we eventually managed to persuade them otherwise!).

The kind man at the farm (who had dispatched more than 30 chickens to new homes already that day), clipped their wings for us and rather unceremoniously, packed them into a cardboard box for the journey home in the back of the car.

Here they are emerging in their new surroundings.

It was an accident....

We accidentally bought two new chickens!

Trip to the Farm

So we went to Longdown Activity Farm at the weekend with some friends. They've got some LOVELY chickens there...........the type that lay eggs!.............so................

Message from Juh-Oh

Juh-Oh asks: "Do you think that the chooks are hanging out for you to knit them a woolly jumper?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7947984.stm"

Wow! What fabulous jumpers, I might try one of those!

Not many eggs

For about 6 months now, our chickens have hardly laid any eggs. In the past month, Leia has started to lay the odd one. When you have 3 chickens, it REALLY, REALLY grates when you find yourself buying eggs! Drastic action is needed!

Scarcity of eggs

We have been in the grip of an egg drought for about 6 months now. For 5 month none of the three chooks were laying eggs, then the aptly named Leah started again, a couple of weeks ago, but she seems to have stopped again! Have started giving them Poultry Spice in an attempt to bribe them back into laying.

Door Fixed (?)

I've re-threaded the automatic door line through the mechanism and re-tied it to the door itself. Hopefully this has fixed the problem; we'll find out this evening when the light gets low.

The Chickens Are Restless

Yesterday morning I was a little later than usual going out to let the chickens out of their run. I was greeted by a chorus of indignant squawks, the sound of a whirring motor, and no sign of their ladyships.

It turned out that the automatic door had hit a hitch. It basically consists of an electic motor with a line tied around the spindle. This line is tied to the rope attached to the door, and so physically opens and closes the door. The line had snapped, leaving the door closed and the motor free-running.

Given that we installed the door system in July 2oo6, and this is the first problem we've had with it, I consider that not bad going.

I tied the door open for the day, and will get round to fixing the line ASAP.

Kiev's comment

The previous picture shows an expression on Kiev's face that suggests how she's feeling about the whole thing. When Alan had put the lid/roof on, she made the following unambiguous comment:

Custom built Sin Bin

Alan has spent the best part of the day hand-crafting a bespoke Sin Bin for Kiev. Lovingly crafted from the best materials that B&Q can offer (2x4 batten & chicken-wire), this Bowens original boasts a unique design based on tried-and-tested designs from all over the world (hooray for the Interweb!).

Features include:

• made-to-measure - just big enough (bigger than the Chimenea!) but not large enough to offer any degree of comfort.
• wire flooring (not very comfortable)
• raised flooring (encouraging a draft around the bum)
• securely fitting removable lid/roof
• newspaper beneath to catch poo

NB: water and food was added after this photo was taken. This photo reminds me of something.......what is it now.........

Shut her out

Another technique to try and persuade Kiev not to be broody anymore is to hoick her out of the nest box and close the gate into the the run, so she can't get back into the coop. This is quite mean as she then spends the rest of the day strutting round and round the outside of the run, trying to find a way in. She is like a machine that will not be distracted from her purpose (she has the demeanour of a person who REALLY needs the toilet and can't get into the loo!).

A broody chook

A broody chicken is a fascinating thing. Kiev is a Buff Orpington, and is prone to this behaviour, sure enough she was broody about the same time last year. She will sit in the nest box from dawn until dusk, day after day, not eating or drinking and not moving or exercising in any way and not laying any eggs. This year, in his valiant attempt to 'snap her out of it' Alan has tried a number of approaches which have included building a partition at the end of Stalag Chicken for Kiev to remain in solitary confinement ..........which she did............for about 3 minutes. We don't even know how she was escaping, I stood one morning with a camera to photograph her escape. I know I'm starting to sound like Mr Tweedy again but I swear, she saw me and hid behind the coop, there was a slight wobbling of the nylon netting that formed the barrier between her 'confined' area and the main part of the run and there she was, no longer in solitary! I have no idea how she did it! Another time Alan, Abi and I were all lying on the grass the other side of the run fence and none of us saw how she got across the barrier! Alan has been reading books and consulting websites and yesterday I found him shoving Kiev back into the Chimenia (see blog from June 2007), our improvised Sin Bin. When he removed her at the end of the day (covered in soot) she stomped straight back up the ramp into the coop where she remained.

Man vs. Chicken

For the past three weeks, a battle has been taking place in our back garden. On the one side you have a big, fat, caramel coloured chicken called Kiev who is driven by laws of nature as old as the species, she wants to sit on an egg until it hatches and is determined to let NOTHING prevent her from doing this (not even the lack of an egg!). On the other side is Alan who has been waging a spirited (if not entirely successful) campaign to try and stop her.

Cheeky Chickens

Recent weekends have seen Alan cleaning out the chicken coop and run, a process that has been streamlined into a 20 minute job. For the past couple of weekends, the hens seem to strut around the place, watching Alan make his preparations (getting his 'cleaning' things together) and just at the point when he is about to open the large coop door and start sweeping out, one of the chickens strolls up the ramp and installs themselves in one of the nest boxes to lay an egg. They can be in there for anything up to an hour. To watch this, you could almost think that the chickens know exactly what they're doing and that it forms part of their weekend's entertainment.

New blog

For anyone who is interested, now have another blog at: http://bowensallotment.blogspot.com/
Can you guess what it's about?!

Chickens to eat

Alan surprised me the other day by saying that he thinks we should have a few chickens and then kill and eat them. Hmmmm........

Molly on the mend

Regularly coating Molly's leg in Grapeseed Oil, followed by weekly coating in Benzyl Benzoate (had to order this from chemist, made sure I mentioned several times, very loudly that it was for my chicken and not anybody in the family as it is a treatment for scabies), seems to be working. The Benzyl Benzoate took some time to arrive and is in a huge bottle - someone else in the village orders it for their horse apparently, so I guess that's why. It is a thick, white liquid. We apply it to Molly's leg with a toothbrush. She's walking on bad leg now, still limping but much better than it was. Also, when applying treatment, her toes(do chickens have toes?!) curl up, which we take to be a good sign as for a while there, she seemed to have no feeling in her foot at all as there was no response to us touching it.

Scaly Leg?

This is what Molly's leg/foot looks like:

Molly's Scaly Leg ?

Here is Molly being very calm and placid as we 'bathed' her leg in Grape Seed Oil (though she does have an expression on her face that seems to say: "I could blind you with one peck you know!").

Hopping Molly

Poor Molly. She has had a limp for absolutely ages now and about 2 months ago it got noticeably worse so that she could not put her leg or foot down at all. She has been spending most of the time laying down (looking like one of those ceramic hen-shaped things that people used to have in their kitchen - what were they for anyway?). It even got to the point where I was having to carry her out of the coop each morning (though she managed to get herself back in at bed-time). Having consulted a few chicken Gurus and books, we are treating her as if it is Scaly Leg by immersing her leg in Grape Seed Oil (I believe any cooking oil will do, we just happened to have some Grape Seed Oil) and brushing it with an old toothbrush. It might just be wishful thinking on my part but she seems a little better. She's certainly able to get herself out of the coop in the mornings now. We will continue with the treatment and see what happens.