Chickens

Our chickens live here. Clearly someone else uses it to sleep in the daytime!

It's a 4 egg day today :O)

bit early in the day to do a count yet…….

😳
I'm new to this remember!

Second the VSb opener – bleedin brilliant piece of kit. 4 x AA batteries last over a year as far as i can tell and it works perfectly. The only minor issue is that in the height of summer it gets light so early that your chickens may get let out at about 4am when the foxes will still be around. You can get over this by attaching a simple timer to the VSB which overrides the light sensor in the morning, but not at night.
you can see the opener in this pics of my home made hen house (old garage doors that were hanging around.

Another recommendation is to get a feeder like this:

You can get them off ebay for about £15 but I made this for about £6, including the barrel and a pheasant feeder spring. It takes about 30kg of feed and stops wild birds and rats getting at the food.

Another fox deterent is the electric netting which I think also works brilliantly. My two dogs have both been zapped by it and won't go anywhere neer the fence now! A bit pricey (like the VSB) but it will hold its value really well and you can always sell it on ebay for very little loss.

With this setup (and a very good 35ltr galvanised drinker) we've been able to leave our 6 chickens alone for a couple of weeks at a time with just someone popping in every other day to collect the eggs.

How does that feeder work?

This is a feeder I made which must hold 40 to 60kg – it's hard to get at as inside the pen but have to watch for evidence of rats trying to get to it.

Not got a good pic of the drinker but it's 30 litres; I use Vanodine V18 to stop it going green.

Mudshark: That's the drinker…. best I've come across so far. How does the Vanodine V18 work?

The feeder is basically a 25kg chutney barrel with a 1" hole drilled in the bottom. Over this hole you fit the pheasant feeder spring – the pellets go down into the spring and when the chickens peck it a few pellets fall out. They get the idea very quickly. The springs are deigned to work with wheat and so are coiled a bit tightly for layers pellets, but you simply stretch the spring out a bit to open it up and allow the pellets to come out.

Legs are just 3 bits of 2×2 bolted onto the side of the drum. fill and forget 🙂

other thing I forgot to mention was another vote for real full fat creosote on the hen house. personally I like the smell and the fact that it melts red mite on contact is just perfect. need to reapply it some time soon.

Vanodine V18; don't know how it works but it's safe for the chickens – good for them even – but stops algae and whatever growing, contains iodine maybe.

I like that feeder of yours. Mine was made from an old desk.

Better pic of the drinker – costs £27 from my local supplier though I got for a lot less than that before the pound got hit; actually that's one of the few things I had to pay for along with mesh for the pen and hinges for the house – the rest was scavenged.

all these thigns on stilts look like they ought to come with instructions to 'light blue touch paper and stand well back'

Some great ideas here :O)

Cheers

Tim

Same drinker except I have the galvanised version – managed to get a second hand one for about £16. I second the 'using scavenged bits' theory – with the exception of the VSB (£60 ebay) and the netting/energiser (£70 ebay), both of which I could sell on for about the same money), I've spent very little indeed.

I've toyed with chicken ownership but I'm still undecided. I'm sure I heard a while back that you need permission from the council in urban areas, is that true?

Doubtfull. Mrs SB was unsure about it and now wouldn't be without them!

I'd just get a couple and see how you go. There should be no probem as long as you're not in a tennanted property that has a clause like that in the tennancy agreement

C

It's possible that there's a clause in the deeds about livestock but unlikely. Other than that the council would only be interested if you keep too many or have a too large house for them – I believe 50 chickens is the max and the house can't be 2 stories.

Edit – Some info here:

http://www.nfumutual.co.uk/lifestyle/keeping-chickens.htm

re: councils – you really need to check. Also worth going through your deeds regardless of whether it's ex/current council or not. In ours for example there is a random clause expressly forbidding us to keep pigs.

ive got 38 hens/cockrels now had about 45 until the fox came for the last time… we have a big range of breeds from light sussex to buff orpington's we've even got one that lays baby blue eggs the best fox deterrent is to get a gun and ex battery hens are cr@p there ex for a reason because they have been used to the limits and are on the brink of death 😯

Mine says no chickens. But it also says no caravans and campers vans and we've had those on the street for years!
My neighbours have given us the thumbs up and other neighbours have had chickens for a couple of years.

So Taka, what do you do with all those eggs? Been tinkering with the idea of getting a load more, but not sure about the logistics.
Are you using electric netting/what sort of area do they have to roam about in?

We've had two (a Neera and a Goldline) for the last year or so and they are little egg laying machines. One a day each for pretty much every day over winter!

However… when they were allowed to fully roam the garden, they ruined two veg beds and the lawn, so now they only get let out when supervised (every night) and we extended their run to say sorry. They really are characters though. Next time you have leftover spagetti, give them a handful and see what they do. Ours think it's worms and spend the next five minutes going mental around their run with a beakful.

Talking about bark though, ours have had that as their run floor for a year and no problems. We do change it every weekend though.

ex battery hens are cr@p there ex for a reason because they have been used to the limits and are on the brink of death

Well not always as I still have an ex-batt that I've had since Aug '08 and she still lays an egg a day. She is an exception though; and POLs are the best option of course. But I really enjoyed watching the ex-batts change once getting some space and ground to play with.

Our deeds say no livestock, but apparently chickens don't count as livestock. (That's what I'm sticking to.)

At our old house, they used to get up on the garden wall to sunbathe, without us realising. It was only when we were moving that we mentioned having chickens to the lady over the road and she went to get her husband to prove she wasn't going crazy and seeing chickens on walls 🙂

I used to have chickens, loved 'em. One in particular used to enjoy being picked up and taken for a walk. She liked to drink tea out of a saucer. Try singing to them, they will sing back.

On the no chickens covenant. It's not criminal law, it's civil law, and enforcement of it depends on the covenantor still being alive, and caring enough to do something about it. Have another look at your title deeds, you may be ok.

chicken tractor

4 more eggs today :O)

Just do it!

Mine are eating brussel sprout leaves and purple sprouting brocolli leaves at present and loving it.

Chucking snails in is always good for a laugh too.

Slugs. They will learn to enjoy them!

sharkbait – either eat them mainly the ones from the less rated hens like the light Sussex or incubate the bigger more expensive reeds like the buff orpington's some of them roam about the fields when they feel like it and others are in a big run which is about 25ft square with a chicken wire fence that's about 6ft high foxes can jump over it if they wanted to

Great excitement at Harry Towers! 4 girls arrive in the morning, children actually helping prepare chicken house! Great tips on chicken care on STW site 😀

Excellent. They really are ace. You'll never waste so much time doing nothing as you will enjoying the company of chickens.
Bet you don't sleep tonight!
You def. won't sleep tomorrow night worrying about them.

List of names exceeds 20, got to reduce to 4! Raining like stink here, hope the shed's watertight. Can't wait 🙂

Amazing! Eating out of my hand and laid 2 eggs on the 5th day of living here! I'm chuffed 😀

I got a small-ish (500ml) screw top food container from Sainsburys for grain.

Once trained, I can shake the pot & they come running, which is a funny sight!

It makes them easier to get in if I go out!