January 8th, 2010 | 
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A couple of days ago we had the first real snow of winter and since then the temperature has hardly crept above freezing. The garden is looking very wintery. I don’t envy the hens though. They had never seen any snow before this week and were not very keen to check it out on the first morning. Last night the temperature dropped below -9 Celsius and actually froze their automatic pop hole so they were shut in till we let them out. We’d better make sure it doesn’t freeze open at night ! I’m impressed by how hardy they are and they are still typically laying 5 eggs per day. They will need to be hardy though, as the sub zero temperatures are forecast to continue for the next week or so.
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The wet weather we’ve had in the last month or so has brought surprisingly swift end to our work in the garden for this year. Weeks of rain have taken their toll and there are many jobs that we haven’t been able to finish. The last proper outdoor task that we did complete, was to prune our fruit trees at the end of October. Since then, however, we have not been really been able to do anything. We totally failed to plant out garlic or broad beans, or dig in manure and cover up the unused beds for winter. More work for next year, I guess !
The natural soil in our garden is clay so all the rain meant large puddles of standing water all over the lawn making any real garden work impossible. There was also quite a lot of standing water in the chickens run which they quickly turned into a mud bath. We had to rearrange their run to avoid the muddy pools and so far their new area is relatively clean.
Last weekend Snowdrop, one of our younger hens and certainly the most friendly and lively, became very withdrawn. She was clearly feeling very poorly and just stood under a tree, away from the other hens, with her head down. She was not interested in any of the food we offered, which was extremely unusual. We checked for all the obvious hen problems but could not find anything (she wasn’t egg bound, had no lice, had a clean vent, no sign of being crop bound, her eyes were clear, no respitory problems, etc.). We managed to get her into our local vets as soon as they opened on Monday. I was very impressed with their service. They seemed very knowlegeable and the consultation and treatment was less than £10.
Apparently Snowdrop’s temperature was "off the scale" and the vet diagnosed an infection of some sort. He put her on a 7 day course of Baytril antibiotics. We had to give this to her twice a day, mixed with some water, using a small syringe (not easy the first few times !). He also recommended keeping her away from the other hens to limit the chance of cross infection. Additionally, as Baytril is not licensed for hens, he said that we should not consume any of her eggs until at least 10 days after the end of treatment.
Our temporary quarantine solution is to bring her in to the house in the evenings and put her to roost in a carboard box, with a makeshift litter tray and perch. Then in the mornings we place her in quite a large sectioned off area of the run (quite easy to do with moveable electric netting), so she can see the other hens. She doesn’t seem to mind this and after only 5 days of treatment she’s eating and drinking properly again and seems to be back to her normal, lively self.
With autumn well and truly upon us, I decided to spend a little bit of time this weekend constructing a wellington boot stand. The idea of the stand is that it is positioned just outside the back door. Instead of muddy wellies being brought into the house, they are removed outdoors, and are placed upside down on the stand. They can stay outside, on the stand, in all weather and the inside of the boots won’t get wet.
The stand didn’t cost anything to make as it only used materials I already had (old fence posts, scraps of wood and reclaimed screws). Less than an hours work, a quick coat of non-toxic wood preserver, and hey presto, one ‘rustic’ (ie. it looks homemade), but very useful welly stand.
Bit of a gap posting updates because of our 2 week summer break in France (and then another couple of weeks catching up in the garden and at work).
We left the garden and chickens in the very capable hands of various friends and family and came back to a vegetable garden in full swing. Plentiful beans, tomatoes, cucumber, courgettes, kale, chillies. There was also a good supply of plums and blackberries. We got more than 4 kg of greengages as ground fall, round one tree, which was quickly turned into jam.
We took opportunity of the sunny weather on Saturday to dig up all our potatoes so we could get them dried in the sun before storage. We had one bed of Charlotte potatoes and half a bed of Edzell Blue, and managed to dig up enough to fill four large hessian sacks. This didn’t seem bad considering how many we had already dug up to eat as delicious new potatoes.
Earlier this week we fitted an automatic VSBb pop-hole opener to our henhouse. This was really to give us additional peace of mind when we are not there. Whenever we go away we arrange for someone visit daily, to feed the hens and collect the eggs. We cannot, however, expect them to also open up the henhouse every morning and shut it every evening. Also the electric fence has to be turned off to collect the eggs and it would be easy for someone to forget to turn it back on. By having the pop-hole close automatically at dusk, at least the hens should be safe at night when the foxes are most active, even if the fence is not powered. We actually found the gruesome remains of a hens foot in our garden last week and our next door neighbour found three more feet in their garden. Obviously someone in the area has lost some of their hens to foxes, so ours are clearly at risk too.
We got the opener from Flyte So Fancy, our henhouse supplier, as they actually had a custom kit for our Haven henhouse. It included a pre cut door, sliders and pulley wheels. This made fitting very easy – it was just a case of unscrewing the old door fixings and replacing with the supplied kit.
The electronics were housed in a weatherproof box and powered by four AA batteries, which apparently will not need replacing for at least a year. It was fitted on the outside of the house and a motorised draw string opens and closes the pop-hole door according to light levels. The light sensor settings are adjustable with a small screwdriver.
It all seems to be working very well so far. It has been operational for four days and we haven’t had a hen locked out yet ! The only thing we have noticed is that dawn is very early at this time of year – around 4.30am. Our neighbours might not appreciate the noise at this time and also the foxes will still be roaming. So we have now, therefore, ordered an additional battery timer. This will allow us to override when the door is opened in the morning. We will set it to close automatically at dusk and then open after 7am.
This weekend we got eight eggs from our eight hens, for the first time, so we can now be confident that they are all laying. For the last couple of weeks we have typically been getting six eggs a day (and occasionally seven).
This weekend, in an effort to make looking after our hens even easier than it already is, we made a droppings ‘tray’ to sit under their perch. It was very easy to make and should be suitable for most henhouses that don’t come with a built in tray.
The hens enjoy kicking up their litter material all over the area around the pop hole, making a real mess in their run, jamming up the horizontal slider for their door. The solution was making a dropping tray by modifying a heavy duty tarpaulin. We had a spare one, but they are very cheap to buy. It was measured and cut for size allowing a 7.5-10cm (3-4 inch) turn up on each edge. It was then just a case of hemming the cut edges and sewing the corners. Handles (from cut off material) were also sewn on the sides.
Time will tell how long lasting or successful it is, but they certainly haven’t been able to kick any bits in the first couple of days of use. It should make cleaning out a breeze. It is waterproof so nothing goes through onto the floor of the henhouse.The handles mean it can be easily lifted out and tipped straight in the compost bins. It’s also easier for us to fill it with the litter material and carry it back to the hen house.
This evening we made up some carrot, radish and lettuce seed tapes. Seed tapes (basically seeds stuck onto paper at regular intervals) are available from quite a few seed retailers, but at quite a high price, which is why we prefer to make our own. I think that seed tapes are a very convenient way of dealing with very small seeds, with very little going to waste and saves lots work on thinning out when the seeds come out. They are extremely quick and easy to use. Simply make a small trench of the required depth, as you would for the seeds and lay the tape in the trench before covering and watering. Hey presto – job done ! Perfectly spaced, straight rows and no seeds blown all over your beds by the wind.
Carrot seed tape is one of the most frequently sold seed tapes. Supposedly a big advantage of carrot seed tape is that not having to thin out the carrots reduces the risk of carrot fly. The very act of thinning the carrot seedlings attracts carrot fly.
For the seed tape paper we used kitchen roll. You can just as easily use old newspapers but we didn’t have any on hand. We use all ours to line the bottom of the hen house. It is just important that the paper will quickly break down in wet soil. Glossy magazine paper would not be suitable. This should be cut into thin strips (say 1.5 cm or 3/4 inch wide). One advantage of the kitchen roll is that it is easily folded, concertina style, to make it quick to cut the strips. It can also be made into longer strips than the newspaper, matching the length of our raised beds.
To stick the seed to the paper we used rice glue. This is often used for traditional Japanese paper crafts and quickly breaks down in wet soil. It is made very simply by wizzing up a small quantity of left-over cooked rice in a food blender with a small quantity of water. You are looking for a consistency similar to PVA adhesive. Don’t make up too much as it really won’t last more than a few days before going off. Alternatively you could make up a flour and water paste, but we find the rice glue is stronger and makes for easier handling of the tapes when they are dry. We put the glue into one of the squeezy, refillable glue pens that you can get from hobby shops. We just made the nozzle slightly larger to stop it from blocking up. You could also use a cheap icing syringe or just a small paint brush. Then it is simply a matter of putting spots of glue at the intervals you want and dropping a seed on each glue spot. A pair of tweezers helps here.
Then leave the tape to dry overnight. Don’t forget to label the tape if you are making several different tapes at the same time.