Chicken-n-Veg

Archive for April, 2009

It’s been a busy but satisfying weekend and we are now proud owners of five hens. It was an early start on Saturday and we were on our way before 7.00 o’clock to pick up a ‘Haven Henhouse’ from Flyte So Fancy in Pulham, Dorset (refer to previous post for more details). I drove down with just my daughter, so we could get it into our estate car, with the rear seats down. We got there and back with the flat pack kit before lunch. Flyte So Fancy seems to be a very professional company. They build all of their kits on site, in a large workshop. There is also an outside area with lots of assembled henhouses and a big shop with lots of chicken keeping accessories – food, feeders, books, fencing, etc. Unfortunately I was on a tight schedule so I didn’t have a proper look around, but for anyone who does live close buy it would definitely be worth checking out.

The assembly of the henhouse went very smoothly. No missing parts and very clear instructions with colour photos. Where panels had a particular orientation they had been helpfully marked and all screws were in separate, labelled bags, based on screw length.

The finished house was just what we wanted. Very well built with a good sized run. A luxury home for some lucky hens !

It looks like it will be very easy to clean. The roosting  box is at waist height with a hinged door at the rear allowing full access to remove the perches and nest boxes and sweep out the litter. It also has a perspex heart shaped window. It does say on the website that you can choose not to have a window, but we like it. It seems like good way to check that all the hens are inside before closing the door.

With their home built we were off to pick up the hens by 1.00 o’clock. We decided to get them from Cotswold Chickens. There are more convenient, local suppliers but having rung around they did not actually have many point of lay hens for sale. Friends had previously recommended Cotswold Chickens and a quick phone call confirmed that they had plenty of birds available. We ended up buying five point of lay pullets -  two Amber Lees, two Bluebelles, and one Bovan Goldline. These are all hybrids (a cross of two purebreds) which should all lay a good number of eggs, but probably won’t start laying for a month or so. As we were beginners we were given a helpful crash course in the basics, including picking up and holding the hens, clipping their wings,  feeding tips, acclimatising them to their new home, the henhouse cleaning regime, etc. So with the five hens crammed into a box (which they seemed quite happy about – something to do with their roosting nature apparently) and equipped with a basic starter kit (food, feeders, drink tonic, cleaning products, bedding materials) to keep us going for several weeks, we were off.

A soon as we got back we introduced the girls (Henrietta, Snowdrop, Flora, Daisy and Bluebell) to their new home.

They were put straight into the roosting area with some water, and were not allowed into the run. They were left there all night to get them used to the fact that this was their new home.

Another early morning to let the chickens out into the run for the first time. With a baby in the house I don’t think we will need to set an alarm to get us up early !  They spent the day happily eating, drinking and exploring their new home whilst we blocked off any holes in the hedges and fences that would let a hen through. We intend to keep them inside the run for at least a week, getting them totally familiar and comfortable, before letting them out into the garden.

At about 7.00 pm, and with no prompting, they all climbed the ladder and ‘put themselves to bed’. I guess they already feel at home !

We have been planning to get some hens for quite some time (hence the blog name) and spring seems an excellent time to do it. If we get some point of lay hens now they should definitely be providing us with lots of lovely, fresh, free range eggs as we get into summer. A lovely complement to the fresh pickings from the garden. Spinach omlette,….fresh mayonnaise and salad,…..summer fruit meringues,….. mmmmmm.

We are thinking of getting a number point of lay pullets first, hopefully this weekend. Then when these have settled, after a couple of weeks say, getting two or three rescued (ex-battery farm) hens. We have been doing quite a bit of research into suitable hen houses / coops, which will ultimately determine how many we can keep. We have decided to go for a design with an integrated run. There are definitely foxes around at night,and we occasionally see them sunning themselves on our lawn during the day. We intend to let the hens have free reign of the garden whenever we are in the garden. During the times When we are not about, however, we want them to have enough room to stay happy and safe (and for our vegetable beds to stay safe from them !). We also wanted the roosting area to be well off the ground so that vermin would not be tempted to set up home underneath.

We came up with a shortlist of two hen houses we liked the look of and seemed to be consistently well reviewed by others.

• A Boughton 902A Poultry Ark with run extension (suitable for 6-7 hens) from Forsham Cottage Arks
• A Haven Henhouse with extended 9ft run (suitable for 6-8 hens) from Flyte So Fancy

They both seem to be well built, easy to clean, easy to move and reasonably fox proof. We have now decided on the Flyte So Fancy design. This seems to offer a lighter, more airy run. To be honest, however, the main reason is that it is available for instant collection from the companies premises in Dorset. This is only an hour or so away and panders to the impatient “I want it now” part of my character. It means we can pick up and build the henhouse this Saturday and get our hens on the same day !

Our first ever blog post is a roundup of activity in the garden for the last two months, as we tried to recover from a late start.

The first job was to clean and tidy the greenhouse. We then removed the polythene sheets from the raised beds. Due to the arrival of the latest member of our family, towards the end of last year, our 2008 growing season was seriously curtailed. Rather than just leave the beds to the mercy of the weeds, we dug in plenty of manure and compost in early autumn and then covered them all with black polythene sheets. The result, when we finally removed the sheets, was some lovely soil, kindly worked over by the worms. Admittedly there were still a few weeds where there was a gap in the around the edge of the beds, but certainly no back breaking digging was required. We will definitely do the same again this year with any unused beds.

We then planted onion sets, garlic, potatoes, broad beans, peas, sweetcorn, French beans, runner beans, carrots, salad (rocket, lettuce, radishes) and herbs (coriander, dill, parsley) directly into the beds. We also sowed chilli, cucumber, tomatoes, courgette and squash seeds into pots in the greenhouse.