Chicken-n-Veg

Archive for the ‘Eggs’ Category

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.

Last weekend Snowdrop, one of our younger hens and certainly the most friendly and lively, became very withdrawn.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.

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).

I think all, or almost all of our younger hens are now laying. It started off a week ago, with one tiny egg in a nest box (see photo above). In the following days we had a number of soft shelled, broken eggs in the perching area and some more smaller eggs outside the henhouse as well in the nest boxes. By the end of the week, however, they seemed to have got the hang of how and where to lay their eggs. For the last few days we have been getting two or three smaller eggs in the nest boxes, along with the larger eggs laid by our ex-battery farm hens. We haven’t had any soft shelled eggs for at least five days.

When we checked the nest boxes mid morning we found our first egg. It weighed in at 74g. Very Large / Size 1 according to our Good Housekeeping Cook Book. By the end of the day we had two additional (Large / Size 2) eggs. Impressive work by our three ex-battery hens on their first full day. One perfect egg each, laid in the right place. To a commercial egg producer they might be ‘past it’ but they seem fine to us. Boiled eggs for tea – yummy.

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 !