Chicken-n-Veg

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.

Today we harvested our first two potato plants. They were Charlotte salad potatoes and we got a little over a kilogram of new potatoes (about two and a half lbs) from the two plants. They tasted absolutely wonderful, boiled with a little mint and eaten with salmon and salad. They were also approved of, as finger food, by our six and a half month old son. He definitely seemed to be purring as he crammed them in his mouth.

We actually planted an area of approximately 6m x 1.2m with potatoes, about (two thirds are Charlotte and the rest are Edzell Blue), so it looks like we will have a very good crop this year.

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.

We have been able to let the chickens have full access to the garden for quite a few days this month, whenever someone has been keeping an eye on them. On the days that we’ve not been able to let them out, however, it has become clear that the space in the run is not enough. Theoretically it is big enough, but we want really happy chickens and don’t want any squabbling due to the limited space.

There are two good reasons why we didn’t feel able to let them out when we weren’t about:

• They seem to have developed a taste for most things growing in our vegetable beds
• We see a fox in the garden most evenings (and even sometimes during the day)

We therefore ordered a Hotline electric poultry net and a high capacity 12V leisure battery. This arrived late last week and we erected it this weekend. It’s a 50m poultry net, giving a very generous run of approximately 12m x 12m  (40ft x 40ft). The net was placed around as many points of interest as possible – Yucca plants, Pampas grass, trees, tree stumps. grass and bare earth for dust baths (although it will probably all be bare earth soon). The hens seem extremely happy with their new surroundings – sunbathing, having dust baths, destroying the plants. We can now let them out all day Knowing that they are safe from Mr Fox and that our vegetables are safe from them.

We spent quite a bit of time at the weekend building and placing two more raised beds. These are hopefully the last raised beds we will need. We intend to use them mainly for ‘permanent’ fruit plants such as raspberry, gooseberry and rhubarb, ie. plants that with a bit of care will last for years. We will perhaps also use the beds for some annual strawberries.

The beds were built from scaffolding boards and are 3.9m x 1.2m. The inside of the beds were lined with polythene (actually a roll of damp proof course), to stop them wicking moisture from the soil. They were also treated with several coats of a green horticultural wood preserver. This is stated to be non-toxic and suitable for any horticultural purpose, ie. safe for vegetables and won’t kill the worms in the soil. We can certainly confirm that worms love the previous beds we built. The polythene liner will stop any preservative treatment from leaching into the soil anyway.

We got a lot of ‘help’ from the hens as we were digging to get the new beds level. The ex-battery hens in particular were so keen to get to all of the worms that we were unearthing that it was very lucky that none were decapitated by our spades. We also needed to keep shooing them away from the vegetable beds, as they seemed to want to help us thin out our seedlings.

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.

With our original five hens seemingly very settled, we decided that now was a suitable time to adopt three ex-battery hens as we had always intended. We got them from a local poultry supplier called Little Misses Chickens. As well as doing some small scale breeding and rearing of birds, they take in unwanted birds – hens, cockerels, ducks, guinea fowls, etc. They also do a Battery Hen Rescue day, every other month, where they rescue quite a large number of hens. These rescued hens are only sold on when they have had some time to recuperate. This meant that rather than get them in a sorrowful state, almost straight from the battery farm, our three ex-bats were well feathered and spritely. They were also already acclimatised to being outside with other hens. They do have droopy, pale combs, which (from reading online) is common for caged hens due to the high temp in their cages, but this will apparently improve over time. They are more than a year old and of the normal ginger Warren(ish) hybrid variety favoured by the commercial producers for their reliable egg production. We expect that these girls will provide our first eggs in the next day or so. Apparently they will lay about five eggs a week this year, dropping to four a week next year.

We introduced the three new hens into the run with our original five birds late in the afternoon. Apart from one scuffle, when Snowdrop got a few pecks for being very nosy as we put the first newcomer in, we haven’t seen any problems. They all seemed quite happy walking around and eating / drinking together. We will obviously monitor them in the coming days to make sure that there is no real trouble.  The older battery hens can certainly stick up for themselves, but so far don’t seem as they are going to bully our existing hens too much.

We fitted coloured leg bands to the new hens so we could tell them apart. The new girls have now been named Matilda, Pansy and Isobel.

When it came to dusk our younger hens went to bed early, as normal, leaving the 3 ex-bats alone in the run. Within a quarter of an hour, however, they sussed what they had to do and went up the ladder as well.

When I checked on them this evening the ex-bats were not using the perches, as expected – a year in a cage without a perch will do that ! I am going to lift them onto the perches every night, for a week or so, to see if they can get the hang of it.

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.