Chicken-n-Veg

Posts Tagged ‘chickens’

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.

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.

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 !