My flat packed hen house, assembled in the gathering gloom of a winter's afternoon, went together fairly easily apart from a couple of entirely necessary modifications I had to make. If you've ever assembled an IKEA bookcase, then putting together a chicken coop is easy peasy. The modifications were a bit more tricky.
Once I'd put the rest of it together I couldn't get the nesting box roof to sit on properly and essentially the roof had not been cut to the right size. So although it was supposed to slot into the main body of the hen house and then be secured by a catch, it wasn't long enough to do both. I had to screw a short piece of wood into the house just above where the nesting box roof came to rest in order to act as a catch. This won't do the job long term and I sense a trip to B&Q coming on to buy something that will do the job more permanently.
The other alteration I've had to make today, the necessity of which was not immediately obvious when I first assembled the hen house as I put the birds to bed before assembling and then attaching the run. This was moving the bolt that secures the flap to the hen house so that it can be reached by the person opening and closing the hen house each day without them having to kneel down on the ground to do so. It seems a pretty basic thing, and maybe it's because I put the door of the run on the opposite side. But I want the door of the run to be near the back door of my house so that I don't have to walk around the run in the darkness at he beginning and end of each day. Also, the run is oriented towards the part of the garden that gets any sunshine in winter. And I was following the instruction leaflet for once!
Saturday 21 January 2012
One Week In
It's Saturday. I've had the chickens a week and, after the excitement of getting two eggs on the first day, laid in the undergrowth up against the fence, we have now entered an egg-free zone. Now I don't know if this is some sort of protest by the hens at their new coop, or whether they're just taking time to adjust to life in their new home. But so far all I'm getting in the nesting boxes is small amounts of chicken poo.
The Parcelforce man finally delivered the goods around 2.30pm on Monday and I assembled the hen house, finishing the job in the dark after dragging my son away from watching Friends on TV to act as Principal Torch Bearer and shed some light on the shed while I slotted home the final screws. It isn't huge, the hen house. Apparently chickens don't like large homes because they like to huddle together for warmth, and this one must be like climbing aboard a Tokyo train carriage when they squeeze in at night. Well whether or not they like to cuddle up together at night I'm not convinced that they are totally enamoured of their run, which is four feet long by two feet wide, and which they're confined to on the days I'm not around to deter predators. (It seems foxes won't come and take the chickens during the day if you're at home, as though it is somehow impolite to do so).
Jolene, I'm pleased to say, is limping less than she was so hopefully she'll soon have recovered from her leg injury entirely. Of course, this means I'll have to identify some other physical characteristic of hers that will enable me to differentiate her from the others. The others, who have yet to be officially allocated the names of Shirley, Penny and Angie, all seem well. But with a chicken, it's hard to tell. There's a lot of flapping of wings, pecking of the ground and looking at inanimate objects in a vaguely interested way. Oh, and getting panicked by a blackbird flying low across the garden. These creatures have not seen a lot of the great outdoors.
The Parcelforce man finally delivered the goods around 2.30pm on Monday and I assembled the hen house, finishing the job in the dark after dragging my son away from watching Friends on TV to act as Principal Torch Bearer and shed some light on the shed while I slotted home the final screws. It isn't huge, the hen house. Apparently chickens don't like large homes because they like to huddle together for warmth, and this one must be like climbing aboard a Tokyo train carriage when they squeeze in at night. Well whether or not they like to cuddle up together at night I'm not convinced that they are totally enamoured of their run, which is four feet long by two feet wide, and which they're confined to on the days I'm not around to deter predators. (It seems foxes won't come and take the chickens during the day if you're at home, as though it is somehow impolite to do so).
Jolene, I'm pleased to say, is limping less than she was so hopefully she'll soon have recovered from her leg injury entirely. Of course, this means I'll have to identify some other physical characteristic of hers that will enable me to differentiate her from the others. The others, who have yet to be officially allocated the names of Shirley, Penny and Angie, all seem well. But with a chicken, it's hard to tell. There's a lot of flapping of wings, pecking of the ground and looking at inanimate objects in a vaguely interested way. Oh, and getting panicked by a blackbird flying low across the garden. These creatures have not seen a lot of the great outdoors.
Monday 16 January 2012
Waiting For The Man
On Saturday I got some chickens. Yesterday I got my first eggs. Today I'm waiting for the henhouse to arrive.
Yes there's nothing like doing things out of sequence when you've decided to rehome four ex battery hens.
The sun is shining and it's a lovely day for putting up a chicken coop (self assembly required, although it should come flat packed). Unfortunately the daylight is only going to last for another three hours so if the Parcelforce man doesn't arrive soon then the chickens are going to be overnighting in the tool shed again, which isn't ideal for them or for the tools they're roosting on and, shall we say, 'dropping' on.
Hens produce a lot of guano, you see. I toyed with buying a house in Norfolk once that had a long garden which backed onto open fields. I was put off it by the fact that said fields were a wintering point for a particular species of goose, some 4,000 of which were inclined to congregate in said fields and each producing fresh droppings every 20 minutes. If the geese stayed for a month that was 4,000 geese times 72 bowel movements a day times 30 days. If each dump produced 20g of goose poo - well, that's a lot. And since I didn't have any confidence that the geese would respect the boundary between my garden and the farmer's field, I didn't pursue the idea of buying this former railwayman's cottage, in splendid rural isolation with only three other cottages and a level crossing for company, any further.
Anyway, back to the hens. There are four of them, like I said, and they have tentatively been named Jolene, Angie, Penny and Shirley. Jolene is so named because she has a limp and leans when she walks. The others have acquired their names because my ex wife suggested they be named after women in song titles. So Angie is a Rolling Stones girl, Penny from Penny Lane by the Beatles and Shirley is named after the Billy Bragg song Greetings To The New Brunette. Quite apt, really, considering their colour.
Now where is that Parcelforce delivery driver?
Yes there's nothing like doing things out of sequence when you've decided to rehome four ex battery hens.
The sun is shining and it's a lovely day for putting up a chicken coop (self assembly required, although it should come flat packed). Unfortunately the daylight is only going to last for another three hours so if the Parcelforce man doesn't arrive soon then the chickens are going to be overnighting in the tool shed again, which isn't ideal for them or for the tools they're roosting on and, shall we say, 'dropping' on.
Hens produce a lot of guano, you see. I toyed with buying a house in Norfolk once that had a long garden which backed onto open fields. I was put off it by the fact that said fields were a wintering point for a particular species of goose, some 4,000 of which were inclined to congregate in said fields and each producing fresh droppings every 20 minutes. If the geese stayed for a month that was 4,000 geese times 72 bowel movements a day times 30 days. If each dump produced 20g of goose poo - well, that's a lot. And since I didn't have any confidence that the geese would respect the boundary between my garden and the farmer's field, I didn't pursue the idea of buying this former railwayman's cottage, in splendid rural isolation with only three other cottages and a level crossing for company, any further.
Anyway, back to the hens. There are four of them, like I said, and they have tentatively been named Jolene, Angie, Penny and Shirley. Jolene is so named because she has a limp and leans when she walks. The others have acquired their names because my ex wife suggested they be named after women in song titles. So Angie is a Rolling Stones girl, Penny from Penny Lane by the Beatles and Shirley is named after the Billy Bragg song Greetings To The New Brunette. Quite apt, really, considering their colour.
Now where is that Parcelforce delivery driver?
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