Keeping Chickens

Red Mite Chickens

Whilst cleaning out the chicken house the other day, we noticed some red mites hiding in the nesting box; so we have treated the chickens with red mite powder.

Red Mite Powder

According to the chicken keeping books; red mites like to live in the dark recesses of the chicken house and only come out during the night time.

They come out to feast on the chicken’s blood whilst the chickens are sleeping peacefully on their pearches.

I’d seen red mites before we started keeping chickens, but didn’t realise that they are a problem for chicken keepers.

We tried to take a photo of the red mites in the chicken coop, but unfortunately they’re so small that the camera didn’t ‘pick them up’.

Anyway, I managed to dust the chickens quite well with red mite powder.

I also put plenty of powder down in the area of the garden that the chickens like to use as a dust bath, so they can ‘treat themselves’ with red mite powder - which I imagine is less stressful for them, than having a human ruff up their feathers and other ‘warm areas’ that the red mites might be hiding in!

Red Mite Powder Chickens

Red mite powder says on the tub that it is fast acting and lasts up to six weeks.

It says it is for use in organic & intensive farming systems and is ideal for use on all birds and poultry.

The back of the red mite powder tub has loads of instructions on it, but basically says that red mites are also known as chicken mites, roost mites, and poultry mites.

The red mite powder we have states that it doesn’t ‘taint’ eggs and is suitable for organic and intensive farming - so it should be good for keeping the red mites at bay for back garden chicken keepers such as ourselves!

It goes on to say that red mite infestation can cause;

• Irritation of the chickens, resulting in depressed egg production.
• Increased feed consumption, accompanied by a decrease in growth.
• Increase in ‘floor eggs’ as nesting boxes are avoided by the chickens.
• An increase in vent pecking, cannibalism and general distress to the birds.
• Clinical anaemia, leading to dull, pale combed birds and possibly death.
• Pale coloured yolk.
• Dermatitis or skin irritation of staff caring for the chickens.

Three eggs per day, hip-hip horray!

Our veggie growing neighbours told us that our chickens had laid three eggs on some of the days that they looked after our chickens for us whilst we went away.

Well it looks like they’re right.

We seem to be getting two eggs laid in the morning and one egg laid in the afternoon. It kind of stresses the importance of checking the chicken coop for eggs on a regular basis.

I also think that our afternoon layer may be laying them around the garden if they are out of their run in the afternoon.

We’re going to have to do some searching to makesure she’s not laying her eggs in some secret nesting spot.

So we now are getting three eggs per day from our chickens…

Over the the last few days we’ve given most of our home laid chicken eggs away. The comments we’ve had back from our ‘guinea pigs’ have been very good.

My Mum and Dad took a few of our chicken’s eggs home with them the other day. Funny thing being is that my Mum said she couldn’t stop thinking about the chickens playing in the garden as she boiled her and Dad’s eggs… Hmmm I wonder if she feels the same way about shop bought chicken eggs?

Looking After Chickens Whilst On Holiday

We faced and passed our first, ‘who’s going to look after the chickens whilst we’re away?’ dilemma…

We wanted to go away for a few days to Worth Matravers (see below) before our eldest started school on the 9th September; our veggie keeping neigbours stepped up to the scratch perfectly!

We gave them a brief walk-through of our chicken keeping procedures, showed them the chicken feed, where we keep the straw etc and asked them to open the chicken coop door as early as possible in the morning, and close it just after dusk.

With just the promise of being able to keep any of the eggs that our chickens laid whilst we went away, our neighbours did superbly. It turns out that they ‘grew up’ with chickens and so rather liked the idea.

We came back to four eggs on the side of the kitchen work surface and found that our chickens had even been cleaned out (their nest was lined with ‘The Times’ instead of the ‘Daily Mail’, so it was defintely not our doing!) over the four nights and five days we galavanted around the Dorset countryside.

Our neighbours told us that on some days they’d ‘had’ three eggs. Two in the morning and one in the afternoon - so it looks like all our chickens are now ‘laying’.

We stayed in a cottage in Worth Matravers, which is a lovely village on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. Worth Matravers is a idyllic spot. A place to unwind and relax. A sleeply hamlet, tiny roads, picture postcard cottages, pub, tea room, post office and a village pond… that was perfect for testing Toby’s hovercraft on!

Square And Compass Worth Matravers

The local pub - The Square & Compass was a joy if you like your real ale and seeing a pub ‘how they used to be’.

The beer was served through a serving hatch that led directly onto the ‘tap room’.

I’ve been a CAMRA member for years, so the pub was my idea of heaven! It’s well worth visiting if you’re ever in the area. 

The Square And Compass have a fine selection of beers, ales, ciders, meads and other ‘liquid’ refreshments. But don’t go expecting culinary delights at the Square And Compass though. A pastie / pickled egg, or bag of crisps is about all that’s on offer food wise.

They even keep chickens and various other poultry in their pub garden. We counted eight hens and two cockerels. One of the cockerels was a little ‘ropey’, we wondered who he’d been fighting with until we went to the pub’s rear garden… My goodness there was a monster of a cockerel in there with his brood!

Our kids unfortunately got a telling off from a rather zealous member of the bar staff - she was firmly put in place by my wife’s mother who gave her ‘both barrels’.

“Yes they are being gentle, they’ve got chickens of their own. But could I ask you why you keep chickens in a pub garden, if you don’t ‘want’ the children who are visiting the pub to stroke them…?’

Square And Compass Chickens

Which I suppose does make you wonder.

The kids weren’t actually doing anything to the chickens, the chickens kept coming up to them and stealing their crisps…

It must be hard work if you have to go out and tell every parent off for ‘letting’ the pub’s chickens play with the kids.

My eldest then told her that they weren’t as nice as ‘his chickens’… So that told her! Perhaps she was having a ‘bad day’ in sleepy Worth Matravers and couldn’t tell that our kids were ‘expert’ chicken keepers… Ahemm!

I think the Square & Compass’ staff would be better off calming down, keeping the chickens in their run or moving the chickens out of the public gardens. Finally get rid of them altogether if it causes the bar staff that much stress - it is after all supposed to be a ‘public’ beer garden, it shouldn’t be a surprise that people bring their kids with them to visit a pub!

In the above picture you can hopefully just make out (on the right) the side of their chicken run, which was a home made affair, from a old shed and what looks like to be 2 x 2 banged together to give them a chicken run attached.

Not that they kept the chickens in their chicken run - as mentioned above, the chickens had free range all over the pub and could accost any unsuspecting child they liked for crisps and other treats!

I thought we’d managed to snap a few photos of the pub garden chickens, but unfortunately all are a bit blurred.

Also in the picture you can see the ‘drive’ that led to our cottage, so we really had a ‘long’ 50 metre walk to the pub - oh my calves ached I can tell you!

So it’s good to be back, the chickens look like they’re all laying eggs now and our eldest is getting ready to start school on Tuesday.

Pullet Egg

We started last Saturday getting two eggs per day but after the fox attack on Sunday, this has gone back down to one per day.

One can only presume that ‘Dandelion’ had started laying before her ‘untimely end’ - hence we’re back to one pullet egg per day for the time being, whilst ‘Softie’ and ‘Ginger’ mature a bit more.

Pullet Egg On Right Hand Side - Supermarket Egg On Left

The pullet egg is noticibly smaller than a egg you’d buy in the supermarket, understandably so I suppose.

The dictionary definition of a pullet is; a young hen, especially one less than one year old.

So they’re ‘teenage’ chickens so to speak, smaller than adults and their eggs are therefore smaller.

We have noticed that there’s been a soft shelled kind of egg laid in the hen house today. So perhaps Softie or Ginger are getting close to being ‘mature’ enough to lay pullet eggs.

Fingers crossed that we may have more than one egg per day come this weekend.

Soft Shell Egg Laid By Pullet

The egg looks kind of funny, and it’s squidgy.

Toby came running in this afternoon saying there was a egg, so we went and looked and saw this.

It wasn’t in the ‘nesting box’ area, it was by the perch. It was in the area that they seem to do their ‘poos’ in at night.

‘Blackberry’ is noticibly now more mature - ‘grown up’ and chicken like, than Softie and Ginger.

Although Softie and Ginger are also coming along nicely and their comb and wattles are growing bigger and redder as the days go by.

Blackberry Has A Larger & 'Redder' Comb & Wattle

Blackberry also seems to spend more time ’sitting’ than the other two.

Don’t know whether this is a sign of her ‘age’, or whether she’s conserving energy due to her egg production!

As you can see from the top image, our pullet eggs are a nice brown colour when compared to the supermarket bought eggs.

We’re still fighting over who has the ‘home grown’ egg in the morning and generally Toby wins the day!

Hopefully as the other two mature into pullets, we’ll get more eggs and there’ll be less need to fight over the eggs in the morning!

We’re still no closer to building a purpose made chicken run. We’ve had a few quotes and have decided to wait and save some money up.

For the time being the chicken will stay in their chicken house and only be let out into the garden ‘under supervision’ - for obvious reasons, we’re scared of another visit from Mr Fox.

They get out every day for most of the day time, but if we’re out we put them back in the chicken house with the ‘downstairs’ run.

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have two pullet eggs for breakfast!

Chicken Manure Compost Bin

I posted the other day on Chicken Manure, and again with photos of our plastic compost bins full to the brim with chicken poo, bedding and straw waste material from our chickens on the Chicken Run post.

Plastic Compost Bin Full Of Chicken Manure & Homemade Compost

We have a ‘three’ compost bin system, we have two plastic compost bins that hold 330L of compost material and a homemade compost heap made from pallets and the like, that we use to hold ‘mature’ finished compost, that we then ‘dip’ into for use round the garden etc.

The three bin system is basically a means of ensuring your compost is aerated and helping with the natural breakdown of your kitchen and garden waste material into compost, by transfering it from one bin to the other as the bins get full. By the time the compost gets to the home made pallet affair, it’s basically ‘usable’ and stays in this ‘maturing’ until used, or it gets bagged up if we have a particulary good compost production year!

We fill the first plastic compost bin with garden waste such as grass cuttings, old flowers, nettles, spent bedding plants, and other weeds and the like from the garden. We also have a kitchen compost caddy that we use to collect tea bags, vegetable peelings, fruit cores and peelings, coffee grounds and the filter paper, egg shells and the like. We also put scrunched up newspaper in this to stop the compost being too ‘green’.

Three Compost Bin System

Anyway, the other day we had the free magazine from the local council pushed through the door. Usually this goes straight in the paper recycling bin, because in the immortal words of Captain Blackadder, it’s ’soft, strong and thoroughly absorbent’!

Just as this right riveting read was about to be dropped into the paper recycle bin, I noticed that on the front cover there was a picture of a compost bin and a headline about ‘Bagging A Compost Bin’ bargain.

I quickly flicked through to the compost bin bargain page, and found that for once the council had included a useful article… The article was headlined in bold, proclaiming that ‘At Least 30% Of Your Household Waste Bin Could Be Composted!‘

The article had a three step composting plan and a useful list of suitable compostable material divided into ‘greens’ and ‘browns’. Basically greens are easily compostable materials and browns are compostable materials that take a little longer to compost down.

Like a good cake mixture, a compost mixture has to contain the right mix of greens and browns to compost down well. Too many greens and you’ll have a ’smelly’ wet compost heap. Too many browns and your compost heap will be dry and will take forever to break down into usable compost.

The three step system is divided thus.

Step 1 is all about the placing of your compost bin. The bin needs to be sited on level well drained soil, so that worms and other ‘friendly’ organisms can easily get into the bin and ‘help’ with the composting process.

They also suggest that the compost bin be placed in a sunny spot to help speed up the composting process - again like baking a cake, compost needs to be ‘cooked’ at the right temperature.

Last in step one, they suggest placing your bin on a ‘wire mesh’ to stop interest from ‘furry’ visitors. We’ve never had a problem with furry visitors. I think as long as you don’t add ‘pre-cooked’ material or dairy / meat to your compost bin, then it shouldn’t be a problem.

Step 2 is all about making good compost. It starts off saying that if your compost is too wet add some more brown material, if it’s too dry add more green. It also says that if your compost has a strong odour then it’s a indication that your compost has too many greens and to add more browns. That’s pretty obvious I suppose.

It then goes on to aerating your compost. Compost needs to be turned regulary to promote aerobic breakdown. The problem with kitchen waste and the like is that it gets compacted easily, and then your compost heap becomes anaerobic. The main problem with this for us composters, is I think that anaerobic compost takes longer to create. It also has a tendancy to be a bit smelly - think bogs etc.

So to aerate your compost you should turn it over with a fork on a regular basis, (or use a three step compost bin plan) and/or add scrunched up newspaper, toilet roll tubes, corregated cardboard, egg boxes (not that we plan to have many egg boxes spare to put on the heap as we’ll be using them to store our eggs in!) as these materials help to trap air pockets in your compost heap.

It then suggests some compost materials that will help speed up the composting process. Apparently nettles, soaked comfrey leaves and urine are good compost activators. Our boys have taken to ‘weeing’ on the compost heap at every available opportunity… This may be more to do with ‘going’ in the wild, then helping with the compost, but ‘every little helps’ I suppose!

It suggests covering fruit and vegetable scraps with a layer of soil, grass cuttings or shredded paper to help cut down on fruit flies and suggests that furry visitors can be deterred by not adding meat, fish, bread or dairy items. These can however be composted and I’ve seen a composting system called Bokashi that allows you to use these materials.

It also says that if you have bees and wasps attracted to your compost bin, that it’s a indication that your bin is ‘too dry’ and to add cold water to it.

Step 3 is all about using your compost and is I suppose the ‘fun’ part of composting. You get the satisfaction of using homemade compost around the garden that otherwise would cost you a small fortune in the garden centres.

It states that it can take between six to nine month to make good compost, but that in my opinion depends on what you’re actually putting into your heap in the first place and the conditions you keep your compost heap in. Generally you should have ‘usable’ compost quicker than that if you aerate, keep the temperature up and ensure your mixture contains a good balance of greens and browns.

Compost can be used on flower beds and vegetable patches to improve soil quality, retain moisture and suppress weeds. It can be used to ‘feed’ lawns and trees and as I’ve already said can save you a small fortune if you usually buy your compost in a garden centre.

So what’s a green and what’s a brown material? See below.

Greens
Tea bags, grass cuttings, veggie peelings, old flowers, fruit scraps, nettles, coffee grinds and filters papers, spent bedding plants, comfrey leaves, rhubarb leaves, young annual weeds, pond algae & seaweed.

Browns
Egg shells (crushed), egg boxes, cereal boxes, corrugated cardboard packaging, newspaper, toilet and kitchen roll tubes, garden prunings including dry leaves, twigs and hedge clippings, straw and hay, bedding from vegetarian pets such as chickens, rabbits etc, wool, feathers, nail clippings, hair, feathers, ashes from wood, paper and BBQ charcoal, woody clippings - saw dust etc, natural fibre string, tumble dryer lint, old natural fibre clothes - wolly jumpers etc, vacuum bag contents, tissues, paper towels and napkins, corn on the cob, pine needles and cones.

‘Secret sauce’ compost receipes…

Add your confidential waste to the compost heap. Like many people I have a paper shredder, as I don’t like the idea of putting old letters and post with my personal details on them into the paper recycle bin. When the shredder is full I add this to the compost heap. It’s paper, so it’s a brown material. You’re also certain to ensure you keep your details from being stolen from the bin!

I also like to add horse manure to our compost heap. We have a few stables in our area and they leave the manure out in bags outside the stables by the side of the road. Our stables give the manure away free - it just costs you a empty bag to replace the one you take your manure away in. This seems to help speed up the composting process and is my heap’s ’secret’ receipe!

Further reading, there’s a wealth of information on compost online so check the below and do a search in your favourite search engine.

The council’s article was promoting the fact that you can get a cheap compost bin from a Government funded scheme at Recycle Now. This is the site we got our plastic compost bins from a couple of years ago. The Recycle Now site is a excellent resource and is worth visiting.

BBC Gardener’s World is excellent.
Portsmouth Council’s Compost Site is good.
Norfolk’s Site about compost problems is informative.
Compost Bins & Other Stuff

Fox Kills Chicken… The Morning After sees Toby say to Julia, ‘oh well never mind Mum, we can get another chicken’!

There’s feathers still blowing round the garden, but the survivors don’t seem any worse for wear. They’re a little ‘miffed’ that they’re being kept in their run and keep pecking at the door to be let out.

Even more surprising, is that this morning we’ve discovered more eggs, so the fox attack hasn’t put the chickens off their laying.

Our neighbour’s Fort Knox chicken run is made I think out of Heras Mesh Fencing type material and we’ve gone and got a quote for some today.

Our local Travis Perkins can get it in 3.6 metre lengths, it is 2 metres tall and costs about £28.00 + VAT, they’ve suggested we contact the local hire shops and see if we can get any second hand - which I thought was pretty decent of them.

The suggestion is that we use this fencing - which is usually seen being used around building sites, to build a nice sized chicken run for the chickens. The fencing comes with concrete blocks for stability, but leaves a bit of a gap at the bottom.

We plan to bury the concrete blocks and either put a ‘kick board’ round the bottom of the fence to stop the chickens getting out, or bury the fence itself to add extra protection against anything trying to ‘dig in’ - be it either a fox or our dog Pip.

We’ve also been told to bury a ’skirt’ of wire fencing laid out flat about a inch down to further deter any digging activity.

So there we are, the chickens will be staying close to the house for the time being in their purpose built chicken house and run. We’re going to only let them out under supervision and as soon as possible we’re going to build another more secure chicken run.

Fox Kills One Of Our Chickens… This post contains a graphic description and image of one of our chickens that got ‘taken’ by a fox on Sunday night.

What a roller coaster ride we’ve had keeping chickens this last 24 hours… Our first eggs have been laid, now we’re faced with breaking the news to Toby in the morning, that the fox has been at the chickens and managed to ‘grab’ one of them.

The fox had been sighted a few days ago, brazenly walking in our garden and checking out the chicken coop. I scared him off, but it looks like he’s ‘noted his interest’ and been back.

Our neighbours have a chicken run that looks like it could keep a person ‘in’ or ‘out’, let alone a fox… I suppose we’re going to have to follow their example.

The day had started off so perfectly with our second egg and our first fry-up using eggs from our own chickens. We then went to my parents and left the chickens in their homemade chicken run, that we’d built a couple of evenings ago.

We got home at around ‘dusk’ to put the chickens in bed for the night. Julia went into the garden and then called me. There was a pile of feathers in the middle of the garden, which was strange - as we’d left the chickens in their run.

Julia then goes up to the end of the garden and opens the nesting box lid. Horror of horrors she finds that there’s no sign of any chickens. We had four, we’ve seen evidence of a pile of feathers and Julia shouts me up to the end of the garden.

I go to the chicken house, Julia runs back to the house and grabs a torch. She comes back up winding the torch handle furiously… We’ve got one of those wind-up operated torches. Oh for a ‘dragon light’ at a time like this. She shines the torch on the scrub land at the end of our garden and there’s a headless corpse.

I go over to it and touch it, it’s still warm, the fox has taken our chicken and we’ve got home too late. It was probably dispatching as we arrived and got scared off when we put the house lights on… Or so we thought.

We start looking for other corpses. We do a sweep of the garden, and then end up back at the end of the garden by the chicken house. No luck, not a chicken to be found. I go over to the chicken corpse. It’s gone…

The bloody fox has been back into the garden whilst we’ve been looking for our other chickens, or for the signs of their ‘dispatch’ at the hands (paws) of Mr Fox.

Our garden is about 100 foot by 40 foot, the brazen fox has been in whilst we’ve been in sight. I suddenly become a Fox hater and vow to check out the Countryside Alliance’s website in the morning, with the view of joining.

Since the ban on fox hunting, we’ve had a massive increase of foxes in our area. We live on the edge of a farmland and a old country house’s estate. I suppose we’re in easy picking distance for any self respecting fox…

So we sit on the step of the cabin down the end of the garden, looking back at the house. Julia’s talking about how we’re going to break the news to Toby etc. I say something about knocking on the neighbour’s doors and seeing if the chickens have escaped into their gardens.

We walk slowly back to house and as we get to the patio we’re looking under shrubs and the like; I hear a noise. I ’sshhhh…’ and we both stand there listening. There it is again, a cluck I swear it’s a cluck. Julia shines the torch to the bottom right hand corner, right at the place the house ends and the garden fence starts…

There’s a fern and a flash of ginger!

It’s a chicken… We have a survivor! It’s actually the chicken I chose and she has been named ‘Blackberry’ by Toby. I pick Blackberry up, check her over and we put her in the house in a box. We have a survivor. We have one confirmed dead, killed by a fox and one survivor. Is there hope for the others?

I tell Julia to knock on the neighbour’s doors and I continue the search, the neighbours join in the search and check their gardens.

Our chicken keeping neighbours kindly go up and down their garden with Julia. They tell Julia how sorry they are and Julia eyes their ‘Fort Knox’ chicken run with envy… No luck, the fence dividing their garden and ours is well over 6 foot tall.

They tell Julia that in the past they lost loads of chickens to a fox - hence the Fort Knox chicken run and the tall fences I suppose. Mr Fox definitely has a run down the backs of our gardens and perhaps he’s the same fox that took their chickens in the past.

Our other neighbours - the ones with the fabulous veggie patch also kindly join in the search. I go to the end of our garden and walk the ‘fox run’ that goes behind all our properties. It’s actually waste land, I don’t know if it’s owned by anyone and most of the neighbours seem to have ‘claimed’ their strip.

I walk about 20 feet along and I see chicken insides on the ground and a flash of feathers. The fox has dragged a chicken corpse down the fox run. I don’t know whether it’s the same corpse that was at the end of our garden that then disappeared whilst we made our first chicken search sweep.

Chicken Killed By Fox

I grab the corpse and take it back to our garden and leave it in the middle. The corpse is still warm, there’s ‘flex’ in the legs.

There’s definitely ‘less’ chicken than when we saw it earlier - if of course it’s the same chicken corpse.

Julia comes back from our chicken keeping neighbours. The result in their garden is as they’d say on ‘The Bill’, ‘area searched, no trace’.

Suddenly there’s a shout from our veggie growing neighbours; ‘we’ve got one!’

I rush round to their house and into their garden; there low and behold in a carbon copy of Blackberry’s hiding place is ‘Ginger’ - another name given by Toby in the last few days. She’s hiding under a plant at the corner of their house.

We search the veggie growing neighbour’s garden for a while longer and unfortunately there’s no more ‘luck’.

We decide to leave it til the morning and then re-commence. We’ve had a result as far as I’m concerned. We’ve gone from losing four chickens to Mr Fox, to finding two safe and well and probably losing ‘only’ two to the fox instead.

I go back to our house and I’m standing in the garden thinking to myself, then for some reason I get the urge to check our house’s side passage way again. We keep logs and fuel for the winter down the passage way.

I’d been cutting logs only a few days before and the chickens had been scratching and pecking around the saw dust. There’s loads of nooks and crannies round there, so I think to myself that it would be a good place to ‘hide’.

I start at the top of the passage way and head toward the ‘road end’. I get to the very end of the passage way, to the gates, and there on the floor is a pile of logs and two old drawers that are due to be chopped up for kindling.

I shine the torch in, I can’t see behind the drawers, but it would be a good place to hide, I move the drawers and see a flash of ginger…

A third chicken is found safe and well! This time it’s ‘Softie’ - another name given by Toby. Three out of four chickens are safe and well! We’ve gone from a complete ‘woe is me, disaster’ to, ‘gosh it’d dreadful, but it could have been worse’…

Julia and I move the chicken house down from the end of the garden and put it on the patio, the chickens are going to be staying close to the house tonight, just in case Mr Fox comes back for more free range poultry.

Then the ‘post mortem’ begins and we try to work out what’s happened and how.

The first obvious thing is the home made chicken run that we’d built the other day. The chicken house didn’t show any signs of ‘forced entry’. There wasn’t any signs of Mr Fox killing ‘Dandelion’ - name given by Toby, in the chicken run, so that leaves only one other explanation…

The chickens must have gotten out of the run and had no where to go to /or couldn’t get back in at dusk, when they naturally want to go to bed.

Prior to building the home made run, we would have left the chickens in the purpose built run area under their chicken house. We’d built the home made chicken run to expand this purpose built run area because we wanted to give them more space. There wasn’t a problem with them in their old purpose built run, so it must be the new home made chicken run that we’d just built.

Second, we got home slightly later than we expected. We missed dusk by about 20 minutes. That might not have been a problem had the chickens been in their run, but as we think they’d escaped their run, we don’t think that once they’d escaped that they could get back in.

Third, the chickens had headed for safety towards our house. The feather pile was about 20 feet from our back door. If they had been in the run, I would have expected them to have been dispatched by the fox in the run itself. He would also probably had all four of them, so maybe the escape was a blessing in disguise.

Fourth we arrived back home in the nick of time, the body of the chicken that was killed by the fox was still warm, the chickens that had ‘hidden’ would have probably been ‘findable’ much more easily by something with a good sense of smell.

Fifth, for the time being we’re going to keep the chickens confined to their chicken house with the purpose built and secure downstairs run, unless someone is in the garden with them.

Sixth, we are going to follow our chicken keeping neighbour’s example and build a chicken ‘Fort Knox’ run as soon as possible… Probably tomorrow.

So we’ve had our first chicken killed by a fox. We will live and learn and hopefully become more cunning and sly in our defences!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a ‘live and let live’ kind of guy. I accept the blame for this chicken’s un-timely death - we should have made a more secure run. The fox was just doing what’s natural to it… But it definitely ‘hurts’ when it’s your chicken that’s been killed by a fox.

1000 Chicken Coops Sold Every Week In The UK was printed in the Mail on Sunday on 31/08/08. Did anyone else read this chicken keeping article? The article is here if you missed it.

The chicken keeping article spreads over two pages in the Mail on Sunday and states that thousands of city dwellers are rearing chickens at home - thanks to celebrity chefs who have highlighted the plight of battery farmed hens and championed home grown food.

The article then goes on to compare people keeping chickens in their gardens to the 70’s sitcom ‘The Good Life’!

The article is a fantastic read and mentions the recent Axminster Chicken Saga that I spoke of a few days ago.

The article mentions that the next issue of Country Smallholding magazine is publishing a seven page guide in it’s next issue.

I don’t know whether our 100 foot by 40 foot back garden allows us to class ourselves as ’smallholders’, but it definitely sounds worth getting hold of the next issue to have a read.

First Chicken Egg Nesting Box

Toby comes in the house after being dropped off and the first thing he asks is; ‘has anyone checked for eggs this morning Dad?’ He gets a negative from me and then rushes off up the garden to check. He then shouts ‘we’ve got a egg, we’ve got a egg..!’

So I shout up ‘are you joking?’ (’are you yolking?’) or something along those lines… Toby is a bit of a joker, so it’s not past him to pull my leg; especially as he knows that we’ve been waiting to hear his happy cries of ‘the chicken has laid a egg’ for a few days.

I then shout, ‘leave it, I want to take a photo!’ grab the camera and rush off down the garden to the chicken house to take a picture.

Chicken Egg In Toby's Hand Nest Box

Sure enough there’s one perfect, if a little ’small’ chicken egg sitting in the nesting box - the clever chickens have laid a egg!

The surprising thing about this, is that we didn’t ‘egg-spect’ any egg joy for another couple of weeks. The chickens are now 20 weeks old, the chicken breeder told us not to expect any eggs until they got to about 22 weeks. So our clever little chickens have laid a egg two weeks early!

The chicken’s combs and wattles have been colouring up and growing bigger. Underneath their beaks, they now have wattles that would make for a impressive double or even triple chin in humans! They wobble as they cluck around the garden and apparently this is a good sign that the chicken is maturing from a juvenile into a adult chicken, and soon will be laying eggs.

Chicken Lays A Egg Toby Holding

So Toby grabs the egg and carefully holds it as I take photos. He’s telling the chickens that they’re ‘very clever’ and that they’re ‘good girls’ - he’s going to make a excellent little chicken keeper!

We text Julia to tell her that the chickens have laid a egg - she’s gone shopping, and asks what it tasted like. Of course we didn’t eat it, we saved it to show ‘Mum’, but there you have it; our first chicken lays an egg!

The next morning, I get up with the boys - it’s Sunday, so Julia’s turn for a lie in. I go down to the chickens and check for eggs and let them into their home made chicken run. No eggs when I look.

The boys and I have a cereal breakfast and then I start cooking a ‘fry-up’ as it’s the weekend at about 10:00am.

I tell Toby to check for eggs, and once again hear the happy shout, ‘we’ve got eggs!’ and ‘clever chickens’ etc. He runs down the garden holding the egg and I’m thinking, ‘please don’t drop it, please don’t drop it…’

Two Chicken Eggs Toby & Zach

He then hands me another egg. This egg is slightly smaller than the first, so I think at the time that it’s a egg from a different chicken. We then get Toby to pose for a few more snaps holding both the eggs.

Toby asks whether we’re going to cook the eggs for breakfast, and I say yes… The other option is to wait for another day and see if the chickens lay another egg, but we can’t wait, so they’re put on the side to be fried.

I decide to give one to Toby and the other to Julia. Zach and I will have the last of our ’supermarket bought’ free range eggs. Zach wouldn’t know the difference yet anyway I don’t think, and hopefully Julia will share hers with me…

Anyway, so I’ve cooked off the bacon and fried some bread, next I come to crack the two eggs that our chickens have laid. As I said above, one of the eggs is a bit bigger than the other, so I assumed that we’ve got two different hens laying eggs now.

First Chicken Eggs Frying

I crack the bigger of the two eggs and can’t believe what I’m seeing… We’ve got a ‘double yolker’, I can’t remember when we last had a double yolked egg, so this is amazing in it’s self. Our first chicken egg is a double yolker!

Maybe the eggs are from the same bird? or maybe they’re from two different birds.

I’m not ‘expert’ enough to know, but as you can hopefully see from the image, the eggs are perfect. If a little small, the chickens are still ’smallish’ so I suppose they’ll grow in size as the chickens grow.

Our first garden chicken eggs are served up with bacon, tomatoes, fried bread and toast.

Garden Eggs Compared To Supermarket Eggs

I also cooked some supermarket eggs at the same time, and I think from the image you can see the size difference between the eggs our chicken has laid and the shop bought eggs.

Another thing is the colour of the yolk. Our chickens have produced eggs with a deep yellow coloured yolk, The yolks from the shop bought eggs are much paler in comparison.

Also you can see by the size of the whites, that the shop bought eggs are much bigger. The white also has a different kind of consistency than the shop bought eggs.

I can honestly say the proof of the pudding is in the eating, or should that be the proof of the egg is in the eating?! Our eggs taste completely different to the supermarket eggs. They taste ‘fresher’. One is a day old and one was laid this morning, so we at least can’t get any fresher than that!

So there we have it… Our chickens have laid their first eggs and we now are proper chicken keepers!

Build A Chicken Run - we decided to build a chicken run so the chickens can have a bit of extra space when we go out.

Building A Chicken Run

It’s ok having them wandering round the garden free range whilst we’re at home, but we’re a bit worried about leaving the chickens in the garden when we go out… Mr Fox has been seen prowling around, and there’s so many of our neighbours with chickens in their gardens that the temptation for ‘him’ may be too much.

We decided to build our run using only the scraps of wood and wire fencing / netting that we have laying around the garden. We’re intending spending a bit of money on a purpose made chicken run when we get the time, so this chicken run is just a temporary measure.

The chicken house came with a small chicken run underneath, but we feel that this chicken run area is just a little too small - we don’t want our chickens to be kept like ‘battery hens’, so we plan to give their chicken house a extension.

So laying around the garden we have a few sheets of marine ply, some old pallets and odds and sods of wood that we’ve built up since having the cabin put in last summer.

The home made chicken run that we’ve built isn’t pretty to look at, but it does the trick. It’s extended a area around the chicken house of about 8 foot by 5 foot and about 5 foot high. We’ve got some wire netting over the top and have made a kind of fence out of scaps of wood and wire fencing for one side. The other side’s wall is the edge of the cabin and the front of the chicken run is closed off with two pallets.

You have to ’stoop’ to get in and close the chicken house door at night, but the chicken run that we’ve added is pretty secure with any gaps filled with bricks and old turf dug up from the lawn when we put some steps in down the garden last week - the constant wandering back and forth to the end of the garden to the chicken house, had kind of left a ‘mud’ path down the middle which was unsightly.

So our home made chicken run has done the trick, it’s been in a couple of days now and we’ve had no escapees. It also allows us to let the dog out in the garden when we’re not out there. As I’ve mentioned before, he seems ok with the chickens if we’re in the garden, but I wouldn’t trust him to ‘behave’ if left out there with the chickens on his own.

The chickens don’t like being confined in their run whilst we’re not there. They’d prefer to have free range in the garden, but as I said earlier, it’s safer all round and we don’t have to worry about them whilst we’re out.

We’ve been and priced up a ‘rolls royce’ chicken run, it’s going to cost a few quid, but will mean we can let the chickens have a run that covers most of the back end of the garden, which hopefully in their eyes will be a pleasant place to peck, scratch, dust bath etc.

So go on; if you have the spare wood, see what kind of chicken run you can build. There’s something satisfying about building your own chicken run and not spending any money!