There is once again a huge interest in keeping chickens and the Build A Chicken Coop book provides detailed step by step guides and plans for those interested in building their own chicken coops.

Also, building your own chicken coop in today’s financial climate of uncertainty makes perfect sense.  Building a chicken coop yourself potentially can save you a small fortune; you could even do it with scrap pieces of wood lying around your garden, or what you can ‘beg, borrow or steal’ from friends and family - obviously before anyone posts a comment on the subject of ’stealing’, I’m not actually suggesting that you commit a criminal offence in your ‘chicken coop building quest’ for materials!

Most pre-built chicken coops need to be assembled anyway, so what you really end up paying for is inflated prices for the material.

As with anything; when you’re considering building chicken coops, there’s some practical considerations worth thinking about before actually getting on with the job.

Building Chicken Coop Provisions

Providing your chickens with proper housing is absolutely necessary to keep your birds in good physical shape, contented and happy.

As a rule of thumb, for a chicken coop to be satisfactory for your birds, it must meet the following requirements:

• It must be predator-proof from all sides. Make sure that all openings are protected with the correct size of wire mesh – 15mm square so that so that predators can not reach inside the coop!
• Make sure that the area surrounding the coop is protected with wire-mesh fencing with the base buried at least 30cm below ground level to prevent foxes and rats from burrowing into the area. Rats would especially be drawn into the area because of chicken droppings.
• Make sure the coop is well ventilated (but not directly in the flow of air) to prevent respiratory diseases. Although chickens can stand cold weather they can not withstand being in the direct path of the wind.
• Make sure the coop is easy to clean.
• You should provide roosting poles for your birds because that is where they sleep! Make sure that there is adequate spacing so they don’t crowd out one another.
• Put 1 nest box for every 4 or 5 birds in a dark corner of the coop to encourage your chickens to lay eggs. Nest boxes should be a little bit off the floor but lower than the roosting pole inside.
• Make sure the coop is roomy enough for the birds to roam around when they are inside, at least 4 square feet per bird.
• There should be a waterer and feeder inside the chicken coop.
• For easy disposal of droppings, place a removable plastic tray under the roosting poles.

For more fantastic ideas on building your own chicken coop, check out the Build A Chicken Coop book.

Chicken Mash

Chicken mash, layers mash, poultry mash… are ‘tasty’ chicken ‘mash’ type feeds that you can make up at home, using left over kitchen vegetable scraps, corn, pellets and bread - not to be confused with chicken & mash ‘home cooking’ recipes for humans!

The only problem with making chicken mash at home; is that if you have a compost heap, you’ll have to decide which vegetable and kitchen scraps are ’saved’ for the chicken mash recipe mixture, and which are going to be put on the compost heap!

Chicken Mash 'Raw' Ingredients

But then again, I suppose you’ll be putting the chicken manure on the compost heap, so there’s no need to be stindgy with your chicken mash ingredients - it all ends up in the same place in the end after all!

Several of the chicken keeping books mention how to make chicken mash, although one book in particular that I keep mentioning since getting hold of a copy - Keeping Poultry And Rabbits On Scraps, takes chicken mash making and recipes to all new levels!

Obtaining ‘free’ chicken feed is almost a ‘mantra’ in Keeping Poultry And Rabbits On Scraps - a chicken mash made from household kitchen scraps is one of the basic chicken feed staples it suggests.

Also the amount of chicken mash that you can create is obviously restricted to the amount of kitchen vegetable and bread waste that you generate. The book suggests that you get friends and neigbours to save suitable vegetable and bread waste for your chicken mash for you…

I don’t know how this would ’sit’ with most people, but we’ve taken the plunge and asked our parents to save their vegetable and bread scraps for our chicken mash. Our parents get a steady supply of eggs from our chickens, so they are more than happy to assist us in collecting suitable ingredients!

Chicken Mash Simmering

A chicken mash is basically made from ‘minced’ or finely chopped kitchen vegetable waste - peelings and stalks or whatever looks a bit out of date or ropey for human consumption, old stale bread, protein - you can also add meat scraps, corn, stale biscuits, old breakfast cereals etc. I also like to put into the chicken mash some of the chicken’s poultry layer pellets.

A good day we’ve found to make chicken mash is on a Sunday, after a Sunday roast; you can then use the vegetable water that has been used to boil the family vegetables as the base chicken mash ’stock’ and add everything you’ve saved over the week to the pot, bring to the boil and then gently simmer for a while.

How To Make Chicken Mash

With experience, I like to simmer the chicken mash mixture so it turns into a stodgy mash. This way it’s not too ‘runny’ and therefore less messy when feeding the mash to the chickens during the week following.

So what’s suitable ‘vegetable wise’ for putting into your chicken mash?

Well, according to the Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps book, everything in moderation can be used…

But for a rough guide, see below;

Artichoke
Beans - broad, dwarf, harricot, runner etc
Beet
Broccoli
Cabbage
Carrots
Corn
Kale
Leeks
Lettuce
Maize
Mangolds
Onions
Peas
Potatoes
Spinach
Sunflower seeds
Swedes
Turnips

As for the other chicken mash ingredients;

Bread
Stale Cake
Stale Biscuits
Left-over Cooked Rice
Left-over Cooked Pasta
Old Breakfast Cereals
Left-over Meat

You then feed the chickens the chicken mash along with their usual chicken food / pellet diet.

I like to keep the chickens in their run first thing in the morning whilst they ear their chicken feed pellets, corn and chicken mash - to makesure that they’ve had enough of what I want them to eat before they can then start looking for ‘extras’.

I then let them have the run of the garden so they can forage for whatever else they can find and feed on the grass shoots.

There you have it, chicken mash may be a easy way of supplimenting your chicken’s feed using ‘free’ methods - free because chicken mash is made from ingredients that you would otherwise had thrown away or put straight on the compost heap.

Chicken Mash

Chickens In The Snow

It snowed just enough to cover the floor a little and leave footprints, so I just couldn’t resist taking a photograph of our chicken’s foot prints in the snow.

I imagine this is the first snow that the chickens have seen, and they seemed happy enough scratching around in the snow - although they did seem to spend a lot of the time alternating between standing on one leg or the other!

Chicken Snow Footprints

As you can see in the photo, there’s still the usual ‘chicken poo’ on the patio problem, but this is something we’ve now accepted…

We basically scoop up the chicken poo and put it straight on the compost heap.

Speaking of compost heaps, our three bin compost system now has a load of compost that included the the first batches of chicken manure / bedding and general poo gathered from around the garden.

The importance of which will soon be disclosed; as we’ve now managed to ‘get’ an allotment - that’s the good news.

The bad news is that the allotment site is a ‘virgin’ allotment site. Although the site is council property, it has never been used as an allotment and so the ‘ground’ is basically a couple of inches of what I would in my uneducated manner call ’soil’… The rest is clay - of the kind I reckon you could make models with!

According to the allotment and gardening books, clay is a very fertile soil, but requires A LOT of compostible material to be dug into it.

Just how much compostible material is required I kind of under estimated until I attempted to dig my first vegetable bed…

For now I’m just going to console myself that it’s too ‘frosty’ to do any digging on the allotment and leave things until they’ve thawed out a bit!

Keeping Chickens In Winter

As we’re now well into our first winter as chicken keepers, I thought I’d write about any difference between keeping chickens in winter to other seasons.

Well the first big difference is the mud / wet due to the rain or snow in the chicken run. Obvious I suppose, but the chicken run quickly can turn into a quagmire in the winter.

It’s also quite ‘interesting’ having to walk down the end of the garden on a dark cold winter’s morning to let the chickens out… But as soon as you get close to the chicken coop, the reward of their ‘tap-tapping’ beaks on the door, eager to be let out to ’see you’ is usually ‘reward’ enough!

Also due to the ‘cold’, it’s important to makesure that when keeping chickens in winter, that they have access to water. A few times already it’s got cold enough to freeze their water, so makesure the chickens can ‘get at’ the water under the ice layer!

There’s also the decreased egg production due to the seasons to think about. Late summer and autumn, we got three eggs per day from our chickens on most days - this is now down to 2 or 3 if we’re lucky. I’ve read conflicting reports on the internet on whether to ‘light’ the chicken house to improve egg production.

It would appear that if we add lighting to our chicken house, then we could probably get the chickens back on to three eggs per day - as they’d be fooled into thinking it was summer time. I’ve also read of people adding pepper to their chicken’s feed. This is supposed to give them a ‘warm feeling inside’, like it does with us, again to trick them into thinking it’s not winter!

There’s a reason why battery farmed chickens are culled after a year or so, they’re fooled into thinking it’s summer all year round by artificial lighting and are basically egg laying ‘machines’ - and reduce their effective egg producing limits due to this.

Our chickens are not battery chickens, so I think we’ll leave them to sort it out themselves. I think I’d prefer to stay on the ‘natural’ side and allow the chickens to adapt to the seasons. If this means egg production is reduced during the winter then so be it.

So the chickens are going to bed earlier as it gets dark earlier in the day; and staying in bed longer! Doesn’t sound like a bad life I suppose. Of course as they’re spending more time in their chicken house, there’s also a increased need to clean them out… More time the chickens spend in the chicken house, the more chicken poo that is left in their for you to add to the compost heap.

It’s the ying and yang of keeping chickens in the winter I suppose; more cleaning to do, but more chicken poo to add to the compost that will eventually get dug into the garden - or allotment… Oh, I didn’t mention that did I? We’ve just got a vegetable allotment, I’ll add that to the ‘post’ list!

There’s also the consideration when keeping chickens in winter, of whether to add some heat to the chicken house. This could be done with adding lighting - by product of adding a light would be some additional heat.

I suppose this consideration is more worthy of action if we lived in a ‘really’ cold climate. I know as a Brit that I like to moan about the weather, but it doesn’t really get that cold in the UK in winter when compared to other countries.

We’ve just made sure that we’ve added lots of extra insulating bedding material to the chicken house, but I suppose the house could be insulated with cardboard or similar if it got really cold. Chickens are originally ‘wild’ birds, so the only thing that really worries me about them in the winter is them standing in the rain and ‘catching colds’… Feathers don’t seem to do too well in the wet!

Of course if you’re insulating the house, makesure there’s ample ventalation. Chickens can really ‘work up a fug’; they sweat through their beaks, so there will be additional condensation created by the chickens in their house and a more ‘wetter’ chicken house will result if it’s badly insulated.

We’ve also been ’spoiling’ our chickens with extra chicken food and kitchen tidbits. Taking a leaf out of the book Keeping poultry and rabbits on scraps, we’ve got our parents and other family members to join us and save up their ‘green’ kitchen waste and stale bread.

We’ve then been feeding this ‘free’ chicken food to the chickens, on top of their layers pellets and corn staple diet. Our chickens are also free to roam round our garden for most of the day light hours - as long as someone’s in, so they also add whatever they find in their garden worth eating to their diet themselves…

They’re particulary interested in scratching around the leaf pile and pile of windfall apples that I’ve left by the compost bins. It’s on my ‘to do’ list to add this to the compost, but it’s been laying here since the late autumn and I think there’s a really big micro community of bugs living in it now. I say bugs, the chickens say gourmet feast!

So we’d built up quite a pile of own and ‘donated’ vegetable peelings, bread (and even the remains of a £10.00 panettone from Julia’s parents from Waitrose!) and other odds and sods and decided to have a go at making our own chicken mash.

Basically we kept the water from the boiled vegetables after a sunday roast and used this as a ’stock’. We then got the largest pan we had and filled it with our assorted bread and vegetable goodies, added a couple of handfuls of corn and layers pellets, poured on the water, put it on a low heat, stirred and simmered for a few hours.

The result was a chicken mash that looked a bit like the consistency of ’soggy’ bread pudding. (I think the dog was a bit jealous that we’ve been cooking for the chickens and not him!) The chicken feed mash smelt ok - foodie, I suppose due to it containing waste human food!

Proof of the (bread) pudding is in the eating, so we took a plateful of homemade chicken mash up to the chickens and awaited their decision. It appears that the chicken mash got the seal of approval, as they ate it all within minutes.

We now plan to make up a chicken mash once per week - make up enough to give them a treat in the morning of chicken mash and continue with their normal chicken feed. The good thing about making your own chicken mash is that it’s chicken food for free. It would have otherwise have gone in the bin, or on the compost, so this way it’s being used and still eventually going on the compost!

So that’s about it on keeping chickens in winter. I’ll add some more soon.

Keeping Chickens On A Budget seems to be a bit of a buzz at the moment - what with the re-printing of a war time favourite Keeping poultry and rabbits on scraps; due to second hand copies of the original ‘going like hot cakes’ on various online sites.

Plus the regular mention of the ‘current economic climate’ in the news, causing a rise in people looking to keep chickens in their garden as a way of saving money.

I ordered a re-printed copy of Keeping poultry and rabbits on scraps via amazon - click here for the right page. It arrived a couple of days later and the book is fairly reminiscent of ‘penguin guide’ books my Dad used to have in his study bookcase.

When reading the book, you have to realise that Keeping poultry and rabbits on scraps was printed during a time of real war time national crisis, a time when people really had to keep chickens on a budget…

The book is in two stages, one on mainly chicken keeping, although other poultry breeds are mentioned; and one on keeping rabbits for meat and fur / wool for clothing!

If you’re looking for information on keeping chickens on a budget, then the book is a ‘must get’ - it’s cheap and packed with straight forward practical chicken keeping information.

It starts with the beginner chicken keeper in mind, deals with ‘build your own’ chicken house plans using cheap / freely available scraps of wood, what breeds to go for, what age to buy, culling, diseases, cleaning, eggs (even how to cook an egg!), feeding, housing etc.

There’s information on how to use every scrap item of kitchen and vegetable waste to make ‘free’ chicken food. We’ve been experimenting with variations of the ‘chicken mash‘ recipes…!

The amazon link for Keeping Poultry and Rabbits On Scraps is here again.

At the same time, I ordered a copy of Keeping Chickens On A Budget from the Wikaniko shop, (pronounced ‘We-Can-Eco’) which is a new UK eco / green / organic type shopping site. This is a dvd guide and also arrived within a couple of days of being ordered.

Keeping Chickens On A Budget dvd guide basically puts you in the back garden of a chap who keeps chickens and talks you through using his chickens, feeders, chicken house, chicken run etc. all of which have been knocked up pretty inexpensively.

Keeping Chickens On A Budget dvd is a 30 minute long chicken keeping guide. If you prefer to ‘watch’ rather than read, then maybe this dvd would be worth getting. Go to Wikaniko and click the shop link. The dvd can be found in the ‘garden’ section.

Well that’s all for Keeping Chickens On A Budget.

Keeping Poultry And Rabbits On Scraps

Keeping poultry and rabbits on scraps has been republished by Penguin Books due to public demand!

Keeping Poultry And Rabbits On Scraps according to the paper today was a ‘war time’ best selling handbook, that’s making a come back due to the ‘credit - crunch’.

The book was first published in 1941 as Nazi Germany was attempting to starve Britain into submission.

Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps taught people how to raise chickens and other animals for eggs and meat, by feeding them on left-overs from the kitchen.

The book - which originally cost one shilling and sixpence when first published by Penguin Books, is apparantly being republished by Penguin Books due to demand.

I haven’t yet seen a copy of this book, although I have just bought one via amazon - for the link to the book, click Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on scaps.

This post was a while back and my copy has arrived… To see the review page click - Keeping Chickens On A Budget.

At the time of writing, new copies of Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on scaps are available for £4.89, or second hand copies can be purchased for as little as £2.36. Although the publisher said that their decision to republish the Keeping Chickens on a budget book, was partly taken due to the prices of the original on some websites!

According to the paper, the chicken keeping on scraps book makes ‘gruesome’ reading for those of us more used to living a 21st century lifestyle…

The keeping chickens on scraps book is 170 pages and apparently contains many images and illustrastions and is full of valuable advice for those who have now started keeping their own animals in an attempt to save money and stave off the credit crunch.

According to the Penguin Books website, Keeping Poultry And Rabbits On Scraps was issued in 1941, when the national crisis made it essential for every scrap of kitchen waste and spare time to be used for increasing the nation’s food resources, this book enabled the meagre official wartime rations to be supplemented in thousands of homes by a regular supply of eggs and meat, at a minimum of trouble and expense.

It now reappears, in response to many requests, to play its part in the hardly less urgent food-production drive of peacetime. Everything that the small-scale raiser of rabbits or of poultry, whether for egg-production or for table use, needs to know is here: buying, housing, feeding, breeding, diseases, are all fully dealt with by experts, the instructions being given in simple and practical language for the beginner.

Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps was originally reissued after the war, in 1949. Here it is once again, a facsimilie edition with all the delightful original illustrations and advice to keep your chickens and rabbits happy, whether they be in a city garden or roaming in a farm yard.

The paper goes on to describe various sections of the book using quotes from the authors Claude Goodchild and Alan Thompson; ‘In fact there is no known waste from human edible food which is harmful in moderation. Do not be content with using your own scraps; get others to save for you. There are plenty of people too busily occupied, or maybe some too lazy and unpatriotic to exert themselves and undertake any work of national importance…’

Ironically my purchase of Keeping Poultry And Rabbits On Scraps co-incides with my purchase of ‘Keeping Hens on a Budget‘, via the Wikaniko (We-Can-Eco) shopping site ‘garden’ section… Oh well, I suppose I’ll have two books to review in a few days when they arrive!

Sorry I haven’t posted on Keeping Chickens for a while, you may have noticed on some of the pictures that Julia was pregnant and getting pretty close to ‘due date’.

We added another son to our family on 14th November and named him Jacob. Jacob is doing well and weighed in at 7lbs 11oz.

Would you believe, our eldest - Toby, then two days later came down with Chicken Pox!

He’s recovered and gone back to school, but has passed it on to his brother Zach. Zach is unfortunately absolutely covered in chicken pox spots!

So we’ve been a bit busy, and haven’t had much time to spare to write a post recently. We’ve lots of chicken related news to update the site with, which I hope to upload over the next few days.

Speak soon.

Tim

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.