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

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. We have a ‘three’ compost bin system, we have two plastic compost bins that [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Chicken Lays An Egg! Whoopee our chickens have laid a egg! Wait, no scrub that, our chickens have laid two eggs… Toby our four year old discovered the first egg on Saturday morning. He’d been staying at Grandma’s house for a couple of days and came back at around 10:00 am in the morning. I’d [...]