Welcome One and All

Hi there, and welcome to The Chicken Keeper, this blog is devoted to the keeping of chickens, and the trials and tribulations that go with it, I also would like to share my D.I.Y tips and ideas. We started keeping chickens in September 2008, the list of poultry we have at present, 4 Brown Shavers,  the others are one Minorca, one Light Sussex, and one Wyandotte Golden Laced .  At present we live on a 1/3 of an acre with a creek running through the back, in Waitakere City, which is part of the greater Auckland area in the North Island of New Zealand, although i’m originally  London/Irish and the other half  is from Waterford, in Ireland.  We are just keeping enough hens to provide eggs for the family, we also grow some herbs and vegetables.

Comments are very welcome, I hope you enjoy the site and maybe find some of it useful.             If reading is not for you then check out the pics in the Secret Layer ^.

The Smallest Egg

Well, the hens seemed to have settled back into the run, after now having spent a whole week on the inside, as I said in a prevoius post, we did have some escapees, but all holes have been sercured.

I’ve been meaning to post the following picture for a while, it’s of one of the smallest eggs any of the hens have ever produced, the last one, which was some months ago, did not have a yolk

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Camp Tenko on Full Lockdown!

As some of you may have read on the chicken update page, the girls have been locked up. Our very patient neighbour came  to the door this week and said something had to be done about the hens, they had eaten all his silvet beet (spinach like), not to mention the droppings left around his property, I’d say they have been going over to his garden for a good ten months or more. 

Tenko for chickens

The chicken run had fallen into a bit of disrepair as it wasn’t really in use other than first thing in the morning at last thing in the evening. So when the hens were put back in with the gate shut, they soon found holes in the bamboo fence big enough to get through, which was helpful to me for patching up the right places, it was a bit of a process, patch up one hole and wait for them to find the next way out. They made quite and effort in one case pulling back the wire fencing in one corner and wriggling under it, once that had been repaired they then searched for the next chink in the fence. After two hours of this, it seemed like I had found all the ways out, only to get up the next morning to find them all out, they had pushed the wire on the gate out at the bottom and crawled underneath it,  honestly they make David Blaine look like an amateur, that’s David Blaine now not David Bain, don’t what to get those two mixed up.

After day two of observing them escape and patching the gaps, they seem to be contained, however they are intent on escape, so I imagine I will ahve futher work to do yet, well it’s hard to see them locked up in a space about one twentieth of what they have gotten used to. As I type this Nancy has escaped, she just wants to get to the old nest which is at the front of the house.

The others seem ok about laying their eggs in the new nest areas I have provided for them, mainly though they look a bit bored in the run, I have been trying to find things to put in the run to keep them occupied, yesterday a put a grapefruit in for them, it was amusing to watch them peck at it, then shake their heads, simularly to a child given something bitter for the first time, but they went back for more, with the same result, which made me wonder about their memory time frame.

Hopefully they will get used to their new situation and so will we, it will benefit us in the long run too, as they would eat our vegetables too and the mess they leave around the house is undesirable, the garden should get a chance to recover from the constant pecking from the hens, maybe we can get some kind of lawn happening at the back now. I sign off  heavy hearted.

Revival in Chicken Keeping

After the WWII the people of Britain were still on rations into the 50’s, so after seven or so years of powdered eggs, it seems the spoils of war didn’t include food for the people, of course everyone had been so busy building weapons they didn’t have much time for farming. To combat this new situation alot of the UK’s city dwellers took up urban chicken keeping. Infact it was what you might call a ‘ Boom ‘ in chicken keeping.

It appears to me that we are renewing our interest in urban chicken keeping once more, it would seem for different reasons this time around, mostly from what I have gleened, the new set of keepers are doing for health reasons, both for the birds and for our own health too. Sadly it was after WWII that factory farming took off in a big way, all those production lines during the war must have given some farmers bad ideas, and it has taken us 54 years to realise that, although we are far from ending it tomorrow.

Figures  show that more people are keeping backyard chickens today than they have since 1952. So much so that today I saw online someone looking for a chicken sitter( minder) in London, to look after their birds while they were on holiday. This could open up a whole new industry, another reflection though on the time we live in, back in 1945 everyone knew their neighbours, and they would have gladly looked after your hens.

Spring Has Sprung

Hi there, not much to report of late, hence the weather report, well to tell the truth, I’ve been so busy working that I haven’t been doing much on the hen front, although I did fix the roof on the coop today, as it had partially caved in, found all the girls huddled in one corner of the coop, avoiding the downed roofing planks.

They have established a new nest away from the brooding Betty, and on that subject she seems to be making her way back to the flock  a little more each day, she is being treated as a stranger some what by the others, as she has been gone from their company for a month now.

I sure there’ll be some action soon with new spring projects, as it becomes easier to work outside, if the rain ever stops.

5000 Visitors

Well a big thankyou to all visitors to the chicken keeper, the site got it’s five thousanth visitor today, which is almost a year to the day I started the site, I didn’t really get going properly on it til November 2008, it had only had 7 views until then, so the figures have primarily been achived in ten months.

One wet hen

This might not sound like alot in ten months compared to some other sites who can reach figures like that almost daily, but it far exceeds my expectations, and the most surprising thing of all is the list of countries that the visitors have come from, which if you are interested in you can view by clicking on the world map in the left colomn at the top, it can be a bit of a geography lesson too.

It’s great to see how many people are keeping their own hens, ”Coop It Going!”  (copyright R.Callaghan.2009)  What do think as a bumper sticker?

Thanks again

Betty Goes Broody

Broody hens can be a problem, unless ofcourse you are looking to hatch chicks without an artificial incubator. The reasons for me as to why a broody hen can be a problem are, firstly Betty has decided to go broody on the communal nest, so therefore the other 6 hens are having difficulty laying, hence I have found eggs all over the back garden, in the coop and other random places around the property.

 

Secondly the broody hen can make themselves unwell by sitting on the nest too long. When a hen is brooding over a fretile clutch of eggs, of course the eggs eventually hatch, usually within 2 weeks or so, however when a hen sits on a clutch of unfertile eggs, they ofcourse do not hatch, therefore the hen sits too long, they tend not to eat much or drink much as they are constantly on the nest, this in turn makes the bird weak, open to illnesses.

Ways to stop a broody hen are , taking the hen off the nest as much as possible, remove the eggs from the nest, and in extreme cases, remove the bird from the nest and place in a dark box for a couple of days, making sure she has food and water, this should stop them.

Finally Renee Lays

Hi there, we have had a Light Sussex hen now for a good 10 months, we got her as a hen, she was a show bird, and the breeder saad she wasn’t sure if was laying, anyway we took her home, she looked like a good hen. She’s a big girl, and it has taken her a while to be accepted by the flock, however she wasn’t laying, and I mentioned to the other half, how she might be nice for christmas, bit of sage n onion, well funny thing is she starting the very next day, I swear they can understand us, now I just have to get her to stop doing her rooster impression in the mornings and we’ll all be happy.

Renee

Egg bound Treatment Works

Hi there keepers, firstly appologies to any out there who have missed my regular postings, I have been very busy at work, and therefore haven’t had the time to post daily.

Anyway on to the business of trapped eggs. If you read the previous post about Daphne having this problem then you’ll already know the treatments that were suggested to me, but I shall go through them again for those that haven’t read the previous posts on the matter.

After catching the afflicted hen, and placing her under your arm like a rugby ball, head out the back, bum facing up, try the following.

Fistly inspect the vent to see if the egg is trapped at the vent, also look to see if they is a white discharge from the vent, if so this is just the urates passing around the egg, meaning that the solids are trapped behind the egg, futher up the tube. Now to try and aid the realease of the egg, it is suggested that you don a rubber glove, preferrably( for the hen), that you lubricate the finger with vaseline, ky or olive oil, this will make it more comfortable for the hen, and add lubrication to help the egg past easier. Inside the vent there are two passages, the top one  is where the egg comes down, word of caution that wasn’t in anything I read, there may alot of trapped wind, so you might not want to be looking to directly at the vent when you insert the oilled finger, so apon entering through the vent you want go immediately up, when I did this I thought I could feel the top of the egg, but only just at the tip of my forefinger, I just very gently massage around the egde of the egg, it did feel soft shelled. It ’s important not to break the egg, as this may lead to futher complications.

The other method I incorporated with the above, was the warm bath, this sounds easier, I thought, well what you do is fill the basin with very warm ( warmer than hen body temperature), then sumerge the lower half of the hen in water, ensuring that her vent gets a good clean, and hold her in in there for 20 mins, this is a long time to hold a hen still in a basin, but it needs to be 20 mins to work, 10 mins won’t always do it, so the longer you can hold her in there for the better, this just generally helps all the muscles relax, loosens everything up. Daphne even closed her eyes for a little while during her second warm bath.

After the bath I gently dried her with an old towel, and let her back out in to the garden with the others, and the very next day her tail was up again, as we let our hens free range I didn’t find the offending egg. So if you have a hen that bum points to ground, try these methods first before taking an expensive visit to the vets.

Daphne our silent shaver

Eggbound Hen

An eggbound hen is the condition suffered by a hen when the egg  is stuck, it may be trapped for several reasons, it could be that the egg is very large, has been broken or the egg shell is soft, either way it is very difficult for the hen to reslove this issue.

After reading severals internet posts on the subject, and with some help from chicken forums, I tried the following, insert finger into vent (wearing rubber glove) and see you can feel the egg, sometimes it may be trapped near the vent, using some sort of lubricant makes it less painful for the hen and aids with the extrution of the egg, many suggest vaseline or olive oil, I tried this three times, but couldn’t feel an egg.

The other method that seems to be suggested alot, and by their accounts works well, is bathing the hen in a warm bath (tub /basin), ensuring that her abdomen and vent are below the water level, I have tried this twice, and yet neither of those methods seem to have worked for poor Daphne. As I haven’t been able to observe her, she may of passed the egg somewhere in the garden.

One of the post I read had another suggestion which was half an asprin with some sugar water, claiming that this gave the hen that extra energy and a bit of a pain killer to be able to push the egg out. Sounds reasonable.

Unfortunately often if these problems do not resolve themselves or the medthods don’t work, then it’s an expensive visit to the vets or let nature take it’s course.

Chicken Feed

When it comes to eating, we have found that our chickens will try anything once, your toes, fingers, hair, buttons, infact anything small enough to fit in their beaks, and more often than not, pieces of bread that are far too big to fit into their beaks, but they’ll try anyway. Since getting our chickens we have mainly fed them with layer pellets, as they were raised on pellets at the farm where we bought them. Occasionally when the supermarket has run out of pellets, we buy layer mash, which is a bit like porridge mix,  you add water and stir it up, we use a bucket, the girls seem to enjoy the change from pellets, my partner told me that one of her pupils, who’s family also keep chickens, said that her parents are mixing up the mash with hot water (as it’s winter here), and it has increased their hens egg output.

One important factor when choosing a feed, is to check whether it contains grit, or shell,  which is essential for the chickens diet, it helps with forming the egg shell, lack of calcium will cause soft shelled eggs, some pellets have the shell included the the pellet, other manufactures place a small bag of crushed oyster shell in with the pellets, or alternatively you can but it from most pet shops. I always try to bring a few shells from any beaches we visit, I put in them in a plastic bag, place them on a hard surface and smash them up with a hammer, do this at home, as it looks strange at the beach.

Other suppliments to the hens diet come from the garden, in the form of bugs and grasses, some plants and weeds, they have really helped keep the weeds down the the back garden, we also throw our food scraps on the compost heap, and they will rake through those and pick out any good bits. A bit of varity is the main thing when it comes to chicken feed, it makes them healthier, both in body and mind, they get bored with the same food everyday.

Layer pellets