Impressions of A Rooster

Hello readers, it has come to my attention, usually at about 6.30 am everyday, that one of our hens, Nancy Pants, is crowing at the back door. Of late we have had a night time thief, coming into the run and eating the feed left out for the girls, in an attempt to not have [...]

Food and Water is not Enough

Hi there readers, after keeping hens now for some 15 months and of course documenting it along the way, I have reached the conclusion that chickens need alot of stimulation. It appears that they are very emotive, for example if one lays a soft egg, she may be depressed for up to 3 days, maybe [...]

Doubling the Run

Hi there, today I am finally getting around to making the girls run bigger, it been 3 weeks now since they have been on full lockdown, we had one casulty, if the form of Manuella the Minorca got very depressed about being confined, she became ill, but as soon as I let her out she recovered [...]

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 [...]

A Flaw in my Floor

Hi there reader, well I was thinking that all of the work being carried out in the back yard was upsetting the hens, as we have been down an egg or two each day, not so. As it happens the floor I made, from a single pallet, and hinged the bottom front of the coop to enable [...]

Putting the new birds in the Run

Hi there reader, Today I thought I would give Maria, our Minorca hen, a run with the big girls, as she is nearly the same size as them now, well feathers  wise, her body doesn’t have much weight about it at the moment, she will grow to be quite a bit larger than the shavers, [...]

Am I bothered?

It seems not, the girls just sat there watching , there has been much activity in the garden today with the bridge for the sewer works being completed, one of the engineers has been welding up the metal plates, to the girders most of the day, and the hens nestled down in some straw and [...]

Update on Camp Tenko

Well, there I was feeling pretty good about my efforts of the new run, all fenced off with 6ft high bamboo, the gate even made from bamboo, I looked over it yesterday, spotted a couple of large gaps, which i blocked with, you guess it more bamboo, but then this morning, I left the girls [...]

Chicken Colditz

I’ve had it with retrieving the hens from next door’s gardens, and I’m sure, although they haven’t said anything, the neighbours are fed up of chickens’ droppings on their driveway. So today I started to build a big run, using bamboo, I suppose it’s more chicken Tenko, for those of you familiar with the BBC. [...]