Hey.... Lets keep Chickens..!

wssla00

Hi everyone,

I have now won most people around to the idea of me keeping chickens, and I want to rescue some battery hens i think. They make me sad.

So I was wondering if you could help me on a quick question?

1. Does anyone know of any good books I can get on chicken husbandry and the like

TIA

jexygirl

Blushing bride posted this link a while back which I found really helpful Wssla.
www.littlehenrescue.co.uk

As for the garlic, I dont do it yet lol, but i guess crush it as it will infuse?
Jex

Spirit_2

Just a littel bit of chicken news. My little broody hatched two babies earlier this week. They are just adorable.

Thinking of announcing it in The Times. Mother and babies doing well.

ginnyknit

I just pop the garlic clove in the cider vinegar and it happily infuses away.

4Chickens

My girls were all laying happily up until last week. We have 4 chickens and were averaging 3 eggs per day. Now we are only getting 1 egg a day and I don't know who's it is. They seem healthy enough and are eating their layers pellets, corn mix and some meal worms. What could cause some of them to stop laying?

jexygirl

Hi Cindie,
Same thing has happened to me - we went from an averrage of 8 per day, down to 3 or 4 the last few days.
I am putting it down to daylight changing / clocks going forward has thrown the routine a little perhaps? Also, dont know about you, but we had pretty much nothing but rain for days, I know other things like feather re growth and things can also affect it.
I am sure they will pick up again soon
Jex

steady__eddie

Several years ago when I was alive and used to keep bantams, they would have a break from laying over the beginning of the year but for three of four years on the trot they laid their first egg of the year on Good Friday. I began to wonder if this was a sign from a higher entity. Some years it snowed on that day (a bit like today I suppose) and I recall thinking that it was a fair amount of body mass to lose in such cold temperatures. They were quite elderly ladies though and I would have had no problem in claiming a few bob under poultry scrappage scheme if such a thing had been contemplated in those days.
I read that quite a lot of you have already been successful on the egg production front but if anyone has been unsuccessful so far this year, I would be interested to hear if they receive their first egg tomorrow.
Jexygirl, take the clock out of their roost so they won't know when we change back to G.M.T.

ginnyknit

Hens tend to get disturbed by alsorts of things and go off lay. All you can do is keep them comfy well fed and cross your fingers. Mine don't like the cold so they sulked all today till I fed them warm potato skins leftover from dinner. I also put warm water in their feeder every morning to get them going, they do like a little luxury and no deviation from their routine. I bought budgie grit from the petshop to add to the crushed baked eggshell and thats cheap and goes a long way. Always feed them their pellets or crumb with grit first thing or they will fill themselves with the fun stuff - like toddlers, I reserve treats for the afternoon usually leftover pasta, rice or cooked veg.I found porridge makes their pooh nasty. A big treat is currants or corn, dont want them to get too fat to lay but love to watch them catch grapes when you throw them in the pen!

Frugaldom

I think you need to remember that hens don't lay eggs every single day. I have quite a lot of hens, so have had eggs all year round from different hens, but they will only lay a certain number of eggs within a certain time scale and they seldom lay when moulting or stressed. Clocks changing has absolutely no effect on hens whatsoever, as they don't use clocks. Sorry. The only way a hen will notice a change is if the owner uses the clock. Working on a dawn and dusk system means nothing changes.

My neighbour brought a sickly hen round for me to look at recently - shooed her away and went to hers to look at it, but I thought it had eaten something silly. No egg binding evident, crop fullish but soft, so it wasn't full of grain! I initially thought it had been poisoned, as it was off it's feet, flopping to the ground and looking close to death. I suggested boxing it up, keeping it warm then offering hard boiled egg for eating and warm water for drinking. Within 24 hours the hen was back to 100% healthy, put back out with the others. What did it regurgitate? A gooey mass of grassy Royal Mail red rubber band that must have been carelessly discarded by the postman. So yes, hens will peck at anything and the cockerels can be worse if they decide to get aggressive.

jexygirl

Oki... I didnt mean the hens had a clock!
I do though! And as I have to get up each morning to let them out, they got confused and did shout at me a bit!
Thats what I meant!

Poor hen eating a rubber band :S

We have been letting ours out of the pen each day for half an hour to scrat around none quagmire ground (they have a 80m square pen for the 14 of them, but its just mud atm), and that seems to have lightened their mood a bit! We had our first 10 egg day yesterday :D:D

Jex