Hey.... Lets keep Chickens..!

ginnyknit

I can now tell which chicken has laid by their calls! Oh my god, I can talk to chickens, Ive even trained the family to drop their apple cores etc into the dish ready to cook the girls lunchtime mash. Yesterday they had the skins off the watermelon and absolutely stripped them down to the rind. What did I do before I had chickens? :rotfl:

champys

I have been looking at this thread for years, and as from today I can participate: we got our first chickens ever this morning. Three girls and a boy, all different colours, what fun - in spite of having loads to do today we just sat there watching them, watching the cats checking them out, watching them gradually relax and become more confident..... They are youngsters and I have no idea how long it will be before they are grown enough to produce eggs. I will be back with a photo soon, and probably also with lots of questions......but working my way through the entire thread might help :-)!

jexygirl

ginnyknit wrote: »

I can now tell which chicken has laid by their calls! Oh my god, I can talk to chickens, Ive even trained the family to drop their apple cores etc into the dish ready to cook the girls lunchtime mash. Yesterday they had the skins off the watermelon and absolutely stripped them down to the rind. What did I do before I had chickens? :rotfl:

Ginny - I can reply! First - what you DIDNT do...

- have a garden resembling A MUD FLAT
- the ability to think about feeding your family without saying "NO THE HeNS WILL EAT IT DONT THROW IT AWAY!"
- look out of your window, without smiling at them/ counting that they are all there.
- be able to talk about things OTHER than hens.

What you do now...
-have a garden that used to resemble grass in a previous life
- throw virtually nothing away - the girls love that!
-talk about their antics at every opportunity!
-laugh at their antics / personalities
-pretend to be cross with them for digging up your flowers / veg whilst lauging
- have an inability to talk about much else!
-smile as you do any task that means you can watch them as you do it, or even better, let them help!
- have a great compost heap with the stuff you clean out
- above all - have THE best eggs, fresher than any you can buy, that taste amazing, and know that you have them because your hens are happy

Congrats Champys - look forward to the pics

blushingbride_3

jexygirl wrote: »

Ginny - I can reply! First - what you DIDNT do...

- have a garden resembling A MUD FLAT
- the ability to think about feeding your family without saying "NO THE HeNS WILL EAT IT DONT THROW IT AWAY!"
- look out of your window, without smiling at them/ counting that they are all there.
- be able to talk about things OTHER than hens.

What you do now...
-have a garden that used to resemble grass in a previous life
- throw virtually nothing away - the girls love that!
-talk about their antics at every opportunity!
-laugh at their antics / personalities
-pretend to be cross with them for digging up your flowers / veg whilst lauging
- have an inability to talk about much else!
-smile as you do any task that means you can watch them as you do it, or even better, let them help!
- have a great compost heap with the stuff you clean out
- above all - have THE best eggs, fresher than any you can buy, that taste amazing, and know that you have them because your hens are happy

Congrats Champys - look forward to the pics

hehe love it & so true! i constantly look out & count the girlies!:rotfl:

poohbear59

Champys, well done on getting your hens. I hope you love them as much as we do ours.

ginnyknit

How true Jexygirl, my Dd looked out the other day and thought we had one extra!

jexygirl

lol,
since we started letting the girls have a "roam / scrat" outside of their 80m squared pen that resembles a mud flat! They not only consider it a "right" now instead of a privilidge, but we now have a 2 person strategy in order to get out of letting them out when we have no time! (one goes out 30 seconds before the other, and stands at the gate, 2nd goes out, they run to the second allowing first person to go into pen unhindered! If we dont do this, you have ZERO chance of getting in without escapees!) and by golly do they tell us off on such occasions!
Besides that, whenever we manage to get them back in (it began as at our discretion, now it would seem its when they are ready to go back in and not before!!!) I ALWAYS manage to gain a hen! We have 14 and I always count 15! Some days its 16! why cant they keep still! Im counting dont you know!
Today ( as posted on the 5 OS pleasures thread so I wont repeat too much!) I tried to get some "after pics" spent ages out there, and out of 36 pics, i can use 6 to update the website! Its amazing how much they have changed, when we took the originals we thought they looked well! We had had them a month and they looked so good to us compared to the state we got them in! It was a shock today to actually compare and see how bad they were! But also good to see how well they look now

example! Eddie (she is WAY too clever!) so called for the lack of comb - eddie the eagle (or short for edwina say no more if you remember... lol)

before - trust me, she looks ace compared to when she arrived!



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today...



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Jex

threemuttleys

Hi guys.

Im very very very interested in this thread, and am currently researching the possibles of us have a trio of hens.

Now we do have a very small garden (about 40ft long, about 10ft wide), but im thinking maybe we could have a smaller breed (bantams?)

Im thinking http://ukpetsonline.com/detail.aspx?ID=446 or similar for living quarters...would this be suitable?

ljonski

Im thinking http://ukpetsonline.com/detail.aspx?ID=446 or similar for living quarters...would this be suitable?

Will your hens have big ears and fluffy tales ?

Daisygirl

Lovely chickens!! We don't own chickens ourselves, but my son 'tends' our neighbour's chickens when they go away - which seems to be every weekend at the moment. The best thing is - he gets to keep any eggs he finds - they are absolutely delicious (when he lets US have any!!) - the yolks are soooo golden and fantastic. The only thing bad about it is the fox which got one of the cockerels the other weekend which wasn't nice for him to find, but the owner said when he texted them to let them know, don't worry about it, it happens. They were kept in a new enclosed area, but it and a few others had escaped though a bit that they had not gone over with chicken(!) wire as it had happened (not my son's fault thank goodness!).