Hey.... Lets keep Chickens..!

RacyRed

Thanks Gigervamp

The rain has finally eased up a bit, so fingers crossed they decide to venture out for the first time and find their food and water. And then maybe I can whip the floor tray out and clean up a bit

Rainy-Days

If you have got some clear plastic you could put that over the top of the run, but make sure once the rain has stopped you remove right away because if the sun comes out it will turn the run into a greenhouse!

When my uncle kept allot of poultry, ducks, hens and geese he always put the feed (that was left over) in at night and a cannister type thing for poultry in their shed!

Steel_2

Hi RacyRed :wave:

I'd leave it out if it's under cover as well. Sooner or later they will come out to investigate. They're just a bit goggle-eyed and scared at the big wide world at the moment.

I had a normal wooden coop with a run when I first got my ex-batts and covered the top of the run with plastic sheeting to give them some protection from the rain and make it seem less 'big' out there for them. Just had to make sure it didn't flap around a lot as the sound of that flapping frightened the bejesus out of them.

But when they found the grass, there was no stopping them after that.

***

Little Miss Prolapse is back with the others and is ok. She didn't seem to be eating a huge amount first of all (she doesn't want to eat the layers pellets, but seemed to like the pellets when they turned to mush in the rain). She would sit quietly in a corner for long periods of time not interacting so I've focused on upping the amount and variety of food I put out there to see if I can get her excited. If she doesn't like something, she simple won't touch it. I watched her turn her nose up at a pasta treat the other day while the others went nuts. Never seen that from a chicken before.

I've managed to get her excited by food, but I think she has expensive tastes that I'm not sure my lemonade budget can stretch to regularly.

She prefer couscous to pasta. Brown rice to white. Strawberries and raspberries to apple. Red cabbage to white. Petis pois to normal peas. Mange tout to runner beans. Marmalade to jam. Sunflower seeds already hulled as oppose to whole seeds. Red and yellow peppers. New potatoes to normal potatoes. Baby carrots to normal carrots. Baby spinach to normal spinach. Baby tomatoes rather than normal size. Brown seedy bread rather than white. Sultanas not currants.

I am considering renaming her Little Miss Chardonnay.

3v3

RacyRed wrote: »

Thanks Gigervamp

The rain has finally eased up a bit, so fingers crossed they decide to venture out for the first time and find their food and water. And then maybe I can whip the floor tray out and clean up a bit

May take them a couple of hours; they have just been rehomed so they will feel a bit unsure of their lovely new surroundings at first.

I'm confident they will find the food and water when they need it

Good cluck! Chickens can be really good fun; ex-batts have just as much character, but seeing them turn from oven-ready to fully covered, free-rangers is absolutely brilliant!

RacyRed

The sun is out now

I sprinkled some feed on the ladder and the braver 2 have pecked their way down it, but stopped short of stepping onto that strange grass stuff :rotfl:

And...... I found an egg already :T:T:T

Their personalities are begininng to show a little bit. I'm completely hooked already, loving the smell of poultry spice and layers mash in the kitchen and the sound of them clucking away to each other in the garden.

Oh heaven

Gigervamp

I often wonder what they're chatting about. They definitely have conversations.

One of our girls, who is sadly no longer with us, was a right old chatterbox. She'd come over to me, hop up onto my shoulder and natter away!

RacyRed

Gigervamp wrote: »

I often wonder what they're chatting about. They definitely have conversations.

One of our girls, who is sadly no longer with us, was a right old chatterbox. She'd come over to me, hop up onto my shoulder and natter away!

Oh please let me find one like that - although I think, from the way one of them seems a lot more confident than the others and has already learnt to associate me and my sounds with food, I might be lucky, time will tell

Thank you all so much for this thread, your helpful advice, and a place where my enthusiasm can have free run without boring my friends and family to bits. :rotfl: :rotfl:

RacyRed

They came out into the run with the sun. And kindly just laid a 2nd egg!

Wasn't expecting eggs so soon

ljonski

free download of practical poultry magazine
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I have had my regular email from ascot supplies

and there is a free download for practical poultry magazine
http://issuu.com/kelseypublishing/docs/practical_poultry_july_2011_-_e100?viewMode=magazine&mode=embed

there is a link to the ascot site

http://www.ascott-dairy.co.uk/index.html

please note..... i have nothing to do with this site, except i am a very happy customer and i have been using them for years...

Thanks to Coolbikerchick on greenfingered

COOLTRIKERCHICK

ljonski wrote: »

Thanks to Coolbikerchick on greenfingered

lol.... I was just thinking of coming on this thread to put a link up...