Hey.... Lets keep Chickens..!

Syman

well, it's nice to have a bit of sunshine. The girls have baan in the garden quite a bit recently. I have a "neglected" veggie patch that i have opened up for them to weed for me. They have had a great time digging around the old pots and buckets that are scattered about.
The school girls have just had a new layer of wood chips layed in their run. The noise they made when barrowing them in you'd have thought i was getting them ready for the pot. Two of them jumped the fence and sought sanctuary with the rabbit, the others disapeared int their coop and watched from there as i spread it out.

you probably had to be there, but it was very funny indeed.

skipton

Mine are just the same Syman and that's tipping in a trug bucket of leaves.

My new girls have discovered the bluebells in the wood so are busy nipping the leaves. They have already done this to most of my bulbs. They had a field day in the greenhouse beds yesterday. I doubt I have any worms left. :rotfl:

rubys_mummy

we're moving house in a few days, and we are going to have quite a big garden

i've always wanted to have 3 or 4 chickens or ducks, just for their eggs, but i don't know which would be best

i'm leaning more towards ducks as we love their eggs, but has anyone experience of either? and which would you recommend?

thanks

krlyr

Just be warned, ducks are very messy! I worked at a garden centre that sold chickens, we had some ducks in as a one-off..never again! They lived in an aviary and we let them out onto the pond daily, but the aviary needed hosing down at lesat once a day, if not twice, and the paddling pool we had in there would be filthy within 10 minutes of filling it up.

rubys_mummy

thanks...i didn't realise they would be messier than chickens! i've been put off by chickens because i've read that they destroy your garden, and aren't as friendly as ducks!

krlyr

They were far, far messier than the chickens. We had the large aviary split up, probably 1/4 for the two resident chickens (quite a large breed), 1/4 for the mixed, smaller chickens, and 1/2 for the ducks. Despite them having much more space, the ducks needed cleaning out daily as said, whereas the chickens only really needed cleaning out twice a week. There were more chickens than ducks at one point and the ducks still needed a lot more cleaning out.

rowsew

Chickens, definitely, and give them an area where they can trash (mine have a large fruit cage with their house in), and then once it's all brown, just leave them there. Mine used to have roaming rights, but they will dig up the bulbs you just planted, eat all your salad, and poop on the patio. I would never have ducks unless I had a big pond and a field for them to live in, they are even worse than chickens. Good luck! Buy duck eggs from someone else

rubys_mummy

well, i think i'm leaning more towards chickens now lol! i didn't think ducks would be that messy!

thanks for all your advice x

tori.k

Keeping Ducks means a lot more work then chickens unless you have a natural pond on site,water will need to be changed daily and they are sod's for laying in water if your not careful making the eggs no good, they eat more than chickens make more noise and mess they do they compact the earth with there feet ends grass doesn't stand a chance ground ends up like a bog or concrete pretty fast , but in saying they are right characters and we wouldn't be without them (but we have natural running water) I don't think I would have bothered if we didn't.

Mojisola

krlyr wrote: »

They were far, far messier than the chickens.

Oh, does this bring back memories! We looked after a friend's ducks when she went on holiday - duck, drake and half a dozen ducklings. It took months for the garden to recover after their stay.

Our chooks are quite happy to rootle around the garden and love to scratch around under the shrubs. They will cause damage if they get access to the veg garden or newly planted areas so we have bits of chicken wire that we use to block off certain areas.

I would start with a few chickens if you're new to poultry. I've heard that runner ducks aren't quite so destructive - join one of the poultry keeping forums and learn from other people's experiences.