Keeping hens and ducks chat.

edwink

Beckyy wrote: »

Orangecrush, I hope your newbie is doing okay now. Speaking of newbies, how do others quarantine new hens for introducing to the flock?

If I'm honest I never have previously, however one was an emergency rescue and the others came from a trusted supplier. I've been looking at taking on more hens and have found some locally but from a person rather than supplier and I'm cautious as I don't have a 2nd coop to quarantine in.

Hi nice to see a new face on here.

With regards to introducing new hens it is often recommended that you keep them separate from your others for a while. This is so they can get used to each other before they are actually all put together.

We have introduced new hens by keeping them in our duck run for a while. That way they can meet each other through the chicken wire fence without having a go at each other physically. But, this method is not available for everyone if they don't have a sectioned off area to put them.

We have also introduced a single hen straight away by putting her on the hens perches when they all go to bed. That way they have the chance to snuggle up together for the first night. She came out in the morning with the others and we kept a very close eye on them for the first few days and she was fine.


We have also and very bravely might I add introduced 15 rehomed hens with our existing 11 ex batt hens and there were quiet a few feathers flying around and some pecking going on for about a week or so. But, it soon settled down with no injuries, thank fully.

So in all honestly I personally don't think there is a right or wrong way to introduce them. Some say keep separate and some say put them together and they will soon sort themselves out. But, as you have obviously read they can and will hurt each other until the pecking order has been reached. The thing is we can't be there every minute of the day to supervise them can we?. We definitely had to take the chance with introducing the rehomed 15 hens but we were here with them all day but not every minute.

If you have any more questions please feel free to just ask. We are a friendly bunch on here. We a happy for you to join in if you have the time to post about your hens and their antics

Hope that helps.

Edwink

StarShapedPeg

Hi all
With intergreting new hens, we’ve always put the new girls into the coop at night when the others were already in bed, like that they wake up together and think it’s always been like that. Never had a problem before but I think my girls are remarkably laid back and either don’t remember or don’t care :A
x

thehenfather

Hi everyone wondering if you can offer any advice. I will be taking over a friends flock in a few weeks time. They have kindly offered all the equipment they have. However im looking at building a decent run and wondering if you can offer any advice experience on the matter?

Looking at 7 birds. Will be getting 2 coops and a smallish run. Already have a medium sized coop and a medium run. Thinking of doing away with most of the runs and having a large enclosure. Im just struggling with the structure. We have issues with rain so think it needs to be covered.

My initial ideas are a run of around 10ft x 8ft potentially going up to 12ft x 12 ft. Concretting in 6x 4"x4" fence posts to a height of about 6 foot. A pent roof covered in clear corrugated sheeting. About a 1ft baseboard going around the base to minimise freaking the dog out. In my head its fairly substantial and will last a few years at least. Theres going to be weak points like the wood sitting on grass but i dont think i have the time or money to sort this right now. Do things sound ok? I dont want to build it for it to blown down in the first wind. Some is ee seem incredibly over engineered others look like matchsticks.

Is there any other ideas? Got 7 birds to house, needs to be sheltered as the ground can get pretty boggy, im budget and time restricted, DIY or off the shelf options considered. Thank you for taking the time to read.

edwink

thehenfather wrote: »

Hi everyone wondering if you can offer any advice.

Hi and welcome to our hen friendly thread

Size wise I personally think you have good sizes in your head for a start. Height wise if you can I would try and go slightly bigger. From what I understand you can get 4 x 4 fence posts in 2 or 3 metre lengths off the shelf. If you were to get the 3 metre lengths say you have 2ft in the ground that will leave you with more height room although you probably wont need that much so just cut a little off the fence posts. Just enough to stand in there yourself and not walk around bent over. Because I can assure you trying to clean/rake their run out permanently bent over would not be very comfortable at all. My advice would be to make the standing height ample to stand up in with a few inches to spare.

Always with hens you need to think about their safety when it comes to foxes/badgers etc. So for us as we back on to woodland we cemented out chicken wire in to the ground all the way round their hotel and their coop. Although we may get a fox in our garden there is no way on this earth the fox will be able to dig under the fence and get to the girls whilst they are sleeping at night. So it is always an extra safety feature if you have the time/money to do this. We did this by fixing chicken wire all the way around the lower level leaving half of it in the ground and loaded with broken bricks on top. Then concrete was poured over the top of the bricks. Then later we added a higher layer of chicken wire and again until we got to a height we could walk under standing up obviously attaching this to the posts as we got higher. For the top we also covered that in chicken wire as foxes can and will climb in order to get in and will break through a plastic roof given the chance to do so. You could cover all the roof in chicken wire for their safety and then cover say half or three quarters in plastic roofing to shelter them and the ground. Hens love to sunbathe so I would leave an area not covered at the end except for the chicken wire of course so they can sunbathe. Hope I have not confused you with all of that.

With regards to DIY runs etc. The manufacturers never consider head height for us humans plus ease of cleaning/raking out that we need to do on a regular basis.

Hope that information is useful to you. Come back and ask any further questions no matter how small/silly they may seem. There is always someone on here that will be able to help as quite a few of us have a fair amount of experience behind us now.

Hope all goes well.

Edwink

Beckyy

Thanks for the replies re: experiences introducing new hens. I recently lost my oldest and last original hen. She was over 6 so not a bad age for a hybrid but I just have the 3 girls now. Nothing seems to have changed since we lost her and I would definitely say she was the one who kept everyone in line so maybe they would
take to new hens okay. I'll report back if I go for it. Thank you for the warm welcome!

CAFCGirl

edwink wrote: »

Aww that's really good news bless her. It must be all that tlc you gave her.:D Didn't know her name was chicken stew

orangecrush wrote: »

Oh Edwink I’m so sorry to hear about your loss! It sounds like she went peacefully though.

CAFCgirl I’m glad your lady recovered! I love her name

We have:

Chicken Stew (who wears a blue ring)
Chicken Pie (she gets pinks)
Chicken Nugget (white)
Chicken Dipper (sporting green)

edwink

CAFCGirl wrote: »

We have:

Chicken Stew (who wears a blue ring)
Chicken Pie (she gets pinks)
Chicken Nugget (white)
Chicken Dipper (sporting green)

LOVE IT :T

We named one group of ours that all came together after breakfast cereals. We had Cornflake, Weetabix, Muesli etc.

Edwink

edwink

We had a quiet elderly ex batt indoors with us today. The weather was drizzling rain for the best part of the day so she was just standing around huddled up looking so cold, bless her. So she had some sunflower seeds, a piece of a hot cross bun and some water whilst sitting by the stove and within an hour she was fast a sleep. I gave a her stroke and she was lovely and warm so left her there to rest. Put her back out with the others on the lawn half and hour before bedtime so she could mix with them and follow them up the garden which she did, bless her again she is such a sweetie that little hen.:)

Clocks changing on Sunday so they will be going to bed an hour earlier.:(

How is everyone else and their girls? All going well I hope.

Edwink

StarShapedPeg

edwink wrote: »

LOVE IT :T

We named one group of ours that all came together after breakfast cereals. We had Cornflake, Weetabix, Muesli etc.

Edwink

We have Dipper, Kiev and Burger.:rotfl:

edwink

StarShapedPeg wrote: »

We have Dipper, Kiev and Burger.:rotfl:

Love those names too

One lot of ex battery hens we rehomed here we named after flowers. We had Pansy, Daffodil, Tulip etc. Sadly all those are in hen heaven now

Edwink