Keeping hens and ducks chat.

SisterAnna

Edwink sorry you have not been well with a virus. With the virus, Menieres Disease and Spondylosis I personally think it is remarkable what you do for these poor ex-battery caged hens. Both you and Cheery Daff have some lovely stories of your time looking after and caring for them. Well done to both of you for all your help towards them and the constant effort you both put in to make their lives so much better.

My new year resolution this year is to log on to money saving a lot more and not only do it once in a while and then play catch up. I always try to read this thread when I log on plus a few other favourites I like to read. Well done ladies.

SisterAnna

edwink

Hi SisterAnna

What a lovely thing to say. Both Cheery and I do all we can for our girls and that includes allowing them into our houses. You just can not beat it when a hen just walks in as if she owns the place while happily chirping away looking for a tasty treat. I do need to restrict mine now having 24 of them otherwise they would literately take over my whole kitchen. If I only have maybe 6 to 8 here I will let them all come in for a warm up and something tasty to eat because I'm such a big softy when it comes to my feathered friends. We just want to make sure they are well looked after, have everything they need and most of all are happy.

Be nice to see you on here when you have the time.

Edwink x

edwink

Shame I can not get the picture on here but have at least managed the link to it. Cheery you may have already seen it in the BHWT latest email. I now have the picture as my laptop screensaver because I absolutely love it.

https://mcusercontent.com/f4cc520bd374650dcb1152373/images/ac7229b7-31e6-42dc-9bf5-4fab26fe215c.jpg

Edwink x

ETA. I am sure most of you know about the forthcoming changing to the MSE forum. One thing that is changing is.... it will be much easier to put pictures/photos in to our MSE posts once the new site is up and running, yay!! I am most happy about that I must say. We will all no longer be required to put our pics/photos on to a photo hosting site like Postimage or Photobucket to be able to put them on here. Hopefully it will be as easy as copying and pasting them but we will just have to wait and see I guess. Yay!! More hen pics x

Cheery_Daff

Morning all :hello:

Not much hen-themed to report round here, but we did have a small incident yesterday :eek: came to about 3.30, time our girls go back into their run for evening treats and wind down towards bed. Four of them came running - but where was Rusty??

I went off to her usual haunts in the fields, and Mr Cheery headed up the drive. When he got to the top he was met by our 89 year old neighbour in his mobility scooter, saying 'are you missing a chicken??' :eek: :rotfl: Turns out she'd been scratching round in his garden, he'd opened the door and she'd jumped in the house :eek: :eek:

Pesky creature. He's our nearest neighbour, but our drive is a good 300m long so he's not exactly close :eek: They've not really wandered off up in that direction before and I hope they don't start to get the idea - I don't really want them out wandering the lanes. But at the minute there's no way to stop them - we have no fence between us and the rest of the world :rotfl:

Hey ho. All was well and at least now we have another place to go looking if she doesn't turn up, pesky creature.

orangecrush

Hello everyone!

Cheery - what an adventure for Rusty!  Must have been a good long hike for her (and your neighbour!).  One of our hens used to fly over the fence into next door's garden, which was open to woodland, so we always had a rushed scramble to get her back before she took off into the forest.

Hope you've all been ok in the storm.  The road at the bottom of our hill was flooded, but has mostly cleared now.  Also some lovely trees in the woods are no more   The hens haven't really ventured out of the coop as it's very exposed where we live, so we've been delivering broccoli to the door of the coop for them

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, not tried ours with broccoli! They did attempt a previously frozen pea this week and weren't impressed... 😂

More adventures for Rusty today... we went out for a bit, and on the way back spotted a suspicious looking chicken on the neighbour's drive... Mr Cheery scooped her up and we rolled down the drive with her looking very co fused and trying to perch on his knee in the car 😂😂

edwink

Looks like Rusty has become very adventurous lately Cheery.  Could be a bit of a worry but I am sure you and Mr Cheery won't be far away and will find her if she decides to go wondering off again.  Naughty girl!

Mine like Broccoli too Orangecrush, especially the chunky stalk bit.  When we didn't have any hens last year we managed to keep the stalk bit to ourselves to add to stir fries but now we have hens again we let them have it.  The stalk keeps them amused for ages and ages, it's the same with the cauliflower stalk too.

We have been buying ours greens as we don't have anything growing for them at the moment.  We are buying 5 bags a week now because they just gobble it up in no time. We normally give them a whole bag every other day because anything green that was growing has now been eaten and the place looks rather baron now. Was going to put a sad face but just about getting used to the new site and fear I might loose this post before I post it or whatever they call it now. 
One thing I have noticed is that the spacing between the rows of text is rather wide now. Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me?.  Not sure how this post is going to look once it is on the thread but here goes anyway.

Edwink x

edwink

Not much happening here at the moment because we have had rain, rain and more rain.  It's almost been non stop here and everything is saturated.  Girls have been staying in their coop mainly so they have mostly stayed dry, bless 'em. Gave them some handfuls of mealworms and sunflower hearts, scattered it around for them as it keeps them busy for ages. Also given them some extra shaved straw for them to scatter about so it keeps them busier looking for the mealworms etc.

How is Rusty behaving Cheery?  Not gone off on one of her long walks again I hope. I can imagine that yours have been in their coop too in this awful weather or hiding in your porch like they do.  Not easy for them in this type of weather is it?.  I do feel sorry for the ones that do venture out because they get soaked through to the skin. Hoppy doesn't mind one bit being a duck, bless her.

Hotel cleaning out tomorrow but at least we will be working in the dry now the coop has a roof.  How we managed to clean them out in weather like this before we added it I'll never know, except to say I remember clearly getting absolutely soaking wet more than once. We have certainly asked ourselves why we didn't add the roof before now.  I suppose it was the work involved with us doing the job ourselves and the cost of the materials. It cost around £600 to complete because of the size of the coop and the fact it was over £30 per perspex sheet, plus all the fixings.  At least it is all done now and it certainly does make our lives much easier so it was well worth doing despite the cost.

I'll try and get some more pictures on here soon.  Hopefully it will be a lot easier now we have the new forum.

Edwink x

Cheery_Daff

Keep talking about your roof edwink, we very much need one too and it hasn't happened so far! Instead Mr Cheery just adds more and more bits of rubbish to keep the weather out and make things inconvenient for me at 6am opening the hen house door before I go to work. Pah! 

Rusty is fine, although she got soaked today wandering off up the drive. We took beaky to the vets and when we came back Rusty was wandering about on her own looking like a drowned rat while the other three were sheltering in the porch. Brought her inside to dry off and hang out with Beaky for a bit.

Beaky had FOUR injections this morning (!) Vet thought she could feel a long sausage shaped mass inside so has given her antibiotics, anti inflammatory, calcium and oxytocin (I think to make womb contract). Bless her. She seemed ok this afternoon, pottering about but still quiet. Vet said to keep her warm and today has been NO weather for a chicken so she's inside our house for another night. Fingers crossed...

I think we're definitely going to have to throw some money at our coop roof too. We did buy plastic panels, but not til the autumn and it was just too windy to get them up there without taking off ourselves! Then they've all either broken or been used for something else. Urgh. Needs a good think... not today though!

edwink

How is Beaky today Cheery? Is she managing ok?. It is always a worry when hens are not well I know that myself.  I have to say you have been somewhat unlucky with the vets bills you have had Cheery, which is a shame for a new(ish) hen keeper.  I would estimate that over our 10 years of keeping hens and ducks we have paid out probably around £300 at most in vet charges.  About £60 of that went on one duck who injured her leg and was given an anti inflammatory injection by the vet on our visit and we were given the rest of her anti inflammatory medication so we could give her the course of injections ourselves at home so she didn't have to go back and travel in the car multiple times. Her leg got better with her resting and the injections helped to make her more comfortable.

I do have to say though that our hen vets are brilliant and we always feel that their prices are really reasonable. The only thing is they are not where we are and we do have to travel I think about 15 miles or so but that really isn't too far for them to travel in the car with us and back home again.  We always wrap them in a blanket and we have a large wicker basket with the carry handle. The children have loved seeing a hen or a duck all wrapped up when we go to the vets.  The parents normally say to their children, sit nice and quiet and don't move too quickly otherwise you will upset the duck. The children sit looking mesmerised at the little head and neck sticking out from the blanket.  

I am sure over time Cheery you will manage to sort out their coop roof.  It took us ten years to get to where we are now with our coop and now it is finally finished at long last. I had wanted a waterproof roof on ours for years but it didn't happen until last year.  It is not the cheapest of things to add to a coop especially if buying the perspex sheets and all the fixings. We probably went a bit overboard with our perspex buying as there was a cheaper version but Mr Edwink was worried that every time he drilled in to it it would split or crack.  The type we purchased was absolutely fine being drilled in to, so none of the sheets were wasted, thankfully.  We didn't expect it to cost so much to be honest but we are pleased with it so I suppose it was worth the money and it should last a good number of years hopefully, fingers crossed anyway.

So is Roaming Rusty behaving herself now or did she enjoy the short car ride so much that she has gone and wandered off again hoping you will pick her up on your way home?.  I remember when we first got our hens we took them round the front of our house for a change of scenery only to find that 3 got out of the main gate.  It's an unmade potholed private road so not busy so they were safe but the other side has lots of shrubs and grass so that's where they were heading.  It took a fair while to get them back in I must say, little horrors they were.  All good fun eh?.

Edwink x