Keeping hens and ducks chat.

ali-t · 8 May 2016 at 4:56PM

Beckyy, poo management is the bane of my life. Winter was a poo/mud combo and last year we cut the grass regularly but now there is no grass left and once we stop putting straw down we will have poo fest again.

Beckyy · 8 May 2016 at 9:25PM

I'm glad I'm not the only one!

On the plus side, the grass that is still in the ground is very green :T

smallholding_antics · 9 May 2016 at 12:33PM

Same here re poop management. We just sweep the concrete areas and use a spade (kids old seaside bucket and spade type) to manually pick the areas worst affected, Time consuming I know.

Dizzy_Imp · 9 May 2016 at 1:50PM

Trust me, chicken poo is nothing! We have three huge dogs and poo patrol for these is 100% worse. Our chickens run in the orchard and I'm afraid we just mow it in. You can't do that with dog poo _pale_ Last year, I had a nasty incident with the leaf sucker that shreds and mulches the leaves as you go....got the picture...? Chicken poo is washed off patios easily with a hose and broom. Visitors to the orchard take their chances!

I have exciting news - we collected a cockerel and three hens from my SiL yesterday. She has a huge free-range egg farm and 10K birds. Occasionally a rogue boy bird gets through the sexing process and has to be *ahem* removed from the flock. I'm such a softie that I said we'd take one and save him from being made into a pie.

Foggy is a beautiful red and black cockerel and although he's still quite young, he was crowing his little heart out this morning, bless him. We took three girls too, so he wasn't on his own and now have a white hen called Penny, a lavender skinny one called Violet and a dark glossy brown and ginger one called Clarrie. 8 girls for our new lad to keep in order. Good luck to him!

They are currently in a new run next to the main enclosure in the orchard, so they can all get used to each other for a few days.

edwink · 9 May 2016 at 2:03PM

We use a wide decorators scraper on the concrete path to scoop up the worst of it and then sweep the path down every day. The stoned area does not need poop picking because it washes through the stone when it rains. We wash the path down once or twice a week and scrub it with a hard broom. We are fortunate that our garden slopes so when we throw buckets of water down the path it heads towards the soak-a-ways we put in so there are no nasty smelly puddles left anywhere. There is no grass left in their area at all now because they have wrecked it but they do spend the winter on our lawn which we then have to re-seed every spring.

Edwink x

skipton · 10 May 2016 at 1:09AM

Hi everyone, so sorry to hear of all your losses. I lost one of my little leghorn muggers too last week. She had been laying softies for ages (due to old age) and I think she had egg peritonitis. My last little mugger is really missing her friend.
The rest of the gang have discovered the delights of the lawn (much to my OH's horror) so I have to de -poo it once they have gone in. Upto now they have gone into the wood but that is covered in bluebells so not very easy to scratch in. I just have a bucket and an old slotted spoon and spatula for poo picking. It's a pain to do but if left it will burn the grass.

smallholding_antics · 10 May 2016 at 12:19PM

We have 3 dogs and 4 horses too so I spend most of my day face down looking at poo LOL!!!

I added 7 chicks to our flock last night, almost a week old. A rejected gosling is in with them (that's a day old) and they snuggle under him/her so I'm hoping they will be ok for now!

Mowing chicken poo into the grass will no doubt be good for it so I think that's something worth doing

we do it with the horse muck (in a fashion) and poor DH picks up the dog poo as he gets in before me

edwink · 16 May 2016 at 8:02PM

Hi all

Hope everyone is ok and enjoying their lovely fresh eggs.

I have a WHO DONE IT on my hands here. To explain:- every year when our veg growing is finishing at the end of the season we open the veg garden gate and allow our girls to forage on the veg beds Also when the tomatoes and cucumbers are finished in the greenhouses we leave the doors open slightly so the girls can go in them over the winter months to have a dry dust bath, At the side of my 2 greenhouses I have a small Polly tunnel which I store all my gardening trays and pots in etc.. At the end there is some shelving with all my veg trays on which are from floor to the ceiling. At the bottom there are a stack of trays and nearly everyday we have found a lovely little brown egg in the lower stack. That's fine they can lay their eggs wherever they like. But, now we are coming to the summer months we have to claim our veg garden back which we have recently done and about a month later we claim our greenhouses back. Are you still with me? :rotfl: Bit of a long story I know but this puzzle needs solving.

Anyway even though the veg garden is closed off to them we are till finding an egg in the Polly tunnel. So it looks as though one of my hens is jumping over the gate, walking to the Polly tunnel and laying her egg and then jumping back again. She is not touching any of the seedlings (YET) in the veg garden. Is she clever or what????

We have 25 hens so which one is doing it???? Do we have to sit up there all day waiting to find out who the culprit is?

Any suggestions will be gratefully received :rotfl:

Getting around 18 eggs a day from the hens and 2 to 4 from the ducks at the moment.

Edwink x

Better_Days · 17 May 2016 at 6:39AM

Edwink - can you supply us with a 'rogues gallery' so we can decide who is the most likely suspect? :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Happygreen · 17 May 2016 at 6:13PM

Edwink, your post made me laugh! The odd places where we found eggs over the years: under the lawnmower - yes, UNDER! One girl made a nest in dip of a tarpaulin covering a wood pile, I found 27 eggs in there!
My recommendation is the only thing that has worked here....when I had the suspicion that one was laying astray I tried to follow them carefully. Just keep the fence in sight and you might see her jump! The culprit tends to shoot off like a rocket once the house door is opened, trying not to be seen at the same time of course! Trouble with this approach is....pray for good weather and you might need a lot of stealth and patience!

Keeping hens and ducks chat.

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