A Month of Chickens (by sarah)
I ment to do this post at the weekend but just didn't get the time! We have now had the chickens a month.
The anti peak spray seems to have worked wonders! And they will now let you stroke them though they do still spend a lot of their time running away from Mary who still excitedly cries 'Chicken!' everytime she sees or hears them.
My dad has decided they are velociraptors and they do have a tendency to come and stare in at you whilst you are cooking, they also tap their beaks on the door. I found this shopping list in his hand writing:
spread, olbas oil, cake, toothpaste, nappies size 5, cheese, bananas, VELOCIRAPTOR
Now cake is a bit iffy but velociraptor?
He says he just needed to check how it was spelt and the shopping list was a scrape piece of paper - I say LICKLY STORY!
But back tot he chickens - their feathers are looking really good!
We are still collecting the stats and the eggometer tells us that we are now under a £5 an egg but we are still out of pocket! However it has gotten down to that in a month and I ended up buying a run so when I do the cost benefit stuff I will do different combinations to show how economic this keeping chickens business actually is! They seem to go through about a sack of food and just over one of straw a month. When the jet washer needs replacing it will have to count as a chicken cost as we are jet washing the decking weekly at the mo but again that should reduce once we build the larger run - but of course you then have material costs for that!
The run should be sorted by the spring hopefully but I'm not too worried about it over the winter but chicken poo in summer will be a different matter!
The girls have been sitting in the autumn sun watching the birds and we do the main feeding and watering when Jean comes in from school - the corn is proving a very good tactic. Jean sprinkles that, whilst Mary sort of throws it about a bit (including on the poor things!), then Jean puts their food out and Mary does their grit. We all check for eggs and if needed I clean things up a bit and put fresh straw in the nest boxes. They mustn't have too much corn as it is a treat but I wanted something where we were properly interacting with them and weren't the scary things that just come and catch them!
They put themselves away in the hen house when it is getting dark but are also now more wary of being caught in the first place! They fluff themselves up if a cat gets two near them and spend their time trying to get into the shed (where we keep supplies) or into the bunny's run to eat his food, he on the other hand has been found eating their bedding in the nest box (though this was the day I'd run out of straw and say had put hay in instead and he loves hay!), I am forever having to remove him from the chicken run as he will eat their food!
We love the chickens! Also they have fluffy legs! (and yes the photo is upside down - I'll try and sort it later!)
Wed 9th Oct 2013 8:22 am 
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