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Fourteen days in and we are still loving our “girls”, the lovely hens bought from Farmer Mike. ready for his morning duties, Little Man scoffs down his breakfast and dons wellies to go and collect the eggs almost before we can catch up with him. He loves stroking them and 3 out of the 4 actually appreciate it too (for different reasons, I may add, than he thinks, but none-the-less they sit nicely for him). One is a real madam who seems upset by the thought that we would even consider handling her, The Rebel. …before you ask, they do not and will not have names!
Looking after them is not too strenuous- They have free access to chicken pellets (a concentrated feed of different grains) and get all sorts of things- peels, grass cuttings, bugs, spiders, snails and slugs, as these are found in the garden. I don’t mind a bit more extensive husbandry. If their egg production drops a bit because they are choosing variety over pellets and not getting as much pellets as they should to keep production going.
We cleaned their coup last weekend, after a week of having them. As their small run stands on concrete, we moved this slightly and removed the poop off it with a shovel. That was relatively easy. The house’s tray comes out, so that’s not too hard to clean either.
Yesterday we also started on project “chicken run”- we have started clearing the space for them to have a chicken run around their coup and small run. (The run just seems too small for the 4 of them.)
Tonight, we let them out a bit in the area where their run will be. This is what they go upto:
Do you reckon they are happy chickens?
They do seem to love that sand bath, don’t they?
Well as of yesterday, we have 2 eggs a day. The first layer is already producing massive ones!
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