Big Green Chicken Blog

Cluckingham Palace [from iPhone]

2009-02-14T11:16:00.000Z

Who's The Fairest Of Them All? [from iPhone]

2009-02-04T14:26:00.000Z

A Medicated Cobweb [from iPhone]

2009-01-17T13:35:00.001Z

Lock Up Ya Chooks

2009-01-06T18:22:00.005Z

The MetOffice says minus 10 tonight! With this in mind, here's a few cold weather chicken tip courtesy of our good friends at the Battery Hen Welfare Trust.

If you have the space/facilities, it may be worth waiting until dark tonight, putting the hens in a cardboard box/crate and moving them to an indoor area such as a porch, garage or utility room for the night.
If that is not possible, then you can cover their coop overnight with carpet, blankets, bubble wrap or flattened cardboard to give them extra insulation.
If you have just a few girls in a large coop/stable or converted shed, it may be worth putting a large cardboard box, half filled with chopped straw/wood shavings, on its side within the coop. After dark, go in and put them all togther in the box, this should ensure that they are sharing body warmth tonight.
Smearing their combs with Vaseline will help prevent frostbite.
Drinkers will freeze overnight (and some may split if you leave them out and try to defrost them in the morning), so bring them in each night to thaw in a sink and fill them each morning with warm water (which they love). Check the drinkers again during the day to ensure they havent frozen up.
Give your hens extra corn in the afternoon as this reputedly will heat them up internally as they digest it overnight.
You can also give them a hot breakfast, anything from layers mash mixed with hot water, warm scrambled eggs, mashed potato, warm sultanas, rice, pasta etc.
Do make sure the hens have some shelter in their run, the wind chill can be very uncomfortable for them. Putting up some boards / tarpaulin again the windward side of their run will help.

Ours are all safe and warm in the outhouse, with a radiator.

Seperating Cobweb

2008-12-31T11:24:00.008Z

Poor little Cobweb really is at the bottom of the pecking order. So much so, the other 2 have pecked a hole in her bum and we've had to seperate her from them.

Amazingly, hens are oftern attracted to pecking at red (as well as shiney things) and so once a chicken is bleeding it's potentailly an ongoing and self perpetuating thing. Seperating her was our number 1 priority, while making sure she could still see the others and they could see her for security and her own piece of mind (this is an ex-battery hen let's not forget, used to being in close proximity toother chooks). We've added, as you can see in the picture, a temporay annex to Cluckingham Palace, made out of old rabbit pen. We gave her bum a squirt of 'Savlon Wound Wash' to be on the safe side, then sound advice from hitting the forums runs thus: "Gentian violet or purple spray (available at most livestock stores and online). Spray this on the red featherless areas of the hens. This tastes bad for them and removes the sight of red which seems to attract them." She's now sleeping seperatly from them too, in the outhouse in a cat basket. Lets keep our fingers crossed.

She seemed to have a lot more confidence this morning, and is eating fine. Maybe this is just what she needs to catch up with the other 2 who are 'free-ranging' like they were born to it and eating there way through the herb garden happily. A few more feathers and a bit of TLC and we've high hopes for her.

Merry Christmas Everyone! [from iPhone]

2008-12-25T09:50:00.001Z

Twittering & Pecking Order

2008-12-22T09:46:00.002Z

The girls are a teeny bit more confident today, especially Mustardseed who's full of beans and clucking away this morning, and they're starting to sort out the pecking order (which was kinda obvious from the start).

Heading off to work, but left them out in the coop to peck around the bottom of the pen and encouraged Cobweb out of the nesting box to grab some grub.

Another 2 eggs this morning. One more, and that's boiled eggs and toasty soldiers for @SparklyJem (the good lady wife) and I tomorrow. Oh, and if you want to keep up on the chooks you can follow my twitter at @Lactose or the Big Green Switch twitter at @BigGreenSwitch

I was amazed to find my good mate Sian from our favourite green site has also set-up a Facebook group for the BGSChooks, so you join for updates and progress reports. I'd love to see some pics of other peoples chickens over there too, and hear your tips and suggestions :-)

Unhinged Chickens

2008-12-21T11:38:00.000Z

Okay, I learnt something this afternoon. Something I've not seen in any books or on the web.

I added a hinge to the ramp, a brass one, so that I could hook the ramp up to the top of the coop by a bit of string once we move them up onto the grass in a day or so (they are only where they are temporarily while they are getting used to the place). You need to move them around every 2-3 days and I thought this would be a cunning way of stopping the ramp catching on the ground every time.

Mustardseed and Peasblossom caught one look at this hinge and spent the next hour pecking at it like pneumatic hammers. "Oooh, shiney thing". It was borderline neurosis before I got a chance to cover it up with a bit of black gaffer tape and all returned to calm. Cobweb would have probably have joined in too if she wasn't still an agoraphobic wreck at the back of the nest box (though I did get her to eat some corn out of my hand earlier).

Anyway, and this was news to me, chickens are attracted to shiny objects - If an egg gets broken they will start pecking at it, and eventually eat it. Apparently, for some hens, once they get a taste of eggs they start breaking eggs to eat them. It can be a hard habit to break. Interesting that, as I was also told egg shells were good for them as a food/calcium/grit source for making new eggs.

I'll let you know any changes later, but for now all's quiet in the coop.

Enough Said! [from iPhone]

2008-12-21T08:11:00.000Z

Now that's a good start!

The Big Day

2008-12-20T17:52:00.013Z

Well, coop filled with straw etc. and off we went. Up bright and early, Smart Car packed with a homemade cardboard chook carrier, we set off for Allesley, Nr. Coventry, for today's Battery Hen Welfare Trust collection.

Big thanks to Ian and Mollie (lovely people) for showing us around, introducing us to the rescue turkeys, and to all the guys and girls helping out on the day.

These people do awesome work and I can't recommend getting your chickens this way high enough. Well worth the wait. This was like a big friendly military operation, and by the time we arrived there were only a hundred or so left for collection.

I'm proud to say we won a special comment for 'best made box' of the day ;-)

Handily, they also had feeders and water thingys for sale, basic layers mash (this is the dusty stuff they are fed on and used to, you have to wean them off this at first) and loads of free constructive advice (just the stuff you need to know, and where to find out the rest).

We picked up a couple of tags (leg rings too) so we could name them properly like the poll on the Big Green Switch website:

Cobweb (green tag, on the right in the picture) is the most 'oven ready' looking and very nervous. She's very agoraphobic so far. She'll need the most care.
Mustardseed (red tag, on the left of the pic) is the toughest and fluffiest and is showing signs of being a good forager already. She's going to rule the roost.
Peasblossom (purple tag) is kinda middle of the road, a bit bald in places but sweet and quite curious. I think she'll be fine.

As you can see in the picture they seem to like their new coop. It's been a long day and already it's nearly time for them to roost. We'll see more of them tomorrow. We've wrapped a hot water bottle up in a towel and Cobweb is sat on it right now. Fingers crossed. I'm very glad we were able to give these girls a new lease of life :-)

What's in a name?

2008-11-27T11:33:00.006Z

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose." - So, the Shakespearian ladies won by 1 vote!

Wow, I mean, what a response. Nearly 500 folks from the Big Green Switch website helped us decide on the categories for our chickens names. Incredible. A very big thank you to all who voted, and the good lady wife and I are chuffed with the choice.

My running around getting folks to vote for sci-fi characters (Princess Layer anyone?) was alas for naught and I was pipped to the post (secretly, I believe, by the nefarious campaign efforts of my good friend Elaine and her lovely bunch of thespian friends from the Little Theatre in Burton on Trent).

So, a fresh poll now folks, and on to the main event ;-)

We've come up with 7 groups of names we like, and you can vote for them on the BGS site here. Please go tell us what to call our 3 ex-batts, arriving on the 20th of December.

A quick thank you too, to everyone who's offered us some fantastic tips through the site and Facebook etc., plus some great suggestions for names. The folks that use the BGS site are a loverly and fun bunch. I do like the idea of calling them all 'Bob' (as they look the same anyway) and naming the coop 'Cluckingham Palace' :-)

I've had loads of good advice from long standing chicken keepers too, from the practical to the damn right strange. I'm tempted to try it all at least once. From "feed the chickens eggshells, the calcium makes the next eggs strong" to "get the menfolk to pee [urinate] in the corners of the garden as the smell'll terrify the b'jesus out of any fox" (Hugh Fernley Whittingstall did something similar in his River Cottage program, hanging bags of human hair around to ward of predators with the scent). Reading around, Matthew Rice (chicken enthusiast and Country Life contributor) heartily recommends hanging a radio up in the coop (and I have a spare solar one I could use, well, actually, not at night, scratch that) as foxes apparently "hate to hear the human voice", "preferably Radio 2, as they particularly dislike the sound of Terry Wogan," he says, though that somehow seems cruel to the chickens...

...anyway, please vote if you get a moment, you don't need to register or anything and there's loads of good green living stuff on the site. Hopefully more chook news soon :-)

We're go for Rescue Chickens!

2008-11-13T13:29:00.012Z

Had a great chat this morning with Ian, one of the Warwickshire and West Midlands Coordinators at the Battery Hen Welfare Trust. We are GO FOR CHICKENS! :-)

December 20th, which seems like ages away, we get 3 ex-battery chooks. We could have got them earlier by traveling further afield, but cramming 3 hens into the Smart Car (with them sat in the back on top of the engine) isn't something we want to do for a protracted length of time. Poor girls'll be disorientated enough as it is.

While a relatively small organization, the Battery Hen Welfare Trust seem to have this whole adoption process nicely streamlined. They have homed over 110,000 hens and have volunteer coordinators all across the UK with assorted dates available for picking up your new feathered friends. Naturally, the BHWF need to be sure the hens are going to sympathetic homes, but as soon as I mentioned our Cumfy Pets coop (he knew the brand), the reserch I've been doing (despite us being first-time chook owners) and our setup at home, they were fine with taking home 3 of their girls and giving them a much happier life.

Ian did raise a few good points for us to consider, and the return emails from the BHWT are packed with good information and contacts. One recommendation he did make, which I particularly like, is the Practical Poultry site which has some excellent advice and ideas in their forums.

Obviously, there might be a short pause in the blogs content getting refreshed while we wait for our girls to arrive. But bear with us, and I'll root out some relevant chicken facts to post in the next few days, especially about adopting ex-batts (as 'recycled chickens' is just SUCH a cool idea).

Gotta be honest, I'm dead excited by this now. Giving some chickens a home before Christmas, I kinda like that :-)

Looking for Ex-Batts

2008-11-10T12:42:00.013Z

I just can't believe that battery hens are slaughtered after one year in lay. Just 'got rid of' when their egg production drops from 6 a week to 5. So these are still young healthy birds, perfect for a family, laying well just "not commercially viable". I mean, come on, 5 eggs a week and they're suddenly not good enough to live? Madness!

I was gob-smacked to read there are currently "over 20 million battery hens in the UK", all producing cheap (and comparatively tasteless) eggs for the mass consumer market. Personally we NEVER buy battery eggs, knowing how they are kept and how the girls are forced to live.

We are, therefor, looking at the likes of Hen Rehomers UK and the Battery Hen Welfare Trust (which both have rehome outlets based in the Midlands) for a cool chook solution. We know there's a million great breeds out there we could 'buy-over-the-counter', but this is the way to go for us.

We already have 2 house rabbits and a kitten, all kinda rescue pets and strays, so this is definitely the way we want to do it. We have a good environment for ex-batts, and can give them the space, time, and care they need to acclimatise to a much better life. Let them stretch their drumsticks and grow some feather back.

I'll let you know how it goes :-)

Coop De Ville

2008-11-09T18:57:00.006Z

This afternoon we put up the chicken coop.

I was a bit apprehensive but we have a CP 047 c/o Cumfy Pets for the BGS chickens. Fox proof galvanised steel wire and sliding bolts. Inner sliding door between the run and the living area. Perches and a 6ft run. All in treated wood. I've gotta say, it was a piece of cake.

Finished in an hour, construction was blissfully obvious and it went together no problem at all. Okay, so the instructions weren't exactly Ikea, but it was built in a way that everything lined itself up nicely as soon as you offered one bit of wood up against the next. With some extra help from Oldspot, taking it easy and chatting to guests etc., it flew up in no time at all. Not too long to spend outside doing brownie-point-earning chores before sitting down to a Sunday dinner with the satisfaction of getting it done.

Nice well fitting coop actually. Tight, cosy, lots of sensible design decisions against the likes of Redmite and for ease of cleaning/access. All that and it looks good, all be it in a solid kinda 'chicken Wendy house' kinda way. I can't really fault it. Lets see how it does in use (once we find a few Ex-Bats) but it went together great and I'm notoriously 'domestically handicapped' in the DIY department.

One recommendation. If you have a power screwdriver get it out before you start. We had a ratchet driver which did the job nicely.

Okay, I'm off for a shower. Check out the video above for time-lapse web cam ( just to prove it was as easy as it was) and please vote of the chickens names in the poll on the site.

I can almost taste the omelet.

It's Arrived

2008-11-06T10:20:00.005Z

Well, from small acorns great oak tree hopefully grow.

A chap arrived with a delivery from Cumfy Pets this morning, bearing 2 reasonable sized flat packed boxes. There was a brief issue of getting it up the ginnel at the back of the houses, it being blustery and me being in a bathrobe, but the smiling delivery guy dutifully did all the hard work and we are now 'avec coop'.

I was in a rush to get out of the door, but I'll drag it into the dining room tonight (out of the Derbyshire weather) 'till m'old mate Oldspot comes over on Sunday to give me a hand putting it up (over a few beers and in return for a spot of Sunday lunch). When it's finally strapped together it should look like the one up there on the left, fingers crossed, but with my notorious DIY skills we'll have to see.

As it happens, my "Keeping Pet Chickens" also turned up from eBay this morning and, while it's a bit bigger print and 'Peter and Jane' than I thought it would be, I'll give it a good shufty tonight and see if I need anything else. Maybe cross reference a few websites.

Better start looking for some chickens. Suggestions/offers appreciated.

Vote for Chicks

2008-11-05T15:21:00.000Z

In the spirit of the US elections, and for a bit of fun, we're gonna let the users of Big Green Switch pick the names of the new chickens.

Yeah, I know we'll live to regret this, and it'll probably teach me a valuable lesson in not opening my mouth in meetings.

This we're gonna do in 2 stages:

The Theme:
- Disney characters?
- Female explorers & lady aviators?
- Classic star of the silver screen?
- Sci-fi characters?
- Our personal friends/BGS staff?
- Comic book characters?
- Lady scientists?
- Shakespearean characters?
The Names:
- We (myself and the good lady wife) will pick 8 or 10 names from the winning category, of which we'll use the top 4 that folks vote for.

Sounds easy enough. Should be fairly painless. Just nip over to the Big Green Switch site and cast ya vote for part 1 before Friday the 21st of November. Then we'll start stage 2.

If I end up with pets named after Disney princesses, I will not be chuffed...