General Chat

If you do,
what breed are they and what sort of run/house do you keep them in?
I am thinking of getting some chickens, I know what breed I want and where I want them.
I will probably have about 4/6 but I'm not having a cockerel.

Gillie XX

I love chickens....................fresh laid eggs are wonderful.

Our garden is far too small to keep any though..................what type are you getting?

xx

Gillie

Wait for TOR she has chickens, so she may be able to help you

Sxx

I really wanted to get some Marans or Black Rock, in fact as long as they are good layers and the eggs are brown I'm not really that worried, I do know some chickens are big eaters and not such big producers.

I have a large garden, 70ft by 60ft, so plenty of room, I used to have a couple of ducks as pets for the lads when they were little, both of the ducks laid daily for me.

Gillie XX

Nudge

And they eat kitchen scraps too................at home, on the farm, we had chicken.................strangely they refused to eat the cakes I made at school!?!

xx

Hi Gillie,

We have chickens at work think there's about 15 of them. We have different breeds and a cockerel, they all get on fine. We collect 6-8 eggs daily.

They have a run with a kind of shed in it which they can roost and lay their eggs.

Nikki

Gillie

I have 4 chickens (breed Warren).

They live in an ark but that is inside a bigger fenced area.

Reason for ark is where I live we have a lot of foxes and badgers so I only let chickens into bigger (unroofed) area when I am around.

Got my ark from ayside poultry (sorry don't have website to hand but should be easy enough to google.

In addition to kitchen scraps I also put used chicken shells into a low oven and then smash up and add to feed as a source of calcium (cheaper then buying oyster grit)

Give me a shout if you want further info.

T.O.R. ;o))

Young man goes to work at a "Poultry Farm" the owner said,I give you one week to sort out the different types and names of the birds. After two days he went to the boy and asked him the type of bird he was looking after,he said ,I don,t know.The owner put his finger into the Parsons Nose,Smelt it and said Rhode Island Red,You,ll have to do better than that.This went on for three more days and each time the boy was wrong and the owner every time put his finger to the Parsons Nose and told him what kind it was,then said to him,I don,t know ,You,re not much good are you? What Kind of lad are you? The boy Dropped his trousers and said,If you,re so Bl--dy Clever,Find Out. **M**>:o))>.

Cheers everyone, TOR I have decided what chickens I want, they will be in a closed pen as we are out in the sticks a bit and back onto woodland, we often get foxes around here, I shall add some pics to the photo page once I have my babies. I can't wait I'm so excited lol.

Gillie XX

Hi Gillie

I have kept chooks for 40 years.
The only sure way of keeping foxes out
is an electric fencing wire at fox nose height.
This never fails!
I also recommend crossbreds-
some commercial layer types
are dumb as doggydoo!

xx mick

Gail

Most of mine are Aruacana cross - they all
now lay a range of various shades of green
and blue coloured eggs.

No worries Gail
Drop in next time you're in the area.
and I will give you a setting!

I have crossed in various breeds
over the years, but only hatch from the
right coloured eggs.

xx mick

Yep
many years ago I left a ladder leaning against a
chook house - fox climbed the ladder and dropped
in on the chooks! I still cant work out how
he got out again!

Well my electric wires 6 inches off the ground
all around the pens have kept them safe for
16 years now.

My dad, a country boy, used to keep chickens in our garden when I was young and used to get them as day old chicks. He would make a wooden pen for them first, stand it on newspaper in the living room with a stone hot water bottle in the corner covered with an old wooly jumper, the chicks would huddle round that thinking it was Mum. They were fed on chopped up boiled eggs and when they were big enough would go outside in the chicken run, no foxes there so safe. I remember Mum drying the eggshells out and crushing them, also she used to put potato peelings in a pan on the fire and boil them into a mush with some bran added I think, and it made the chickens a warm meal in the winter time.
We used to get lots of eggs and would sometimes pass them on to neighbours too.
Happy memories, when I worked at the Railway Parcels office, we would get dozens of boxes of chicks sent through, they would be brought into the office at nighttimes till they were collected and the peep-peep would remind me of those chicks at home.
Lizx

Hi Liz

Thats exactly what my father used to do!

Every so often he would bring home a dozen
day olds in a shoe box!

Thats what got me started on my life long
love of chooks

xxx mick

I was always scared of picking them up when they were little as I was worried I would squeeze them and hurt them. Don't like picking any feathered creatures up now, even Mum's blasted budgie, if he sat on my head I would hate it but couldn't lift him off, Mum would have to do it! If I find an injured bird, I have to put a cloth over it and pick it up like that. My brother has budgies which he breeds and my other bro has chickens and bantams but he has a lot of land, I only have a small paved garden, used to have a dog who fancied living with you Mick. She was a real digger and ruined any lawn she was on.
Dad used to have homing pigeons too and we had rabbits but I stopped eating those after my pet one went missing lol

Lizx

We had a big suburban block - quarter acre.
I used to have chooks, ducks, pheasants, a peacock, quail, guinea fowl, pigeons , budgies and rabbits at various times and sometimes all at once!
I dont know how my mother put up with it all,
but she was a country girl herself from a small
Suffolk village.

Mick, some of my Mum's family were from Silly Suffolk lol
I am a Norfolk girl myself !
Dad was from Buckinghamshire.
x