The first thing that I did was to move the run away from the coop and to another part of the garden. I pushed the open side of the run up against the fence and put the chickens in there so that they couldn’t escape whilst I removed the net.

When I removed the run this is what was left behind...

I think the chickens enjoyed the grass when I moved the run

The next step was to remove the netting – I have to admit it was a lot easier to take down than it was to put up!

Here you can see what the chickens did to the ground behind the net

With the netting gone, we had access to all sides of the coop so we gave it a big clean out. First we removed all of the bedding, and then scrubbed everything down with hot soapy water. I let the coop dry and then sprayed everything with some mite spray (we used 2 cans of the stuff). I even removed the perches as they were not being used and provided more hiding places for the mites. I have included some pictures to show you the extent of the infestation.

This is the bit of wood I put in for the new nest area

Here is a (nice?) close up of the creatures...

This is the slot that the floor slides into. There were mites all along the back edge.

When I removed the percehes, this is what was lurking behind them.

As you can see the mites were everywhere! Once I had finished cleaning out the run I moved it to a new position – ready for the electric fence. I have replaced the wooden nest area with a plastic box. Hopefully this is the last of the mites…

This is the cleanest the coop has ever been!

The run in its new position

I have recently realised that my setup is not working very well for me. One reason that I think I have got so heavily infested with mites is that the coop is virtually impossible to clean out in it’s current location – in order to get to the nest box I need to squeeze into a small gap between the coop and the fence, and I only have access to the rest of the coop from one side because of the netting at the back of it and the run at the front. Also, because of the nest area that I screwed into the floor of the coop, I can’t slide the floor out to clean it.

The run itself is also causing me problems: Due to the fact that it is so long and only about a meter high, it is virtually impossible for me to clean it. This means that over the past few months, the land underneath the run has turned into a bit of a swamp. As well as the vast quantities of chicken poop that have built up, I have had a problem with one of my feeders. When I moved the feeder into the middle of the run the weather was dry and it caused no problems. The girls like to empty the feeder onto the floor, but then over then following days will eat the pellets up so nothing is wasted. Since the weather has been so wet, all of the pellets on the floor have been turning to mush and being scratched into the floor and creating a disgusting smell. This means that the floor of the run has turned into a mixture of chicken poo and fermenting layers pellets and the smell is awful! They were also getting through twice as much food as usual so I have had to move the feeder back under the coop.

The final thing that I hadn’t really considered in my setup was convenience. Due to the fact that I have to move a load of flower pots, and squeeze under the netting to get to the back of the coop, changing the girls’ food has been a nightmare.

To fix all of these problems I have decided to have a bit of a move around in the garden. I am going to move the coop to the area behind the netting, remove the netting and the run and put up an electric fence. This will allow me to enter the chickens’ area and keep it clean, and will allow access to all sides of the coop for cleaning. This should hopefully solve most of my problems…

I put the girls away and put the flower pots back on the bottom of the net to stop the girls from getting through, and went to fill up the water. When I got back out Victoria had managed to escape again through a tiny gap at the end of the net. I then had to chase her around the garden for 5 minutes to get her back in the run.

I always used to leave one flower pot on the net when I was out in the garden but it seems that the girls have learnt how to get out of that now. They really love trying to mess up my garden…

I have added netting up the back of the coop and along the fence at the side of the enclosure

While I was in there I thought it would be a good opportunity to get a few mug shots of the girls. Their combs are looking so big now!

Daisy's comb used to be so tiny...

This one is a little bit blurry - it's difficult to make a chicken sit still!

I was a little bit nervous about leaving the girls for the weekend, and to make things worse as soon as I let the girls out on Saturday morning, Victoria jumped up on the fence. That was the first time I had seen any of them go up onto the fence and I was worried that she would end up in next door’s garden.

In the end I had nothing to worry about and the girls were fine – although they did make a few attempts to escape the netted off area of the garden! Apparently whilst I was gone the girls had managed to find their way into the rest of the garden a few times. When I got back I let the girls out and within 20 minutes of doing so Daisy had escaped and was scratching about in a pile of grass clippings by my compost bin. She was only out there for about 2 minutes but she managed to spread the pile around half of the garden! I think I am going to have to put some netting around the fence and the top of the coop before I let the girls out again.

One more thing happened today that made me laugh. I went out into the garden and put some meal worms in the run for the girls, in an empty washing up bowl that I put in the run about a week ago. I went back inside to watch tv, and when I looked out I could only see 2 chickens – Meg was nowhere to be found. Then I noticed the washing up bowl was upside-down and moving around by itself! I realised that Meg had somehow managed to get trapped underneath it and was walking around with it completely covering her. It looked really funny and she didn’t seem to be at all bothered by it (I think she was still hoovering up some meal worms that were underneath).

Yesterday I got an odd egg in the nest area. It was rough and had lots of red/brown speckles on it – I though it might be Daisy’s first egg.

Is this Daisy's first egg?

This morning when I let the chickens out there was already a cracked egg in the run (I wrote about it in my previous post) so when I came back at lunch time to see this I was pleasantly surprised:

Eggs in the nest area

It looks like the nest is working and the egg on the right it the biggest one I have had so far!

The Bad News

After I cleaned out the chickens today, I was doing a bit of gardening when I heard a flapping of wings. I looked round and Victoria had managed to fly over the netting that I put up yesterday. I chased her around the garden for a bit until I finally managed to catch her and put her back over the other side. As I was putting her over, I leaned on the netting and the string snapped! Well that lasted a long time!

I blame Victoria!

I took down the netting and decided to think out a way to improve it. I decided that the next attempt would need a stronger chord, and would need to be higher off of the ground, so I got out my drill and some bits of wood and this is what I came up with:

Version 2 of my net fence

This is much better than what I did last time – the rope is a lot stronger and the fence is a bit higher. It looks like the rope is not tight enough but this is as tight as I can get it. The reason that it sags is that the netting is pegged tightly into the ground and is pulling down on the rope. If I tightened it any more I think the wood would snap!

The other advantage to the new setup is that it is easier for me to get in and out. Where the netting attaches onto the coop, I have purposefully left the bottom quite loose – instead of being pegged into the ground it is attached to the coop about 1 foot off of the ground. This means that when I move the flower pots off of the bottom of the net I can just about squeeze under it without having to lay face down in chicken poop.

It nearly worked

I did get 2 un-cracked eggs but I wasn’t really happy with it so I decided to stop being lazy and screw the pieces of wood down. Now it looks much better.

Now it's not going anywhere!

Last week I got fed up of the girls trashing all of my flower beds so I decided to put up some netting. I constructed a frame out of some bamboo canes and some string and put the netting over the top of it. It has worked surprisingly well and the girls have not tried to scratch through it once.

I lashed the bamboo canes together with some string - Ray Mears would be impressed by my efforts.

At the weekend 2 things happened which made me think I need to upgrade my netting. First of all the girls dug up one of my plants that was outside the netting (it looked like pretty tough but now I think it is dead). Then I planted lots of vegetable seeds in various containers and I realised it would be too hard to stop the girls destroying my crops. Since I was in the mood to get stuff done today I decided to use the remaining netting to fence off half of my garden.

I put up some string between the coop and the fence and draped the netting over the top, pegging it down into the grass. This sounds simple but it was extremely windy and I bent a few pegs. I then put some left over weldmesh on top of the coop to hopefully discourage perching on it (and jumping down the other side). I also had to block off the gap down the side of the coop – when you look at the photos bear in mind that this is temporary and pretty much an experiment. If the girls stay in their section I will do something better and make it more permanent.

It's not perfect but it seems to be working.

This should hopefully stop them from jumping on the roof

A professional bodge job - the less said about this the better!

The only problem with this setup is that it makes it extremely difficult to get in and out of that part of the garden. Part of the netting is held down with some large flower pots – I have to move these and squeeze underneath the net (it is pulled very tight so I can’t lift it very high) and try not to lay in any chicken poop. If this goes well I will redo it to have a proper gate.