After a few more days of going outside each morning to defrost the chicken’s water with the kettle, I decided that I don’t like freezing to death in the mornings and have started bringing the water in at night. This has made such a difference – I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before! The water still freezes as the temperatures are below freezing during the day too, but the ice is less thick and it is easier to open the drinker than when it has been in the cold all night. Each morning all I have to do is fill it up and take it out to them which saves me a lot of time in the mad rush before work.

After a few days of frost and freezing temperatures we have had another round of snow – but this time it is nowhere near as bad as it was last time. On the first day of the snow Daisy and Victoria fell asleep outside again, and I only realised because I decided to bring the drinker in – otherwise they would have slept under the stars. I don’t think it would have done them any harm and they seemed perfectly happy, but I put them in just incase.

One weird advantage to the cold snap has been that poo picking inside the nest box has been easier – the poos have been frozen solid and not so sticky which actually made life easier!

When I spoke to her on the first day of my holiday, she told me that Victoria had already escaped once and had to be put back inside. That same night, before going to bed she decided to check on the chickens and Daisy was stuck outside the coop and the door was closed. She said that Daisy was pecking at the door, and she had to put her in through the roof. Daisy didn’t really appreciate being picked up and flapped about like mad which made life difficult.

The rest of the week was filled with escape attempts – Victoria managed to escape the run at least once a day and had to be put in. My girlfriend’s brother was also staying at the house and was sleeping on the living room floor. One day he woke up and opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was Victoria tapping on the patio doors! They went outside to put her back in, and it turns out that she has figured out how to get back into the run – she sneaks round the back and jumps straight over the fence and onto the coop roof. I saw her doing this and noticed that she does touch the fence but it doesn’t hurt her because she is not in contact with the ground.

Today I came back home at lunch time and the chickens did the naughtiest thing yet. I bent down to give them some mixed corn and Daisy jumped straight up onto my shoulder. I didn’t really mind until she started trying to climb up onto my head, at which point I decided to try and get her off of me. Trying to get a chicken off of your head is not easy! There was a lot of flapping about and a bit of a struggle, and in the midst of it all Daisy did a big sloppy poo all over my jumper!

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…

At first I thought this was chicken poop...

...but chicken poop doesn't move!

I’m not 100% sure what these are but I think they might be the dreaded red mite. Even though most of the mites were black, when I wiped them off the dust pan and brush it left streaks of red blood over it so I think they have been feeding on the girls. This might be why they keep making such a racket every morning!

A close up of the parasites

I didn’t have time to completely clean the coop today, but I spent a good hour and a half removing all of the bedding from the floor. Most of the mites were in the nest box, so after I had cleaned it out I spread a lot of stalosan f over the floor (it is a powdered disinfectant) and blocked the nest box off so that the girls can’t sleep in there. I also removed the bedding from the rest of the coop apart from the area where the girls lay (there didn’t seem to be any mites in there).

I think this weekend will be time to give the coop a good clean out – I intend to go to my local pet shop and buy some mite powder. I will then give the coop a good clean out and replace all of the bedding, and give it a good sprinkling of mite powder.

I feel really bad for the girls – there were so many mites and they must have been driving the girls nuts! When the girls went in to sleep tonight I lifted the lid of the coop slightly to see what they would do. When they first went in, they had a good look at the wood blocking off the nest box. Then they went up to it and started pecking at it – trying to find away into the section that they normally sleep in. It was really horrible to watch – they clearly wanted to go sleep in their usual spot but I think it is best to keep them out of there for a few days.

Well not anymore! I finally decided to do something about it and added this hi-tech invention to the side of my coop.

This took me a whole 2 minutes to do and I think it may even have cost me just over 20p...

I had some hooks in my garage and decided to tie a bit of string round them to hold the door open. When I was walking through the house to get the string I found this little rubber ring on the floor so decided to tie it on the end of the string to put over the hook – I don’t even know what it is or where it came from. It’s amazing how such a small effort has made my life easier!

I had to move the run out of the way to clean it properly which was a bit of a pain – it is very difficult to move it by yourself without breaking it. Before moving it I had to crawl in and pull out the pieces of wood that I put in there for the girls to climb on. When I was inside there the smell was terrible! Once I had got the coop out of the way I raked up all of the poo and attempted to fork the ground over a bit but the ground was pretty hard so I gave up on that one pretty quickly. I did manage to turn over some of the ground so hopefully the girls will enjoy dust-bathing in the loose earth.

I got up around 10:00 on Saturday and the brown one (I know I need to give her a name!) was nowhere to be seen. I opened up the coop and she was laying down in the nest box. She ended up going in and out of the nest box for about an hour and when I went outside there was an egg in the box – still warm and …moist (nice).

Yesterday a similar thing happened and she laid another egg. I took the egg back inside and then the grey one started to act a bit weird, also going in and out of the nest box for a while and she laid an egg too! I was pretty pleased – 2 hens have started laying in the past week.

The grey one laid this egg (on the right) which was 33.63 grams. The egg on the left is a shop bought large egg.

Later on I went outside to change their water and I found the tiniest egg laying in the run – the third egg of the day. Now I have 3 chickens that are all laying so I’ve been eating eggs for breakfast over the weekend which has been great. It’s very satisfying to be eating eggs produced in your own garden.

I have been eating lots of eggs

The first 2 eggs I got off of the brown one were laid in the run and were very dirty. Luckily she has started to lay in the nest box which is good – although they still get a bit dirty because the girls sleep in there. The grey one also managed to do it in the nest box yesterday but today she did it on the hard coop floor which caused the egg to crack. I am still waiting for daisy’s second egg…

Daisy's tiny egg is bottom left, the brown one's egg is top left and the 2 on the right are shop bought.

Apart from the egg laying not a lot else has happened. I have been trying to get the chickens used to being picked up by picking them up once or twice a day. They really don’t seem to like it so I’m not sure if I will carry on doing it. It could make things easier for me if they do get used to it because sometimes I have to pick them up to put them in the run.

The girls are getting a bit more used to me now.

Last night I blocked off the nest box so that the girls were forced to sleep in the coop. I was hoping that they would use the perches but instead they all huddled together on the floor near the nest box. It did make poo picking a lot easier though (the floor of the coop slides out) and means that the nest box is still clean for laying. I am going to keep blocking it off each night until they learn to sleep on the perches.

Daisy is all hunched up

I posted about Daisy’s health on the forum and JuicyLucy said that it is normal to have bloody poos when you are worming them – she said the blood would be pink and stringy which is exactly how it looked. I was still worried about her so I popped home at lunch time and she seemed to be fine by then. I’m glad I went home because it meant I could relax this afternoon instead of being worried the whole time.

Flubenvet

When I got in from work I had the usual task of weighing out some more medicine for the birds. I must admit I will be glad when the treatment is finished – only a few more days to go now.

I let the girls out just after 6:00 and they all decided to attack the forget-me-nots that my parents brought up for me last week. I moved the pot up on top of the bench but they still finished off the bits that were hanging down low enough to be pecked. I think there are still enough of them left to just about survive!

Forget-Me-Nots

After dinner, the birds kept trying to jump in through the closed patio doors so I thought I’d go out and play with them for a bit. I gave them a few treats and two of them even sat on my lap at one point!

The red one is definitely getting a lot more tame. Daisy has always been the most tame and she will let me touch her, but recently I have been able to touch the red one without her minding too much. Today I was running around in the garden and the girls were following me and the red one was always the first to catch up with me. I would run across the garden and put some treats on the floor – both of the others would go straight for the treats but the red on would stand right close to me and look up at me. When I ran back to the other side of the garden the other girls would carry on eating the treats but she would run after me straight away.

When the girls started to go in for the night I suddenly realised I hadn’t cleaned the poos out of the house yet, so I quickly took the roof off and tried to clean it out before the girls went in. Before I could finish though they all ended up on top of the coop and getting in my way. One thing I’ve learnt about chickens is that they love to get in your way!

Daisy Exploring the Patio

Before today, whenever I have let them out of the pen they have spent most of the time in the flower beds and on the lawn and pretty much stayed away from the patio.  Today they decided to spend most of the time exploring the patio and the alley way down the side of the house which I found pretty stressful!  When I let them out today I intended to sit in the house for half an hour and let them get on with it, but I changed my mind when I saw them trying to eat a scrap of silicon sealant that must have ended up out there when I got my patio doors replaced.  I immediately went outside and got it off of them when I noticed they had found some more.  I then spent the next 45 minutes chasing the chickens round the garden in a mad race to pick up all of the rubbish before they did!  Before today I though my garden was pretty clean but the chickens are really good at finding rubbish.  Most of it was left over from builders but a few bits had obviously blown over the fence.

When I finally got them to stop trying to eat bits of silicon and plastic they decided it was time to rampage through the patio knocking over flower pots!  I ended putting all of the seedlings up on the bench so that the girls couldn’t get to them.

Towards the end of the free-ranging session a helicopter started hovering over the school field out the back – I think it might be related to all of the noise I have been hearing from there.  Maybe someone actually broke in or something this time.  Either way the helicopter seemed to really confuse the girls – while it was out they spent a lot of time standing still and looking around, trying to figure out where the strange noise was coming from.  Once the helicopter disappeared it was starting to get dark and I was slightly relieved to see the girls go back into their run.

Rumaging Around in the Forget-Me-Nots

At lunch time today I came home from work because I was having some stuff delivered for the girls – I got a big bag of mixed corn and some dried meal-worms.  These went down a treat – the birds seem to like the meal-worms more than they like the mixed bird seed that I have been giving them.  The mixed corn was also highly successful as it seems to contain all of the bits that they like most out of the bird seed (and with no black sunflower seeds that they always leave behind).

One more thing before I go: I was reading the chicken forum at Down the Lane and someone made a post saying that one of their chickens has been producing sloppy, caramel-coloured poos. At least one of mine (the grey one) has also been doing this. On the forum they seem to think it could mean that the girl has got worms so I ordered some Flubenvet which is due to arrive tomorrow. I am going to worm them all as the sloppy horrible poo is difficult to clean up and smells disgusting!

I Think my Girls Might have Worms!