Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Poultry and Pets => The Hen House => Topic started by: eneville on February 11, 2013, 22:02
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This year I've learnt a lot about keeping chickens, thanks to everyone who has answered questions for me.
There are a few things playing on my mind:
1) predator proof upgrade
I'd like to make a concrete base, with steel reinforced concrete pillars for a perimeter of aviary wire. That should stop any pesky rodents getting in. How do I set concrete posts in a concrete base? Currently we have a mesh under the coop which looks a bit like a tray, but with a coop on top. This stops rats/squirrels getting in.
In order to house more hens we need a bigger space, so I think concrete is the way to go, nothing can push it over.
Also, is this a bad idea? There's a train line backing onto the garden so there's risk of vermin wandering along the line and hopping into the garden, so we can't really free range and a big enclosure is the only thing I can think of to make life better or the hens.
2) how to wash a mucky chicken
Milly has a rather mucky feathery bum. Should we wash it in something like Johnsons bubble bath/shampoo? She doesn't seem too bothered about the state of it, but compared to the other girls her age she is very mucky.
I'm not thinking of dunking Milly until the warmer weather, just wondering what the tried and tested methods are.
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I use warm soapy water followed by hair dryer. Be gentle, the shock of a bath can kill.
Best way to keep out vermin is good husbandry, take the food away at night, clean up etc.
I have a grass field to one side and farmers field to the back of me, so mice are more of a pain that rats. I have a rat trap and will use if there is presence of rats. Mine free range and ignore mice. Don't have squirrels or foxes, just a mole!!!
You could just enclose with weld mesh.
If they don't free range do you give them greens?
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you really will have a job stopping all the pests getting in well at least the small ones considering they can get through a gap the size of a pencil, as said good husbandry and take the food away when the chooks go in.
I do sometimes feel sorry for any mice that get in our coop.
there was a lot of noise coming from there last year so we went to investigate and there was not much left of the rodent that had got in just a bit of tail.
anyone else had this?
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I don't use any soap if I have to wash a mucky bum. I use warm water and hold her in the water and gently wash the muck away.
I then gently dry her in an old towel. I would do it inside in the warm in this weather.
I wouldn't like a bath outside in this weather. :D
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I do all of the above, warm soapy water if the weather warm enough....one of mine regularly has a mucky bottom, (her first poo of the day is always a tad loose, and then all nice and firm after that), so on the colder days, she gets a good old wipe with a sensitive baby wipe, and that does the job nicely.
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I set my posts first.
Part filled a 18'' deep narrow trench with brick rubble.
Then filled with a wet concrete mix.
I also have roofing after watching a fox scramble a seven foot gate. My pen is more secure then my patrol base in Afghanistan, only I don't use claymore mines! I haven't lost a hen yet.
I always leave bated traps in cages out for mice, which every so often I catch. Sometimes large slugs get snapped as well.
Prevention is always the answer.
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Sorry, soapy on the brain, just warm hand hot water!!