Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Poultry and Pets => The Hen House => Topic started by: bashful_badger on September 01, 2009, 08:44
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Any ideas what I can put in my run to help keep chooks entertained?
We have a branch just chopped off a beech tree because it was overhanging greenhouse and tree was very lopsided, so they can jump on that.
Are plants any good or will they just decimate them?
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Large plantpots are good fun as they can hide in them or sit on them!
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Large plantpots are good fun as they can hide in them or sit on them!
Excellent found 3 among the rubble clearing allotment yesterday! Big terracotta ones :o)
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as the side of my run is a 6ft fence my girls have a 2 mtr long shelf that we fixed to the fence posts, the shelf goes behind a choisia (sp) bush and they love sitting on the shelf behind the bush :D they also have 2 HUGE laural trees in their run which has large branches attached for them to perch on, and this weekend hubby chopped down some self sown elm trees growing in our hedge (they had got to well over the height of the house :ohmy:) so the girls now have 2 huge logs to clamber over and sit on too!
would take a piccie but i dropped our camera yesterday! it was one with one of those lenses that goes in and out! the lens was out and you can guess what side up the camera landed :mad:
Debbie
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we have things like tyres, logs, ramps, buckets, plantpots,sandpit/dustbath, footballs, a small budgie mirror(they love that!), leaves pegged up just out of reach, to make them jump! not that they are in there much mind...they much preferre the garden and the pumpkin plants >:(
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(http://i887.photobucket.com/albums/ac74/lizzieandy/226.jpg)
(http://i887.photobucket.com/albums/ac74/lizzieandy/210.jpg)
(http://i887.photobucket.com/albums/ac74/lizzieandy/214.jpg)
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Lizzie: is the netting in 3rd pic what you call weldmesh ? or something different?
Thanks
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hi tode, yes it is . we bought it from a site that grannie recommed.. its called Hills of Devon, cheap prices, great srvice and free delivery ;) we used 1x1 1/2 weldmesh that was 1.6mls thick....nightmare to use/cut/staple but dead safe for the girls once its done :)
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Thanks, our run is in ordinary chicken netting.
Looks a lot stronger than that.
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Tode, I think some other countries call weldmesh "hardware cloth" if that is any good? At least that is what I was told when I tried to buy some for something else :o)
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yes it is also called that which I thought was really strange :lol:
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Thanks: found something similar "Netlon", 1 mm wire, sold in 1m x 3m panels, rolled up.
But seems V. expensive: £20 per panel !
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See if you can buy welded wire mesh on the roll, buying it in panels is very very expensive.
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lovely piccies Dizzylizzie, love the stuffed dog! :D :D :D
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thats a toy i forgot to mention....the girls love the 'stuffed dog' he he he
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Thanks: found something similar "Netlon", 1 mm wire, sold in 1m x 3m panels, rolled up.
But seems V. expensive: £20 per panel !
wow , thats very expensive ???
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Dizzylizzie, what's in the small log-roll corner section? Is that like a dust bath type thing? We have a spare bit of log roll.
Great photos!
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If you really want to spoil them, have a look here :D:
http://www.becksbirdbarn.co.uk/index.php?p0=cat&id=72
Apparently, their best-seller for chickens is the first one - the bell carousel.
I'm still not entirely convinced that these are safe but the lady I spoke to was adamant that if they are safe for parrots then they are safe for chickens (in that parrots have more powerful beaks).
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hi, in the log roll thing is a mixture of soil and sand, the love to bathe and scrat in it! i just had another look at the photos and the run looks awful....its not the mud bath it looks , honest! it has a layer of bark, but the grass is from the lawn mower yesterday . they had a fab time kicking it around! but like i say, they are mainly in the garden, i use the run in the morning to make sure they eat their pellets before stuffing their faces on goodies from the garden, and i use the run if we are going out! :)
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hi amanda, i have tried some parrot toys and mine were not interested...but love the budgie mirror! i suppose they are like people in that they all o for different things. one of mine spent nearly an hour rolling a pepsi bottle around the garden yesterday :D....little things eh?
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Hi Lizzie.
It's like small children, isn't it? You can buy them all the expensive stuff but they prefer the boxes the toys come in half the time...
I liked the idea of the budgie mirror - which made me think of parrot toys I had seen, hence I posted the link.
We have endless empty plastic bottles (I am a fizzy water addict) - perhaps I'll give mine a go with one. They do like the little coloured balls that escape from my daughter's ballpit/paddling pool but Annie gets most upset (being only just three, she is not good at sharing) and shouts at them to "Get off my toys, chickens!" :D
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Wow dizzylizzie! Even I want to play in that run :D
I seriously need to give my girls some more 'stuff'. Although they are out of their run and in their part of the garden by 2pm.
I'd love some logs to put in their part of the garden for them to clamber over. Haven't a clue where you'd get them though.
Mine like their long branch to sit on. The Happy Egg Company have swings for their free range hens! Kind of like a perch that swings. If you go to their site and click your way through theres a video of one of them on one. I'm not sure if the hen in question would prefer it to be stationary though :blink:
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thankyou :D. when we go to the local parks to walk the dog etc, we take bags for anything interesting...acorns, pine cones, interesting sticks, etc. also look around where you live, most garages have to pay for tyres to be taken away, so will quite happily give you as many as you want.i have just visited the centre for alternative technology with my children and they use tyres for compost bins, so im using them for my chicken poo! if your neighbours are prunning trees, particulary fruit trees, offer to take any logs away, your girls will love logs, they are like a drive through, they can perch on them and eat all the little bugs that think they have safe lodgings...have fun collecting :D
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mine love the old dvd's i have hanging up. and i had a long piece of wood used to prop open the coop lid whilst clening, and it was on the floor over their log, and they used it like a see-saw!! enjoying the movement I guess.
Mostly they just like something different going in the pen for a few days - including the middle from kitchen roll, empty tub of diatom, broken off branch from tree/shrubs..especially if it has bark on, which they love to strip off. I try and use only stuff that I can throw away when it gets poopy :ohmy:
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I've loved reading this thread. I'm going to go to the local woods and see what I can find for my girls. :)
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i had a long piece of wood used to prop open the coop lid whilst clening, and it was on the floor over their log, and they used it like a see-saw!!
love the idea of them on the see-saw, I imagine mine get up to all sorts while we're all at work :lol:
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love the idea of a see-saw...going to have a look now what i can use- thanks for that! 2 of mine love the c.d i have hanging...one is really spooked by it and the rest just ignore it he he he
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It's good to move the logs every few days or so as theres always lovely bugs underneath,yum
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mmm tasty :D
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I had a branch in my run and was warned off on another forum as they said it was a host for red mite to get into the run. Has anyone any comment on this as you can imagine it really limits what we can put in for them to play on if we can't bring wood in from the garden.
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mine go in the garden anyway....so what ever is there they are gonna get! :D
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I had a branch in my run and was warned off on another forum as they said it was a host for red mite to get into the run. Has anyone any comment on this as you can imagine it really limits what we can put in for them to play on if we can't bring wood in from the garden.
Seems a bit over the top to me, (no offence intended!) and I don't really know that much about chickens tbh but loads of people put branches/tree trunks etc in them.
Was it just one person on the other forum or the general consensus of opinion from members there? Wasn't the omlet forum was it? Just that with them being plastic houses the owners do seem a bit more concerned about contamination I think, maybe?
If it was just one big branch you had and were really worried couldn't you just dust it occasionally if you felt it necessary?
I asked another question earlier about do people dust their runs for red-mite, only one reply so far but it was my (Novice) understanding that the mites only come out to feed at night so I'd have thought it'd be pretty pointless hiding in places where there are no chickens at night!
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mites do only come out at night, and as most of us lock our chickens away at night i dont think there would be a problem. As my chickens are in the garden most of the time, they have access to all kind of things anyway. i would much rather them have a small chance of getting redmite from a log than sitting in a run with nothing to do in case what they are playing on happen to have red mite.....im with bashful badger on this one. :)
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I haven't put it in yet, they've only been here 24 hours and I don't want to spook them, but I have an old plastic dustbin without a bottom (I cut it off and used it as a raised bed for root veg) that I think they may enjoy.
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Ok, just to let you know, after getting an idea from here about the see-saw, my hubby has made the girls one......and they dont like it!...not only do they not like it, they shout,sqwark and side step around it! i have come to the conclusion that the 'toys' are to make us feel better for shutting them in a run, because they seem to love eating the pumpkins and sitting in the sun, scratting in the grass and eyeing up the fence(and looking for launch pads) .....but i will still continue to look for toys they they wont take offense to , or scream at like the martians have landed, in the hope that they will never get board of living with me and leg it to next doors garden :D