Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat

Poultry and Pets => Chicken Chat => Topic started by: Oliveview on June 28, 2016, 11:20

Title: Thought one of our hens was dead!
Post by: Oliveview on June 28, 2016, 11:20

Last night I discovered one of our last 6 hens looking seriously ill, she could not stand and I thought she was all but dead. We live in Spain and the weather is now hot ( 38 deg yesterday)  poor hen was suffering from over heating.  I put her in the water bucket to soak all her feathers then drained most out and then left her laying in a little at the bottom.  They do have another water bucket too.  This morning I could not tell you which hen it was!  I have put some bed spreads along the fence now, pegged to the orange tree above,  so they have a ' tent'  for extra shade and the ground is soaked below.  Looks like we have squatters living at the end of our garden now 😀😁 
We have been trying to decide if we should get more hens or not,  this year we have had a big problem with rats. We set nasty traps, caught nothing, but the bait was eaten!   Our neighbours dog came into the hens garden and went crazy under the log pile, so we moved the logs, 3 rats escaped, Duquessa killed 2 more and the next night came back and dug and dug where the logs used to be and dug up 4 young rats.  So now we leave the gate open from next doors garden into ours and Duquessa goes on rat patrol, last night she killed a female in our garden! 
We will wait now until the summer heat is over, cement and tile the hen house floor, brick up the sides and put rat proof wire at the top, then we will get new hens!  We only have 6  hens now, no eggs for a few days , we will have to resort to buying eggs! 😵 

Title: Re: Thought one of our hens was dead!
Post by: grinling on June 28, 2016, 21:51

I have closed the run door and looked down to see the pekin lying there with her head under it...opened it and he walked off!!!

Mine go under a fig looking bush for shade if the sun comes out....also uses it for raincover.