Dear all,
Just wanted to share our experience with you in the hope that it might help others.
We have had experience of chickens before - twice over the last 10 years, and have not had any trouble at all. The hens become part of our family, have names, are tame and we really love and appreciate the eggs.
After 3 years of no chickens, we decided to build a lovely place for them to be and get some more. Since the beginning of the year, we have been working on an enclosure for them at the bottom of the garden. The enclosure is the size of a small garden, and we converted a shed into the coop, with 2 nesting boxes. The plan was to keep the hens in the run which we believe (hope!) is fox proof and let them out in the garden when we are home and can keep an eye on them.
At the end of May we were ready to welcome 6 new additions to the family! And this is where we were naive. We searched on the internet for somewhere local where we could buy the chickens. Unfortunately where we live in Surrey, there was no-one local. After doing a few searches, and ringing a few places up to see what was available, we decided to take to trip to a place in Surrey, but still a good 50 min drive away. The website all looked good, and when I spoke to the supplier, he seemed to know what he was talking about.
We should probably have taken more note when we arrived at the suppliers. There was a chicken dying in one of the pens, and was dead 10 mins later. However, hundreds of other chickens seemed to be healthy and ok. He said he would have to find out what happened to the dead one.
We were so excited about getting our chickens that we didn't stop at this point and think. We chose 6 chickens which seemed fine and came home with us. They were all POLS although we now suspect they were younger than we were told they were. None have started laying, and only 1 is looking close with a comb starting to develop.
Well the very next day, and for the following 5 weeks I have spent a fortune at the vets. The very next day they were coughing, sneezing, 2 of them had eye infections. My guess is that whilst they were at the suppliers, they were dosed up with antibiotics and when they came home they went downhill rapidly with no medication in them to keep them looking ok.
The good news is 5 of the girls are now ok, and happy - although it took 4 weeks. Unfortunately we lost one, and we don't yet know why - the vet is doing a post mortem.
I did contact the supplier a couple of days after we bought them home, but he was quite cross I had got a vet involved and said we should have contacted him. Well, I guess we knew he'd either send us antibiotics in the post or exchange the birds. We did not want to wait, and anyway wanted professional care for them. We didn't want them exchanged - although we (hubby and 3 children) only had them for a couple of days at this point,we did choose them, we had given them names. We were not going to send them back - they were ours and we wanted them to be ok. Maybe this is too emotional, but that's the way it was.
So, we are very disappointed that we are down to 5, but will hopefully give them a lovely life for the next few years.
We just wish we had taken more time to research the supplier, and see if anyone else had had any experience with him. We spent months, lots of time and energy getting everything just right for when we did have chickens, - we should have spent much more time researching the supplier instead of being impressed with his website and telephone manner.
Stella