also i was thinking we could get some hatching eggs so the children could see the whole proceess but do people see this as a waste of time and effort preffering to buy pol birds or is this a really good idea.
Hi Marianne, you'll find lots of people round here luuurve hatching their own eggs (any minute now they'll be flooding into this thread
) - I'm quite tempted by the idea but you do have to think about what you'll do with the hatchlings. You won't know for a while whether you've got girls (good for eggs) or boys (good for lots of noise and making more eggs, but not great for back garden keeping
). Great experience for kids, though, as long you all know what's going to happen to them in the end ...
The advice I was given on space was a minimum of 1 square foot indoors per bird and 3 square foot per bird in the run, with a bit more better; I currently have five large-ish hens in a house about the same size as yours and they have plenty of room, but I wouldn't want more than that wandering round in my back garden - my neighbours are very tolerant, given that we also have four dogs, and I don't want to push my luck :?
The other thing to remember is that if you are introducing some new birds you may need to have a way of keeping them separate - but within sight & sound of each other - until they settle down. I introduced two new girls a couple of weeks ago, and they were OK at night in the same house but I had to keep one of the 'older girls' in a separate run next to the main one for the best part of two weeks during the day, till she stopped bullying the newbies.
Hope that helps!