Hello

Hi, I am new to the forum and new to keeping chickens.  I have trawled through the forums this morning and now I am seriously confused (doesn't take much admittedly  :blink: ). 
Let me start at the beginning (I have a grasshopper mind so bear with me )

I got my first two chickens 3 weeks ago and so far I am loving it and them. They are about 18 months old and they appear to have settled in very nicely. 
We named them Penelope and Felicity (The good Life - yes naff I know but fun  ) and so far Penelope is the only one of the 2 laying eggs. Felicity had one go at it but it was shell-less and had a weird blobby thing attached to it.  In hindsight I should have taken a picture of that as it didn't look right.  She appears otherwise healthy and happy so I am not too worried as I have read it could take up to a month before they start laying eggs in their new environment - I guess we just got lucky with Penelope settling in faster.

My first 'issue' :I came across this post :                                   
http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=37371.0;topicseen

I showed the post to my husband and he thought I had made it so similar is the problem. 
I think I have been over- feeding them with treats.  Tomatoes which they seem to love, cucumber cut in half - they only eat the flesh so it's a scout about to find the skins  and chicken seed & insect mix  (a handful in the morning and again in the evening).   
I read all the advice and will follow that and hope they start eating their layer pellets again - I did go out earlier and hand feed them, Penelope looked at me like I was stupid but Felicity was happy to eat out of my hand so I don't think there will be a big problem getting them eating the pellets again.
The issue I still have is - do I need to add anything to their pellets and/or water.  I have read so much about garlic granules/cider vinegar/poultry spice that I am now wondering if I need all this stuff.  They all seem to do pretty much the same thing (ok I'm a novice and probably got that one wrong too lol)  Any advice would be much appreciated.

On to issue 2 :

Cleaning out the coop.  It would appear, as with the treats, that I have been going overboard on the cleaning front  (anyone for dinner in the coop?  ).  Each day I clean out the poop tray (I have a bucket next to my greenhouse which I deposit it in and that goes on my veggies and a great fertilizer it is too) spray it down with the hose and dry it off and pop it back in again. 
At the end of each week I just about dismantle the coop, taking out the perches, the bottoms of the nesting boxes etc and wash them down with Poultry Shield, give everything that is left in the coop a brushing down.
When all the bits are dry I put it all back together, put clean bedding in and then use Diatom - I have a puffer bottle witch helps it go into the nooks and crannies.
I think, having read the forum, that this job could be done once a fortnight or even once a month (providing of course everything is still clean) or have I got that wrong too 

I started off using straw but I bought some Hemp with eucalyptus pellets and it is so much easier to clean, it seems to stay cleaner than the straw and certainly doesn't make much of a mess and best of all the chooks seem to like it.

I will post pics of the area I have for my chickens but needless to say they are free range - we let them out of the coop at around 6:30am and they go back in around 9:00 ish at night ~ well Felicity does, sometimes I have to coax Penelope back in as she loves to wander around.

I apologise for such a long winded post but I think I overloaded on info reading various forums (this one is by far the most informative and no I am not sucking up - just being honest  ) so any help or advice would be most welcome.  I have attached a pic of my 2 feathered friends (just hope I get it right - I'm not the best with attachments lol)

Thanks for taking the time to read and I promise - shorter posts in the future 

Kind Regards
Carol  (and Penelope and Felicity)

First of all welcome to the forum and the mad world of chicken keeping! You'll find all of us are mad for our chooks - whether we have two or two hundred.

Don't ever feel silly about writing in or admitting you are confused - if you don't ask, you don't learn and there are a myriad of experts on here who'll glady help you.

To deal with your first issue - you were right to stop the treats as they were having way too many. Like us, chickens need a balanced diet to remain well and produce eggs. They can be fickle and you will worry that they are starving to death if they don't eat their pellets - they are just playing mind games (!) with you in the hope you'll give them treats, so try not to break as they will turn to their pellets eventually. Once they are eating the pellets regularly, you can give them the occasional treat of mixed corn etc; but only in the late afternoon as it will fill them up and they won't eat their pellets if you give it to them in the morning. Being free range as well will mean they eat fewer pellets as they will fill up on grass etc, but will get some of their natural diet from that, so that's normal.
Soft eggs - you don't say how old they are but hens that are just coming into lay will lay all manner of weird and wonderful eggs - soft, hard and ribbed, torpedo shaped, tiny with no yolk or albumen. The fact that they have received too many treats can cause this to happen also because they are not receiving the calcium to make a hard shell. You don't mention if you provide grit for the birds - this will also help towards the problem as it contains crushed oyster shell which is a good calcium source. Keep an eye on the soft egg layer and see if she improves as she consumes more of the pellets. If not there may be some other cause, but a lot goes on age as well.
You'll probably find Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV - horse type not cooking type) or garlic granules/powder to be the most used supplements on here as a general tonic - ACV helps acidify the stomach to kill worms and bacteria and garlic in whatever form is a general all round tonic . I tend to give a small amount of ACV (as per manufacturers instructions) in their drinking water one day per week and garlic granules into their feed twice a month, but you will see everyone does it differently. What you should not do is use the ACV every day as it can kill good stomach bacteria as well as bad. Using ACV should not take the place of worming as there is no definitive proof that it works. If your girls are on grass, then worming with Flubenvet is recommended every four months.

Cleaning - cleaning the poop tray every day especially in Summer is good practice as it keeps the flies and smell down. You do not need to dismantle the coop every week and Poultry Shield it, unless you have an outbreak of redmite - but cross that bridge when you get to it. Give the coop a complete going over once a month or even two months if it smells okay, but always check for the mite regularly (when it's dark, rub a white hanky under perches and into dark corners. If it comes back blooming then you've got redmite - lots of instructions on here on how to deal with it).

Hemp, dust free wood shavings or that type of bedding are much easier to handle as damp straw can harbour all sorts of problems and as you say, it's much easier to clean.

Sorry for the long response and again, welcome!  

Helen, I do have grit which I was mixing with the chicken seed & insect mix. 

Just to double check, grit is different to oyster shell.  Your chickens will need both although the grit they'll pick up throughout the day as they free range is they need it because it breaks down the food in their crop.  The oyster shell however is important for calcium and hard shells. 

Quote from: Carolf on July 29, 2011, 14:12

Helen, I do have grit which I was mixing with the chicken seed & insect mix. 

Just to double check, grit is different to oyster shell.  Your chickens will need both although the grit they'll pick up throughout the day as they free range is they need it because it breaks down the food in their crop.  The oyster shell however is important for calcium and hard shells. 

**Panic**

Just ran to check the bag (ok, I can see me having a heart attack at least once a day until I get settled into having chooks  ).  There are definitely shells in the grit bag, more grit than shell admittedly but I assume it is the correct stuff.

Panic over 

Another thought:  I've got the same coop as you and have recently replaced all of the green felt with onduline.  Red mite love the felt and although we were clear of mite when we took off the felt roof there was a nest of earwig, whereas the area that I'd managed to paint with the slurry was clean as a whistle.

I figured we would have to replace that felt somewhere along the line as I had read that the mites love it.  A quick question, there is felt on the roof of the body of the coop as well as on the nesting box. Is it advisable to replace both (if and when needed) or just the bit over the nesting box?

Certainly over the roof because that's half over the coop where they sleep which is where they would get bitten at night if you ever get red mite.  Although until you get it replaced if you use a paintbrush and force the slurry into the roof gap from the inside of the coop it will coat it sufficiently (I hope that makes sense).  The roof was easier to replace as the old one came off easily but the nest box was harder as it had been stuck down and once the onduline is on it doesn't have as much room when open as before.  We also replaced the stairs for a home made version as we had felt on there too.