When I came home to check on the chickens at lunch time today, Daisy was in the run all by herself. The other two had jumped up onto the roof of the coop and then flew over the fence – I know this because there was chicken poo on the coop roof. I grabbed Meg and put her back over, but it took me about 10 minutes to catch Victoria.
Over the Fence
August 6th, 2009 .Cruel to be Kind
August 2nd, 2009 .The electric fence kit that I ordered arrived a few days ago, and over the weekend I finally got around to setting it up. As with most electrical things, the net was pretty easy to install and connect, but running the cables was a pain. I have the net at the bottom of the garden, and decided to put the earth stake as far away from the house as possible so this meant I had to run quite a lot of cable.
Electric Fence
The net isn’t really in the correct place yet – I need to trim some branches off of the conifers at the back of the garden before I can move it into place. Also, the wiring isn’t very neat and I need to do something to hide the cables.
When I got it running, I put my hand on it a few times to see how much it hurts and I was pretty disappointed – I could hardly feel it. Then I touched it whilst I was kneeling on the ground and that really hurt! I guess it will work well with the chickens as they are not wearing shoes.
The horrible thing about this is how the chickens have reacted to it. They have all had a shock off it, and as expected this does not make them happy. Even when I turned it off and went back into the coop to spray more poultry shield (the mites still haven’t gone away), they got really scared when I flicked a bit of newspaper. I think this whole thing has been really stressful for them. I must admit I feel pretty cruel at the moment – it’s a pity I can’t explain to them that I am only doing this to give them more space!
Products
July 28th, 2009 .Today my new cleaning products arrived – I ordered Diatom, Poultry Shield, and a spray bottle from Flyte So Fancy. This is a store that I have used a lot of times – they have a great range of poultry related products and delivery is always lightning fast!
Hopefully this will kill them!
Poultry shield is a liquid that I used to spray the inside of the coop and should hopefully get rid of red mite. Apparently it helps to destroy the mites and the eggs, and it was significantly cheaper than the spray I bought (probably cost me less than £1 to spray the whole coop compared to £15), and was also easier to apply.
The other product that I bought is diatom, which is diatomaceous earth and will hopefully prevent the mites from coming back. It works by dehydrating them, and although it won’t kill them instantly, it should help to control their numbers in the future. After I finished spraying the coop I spread a load of diatom all over the inside.
Both of these products were recommended to me on Down the Lane and those guys always seem to know what they are talking about!
Whilst I was cleaning out the coop again, I let the girls out in the garden. I must admit, whilst it has been stressful sorting all of this out, I have enjoyed letting them out in the garden again. They had great fun scratching around under my rose bush, and spreading a heap of grass clipping around the garden!
Chickens love piles of stuff, but they won't be piles once the chickens have finished with them!
More Mites
July 26th, 2009 .When I went to clean out the coop this morning I found more mites. These ones were all smaller and bright red (I think that means they are younger than the larger black ones). I took all of the bedding out of the nest box, sprayed the mite spray that I have been using and put down some more newspaper. When I cam back about an hour later there were quite a few dead mites on the newspaper.
I think this is going to be a problem for a long time…
Moving and Cleaning the Coop
July 25th, 2009 .As I said in my last post, I am intending to move the coop to the back of the garden and swap the netting and run for an electric fence. Although I haven’t got the new fence yet, I have decided to take down the netting, and move the coop and run to a new location ready for the fence. This has allowed me to give the run a good clean and I have applied some mite spray.
The first thing that I did was to move the run away from the coop and to another part of the garden. I pushed the open side of the run up against the fence and put the chickens in there so that they couldn’t escape whilst I removed the net.
When I removed the run this is what was left behind...
I think the chickens enjoyed the grass when I moved the run
The next step was to remove the netting – I have to admit it was a lot easier to take down than it was to put up!
Here you can see what the chickens did to the ground behind the net
With the netting gone, we had access to all sides of the coop so we gave it a big clean out. First we removed all of the bedding, and then scrubbed everything down with hot soapy water. I let the coop dry and then sprayed everything with some mite spray (we used 2 cans of the stuff). I even removed the perches as they were not being used and provided more hiding places for the mites. I have included some pictures to show you the extent of the infestation.
This is the bit of wood I put in for the new nest area
Here is a (nice?) close up of the creatures...
This is the slot that the floor slides into. There were mites all along the back edge.
When I removed the percehes, this is what was lurking behind them.
As you can see the mites were everywhere! Once I had finished cleaning out the run I moved it to a new position – ready for the electric fence. I have replaced the wooden nest area with a plastic box. Hopefully this is the last of the mites…
This is the cleanest the coop has ever been!
The run in its new position