June 8th, 2009 . Posted in Chickens | Comments Off
Tags: Chickens, fence, free range, netting
Today I went out in the garden to change the chickens’ water and the girls were really misbehaving. I opened up the back of the run to let them out in the netted area and then left a small hole at the base of the net while I went back to the house to fill up their drinker. On my way back to the house I got distracted and did a little bit of weeding, and when I turned around all 3 girls were out in the garden, and Victoria had made a bee line straight for the flower beds and was having a great time digging up all of my poppies. I had only turned my back for about 30 seconds!
I put the girls away and put the flower pots back on the bottom of the net to stop the girls from getting through, and went to fill up the water. When I got back out Victoria had managed to escape again through a tiny gap at the end of the net. I then had to chase her around the garden for 5 minutes to get her back in the run.
I always used to leave one flower pot on the net when I was out in the garden but it seems that the girls have learnt how to get out of that now. They really love trying to mess up my garden…
May 28th, 2009 . Posted in Chickens | Comments Off
Tags: Chickens, comb, fence, netting
Today I decided to put up a bit more netting around the chicken’s area. They have recently been escaping by jumping up onto the fence and then onto the coop and down the other side. I decided to extend the netting so that it runs along the roof of the coop and all around the fence at the side. Now it must be un-escapable!
I have added netting up the back of the coop and along the fence at the side of the enclosure
While I was in there I thought it would be a good opportunity to get a few mug shots of the girls. Their combs are looking so big now!
Daisy's comb used to be so tiny...
This one is a little bit blurry - it's difficult to make a chicken sit still!
May 25th, 2009 . Posted in Chickens | Comments Off
Tags: Chickens, fence, free range, netting, treats
This weekend my girlfriend was on holiday so I decided to go away for the weekend and see my parents. My girlfriend’s mum offered to come up and look after the chickens which saved me paying pet sitters to come around and look after them.
I was a little bit nervous about leaving the girls for the weekend, and to make things worse as soon as I let the girls out on Saturday morning, Victoria jumped up on the fence. That was the first time I had seen any of them go up onto the fence and I was worried that she would end up in next door’s garden.
In the end I had nothing to worry about and the girls were fine – although they did make a few attempts to escape the netted off area of the garden! Apparently whilst I was gone the girls had managed to find their way into the rest of the garden a few times. When I got back I let the girls out and within 20 minutes of doing so Daisy had escaped and was scratching about in a pile of grass clippings by my compost bin. She was only out there for about 2 minutes but she managed to spread the pile around half of the garden! I think I am going to have to put some netting around the fence and the top of the coop before I let the girls out again.
One more thing happened today that made me laugh. I went out into the garden and put some meal worms in the run for the girls, in an empty washing up bowl that I put in the run about a week ago. I went back inside to watch tv, and when I looked out I could only see 2 chickens – Meg was nowhere to be found. Then I noticed the washing up bowl was upside-down and moving around by itself! I realised that Meg had somehow managed to get trapped underneath it and was walking around with it completely covering her. It looked really funny and she didn’t seem to be at all bothered by it (I think she was still hoovering up some meal worms that were underneath).
May 14th, 2009 . Posted in Chickens | 4 Comments »
Tags: Chickens, eggs, fence, nest box, weldmesh
At the back of my garden, in the area that I have fenced off for the chickens there is an old wire fence. It’s pretty sturdy but there was a small gap at the bottom of it, so before letting the girls out for the first time I laid some old bits of wood in front of the gap. Yesterday I was watching the girls scratch around out the back and I noticed that the gap had reappeared – the girls had scratched away so much of the soil around the base of the fence that the wooden planks had dropped down and made a gap big enough for a chicken to get through.
Today when I got home I decided to fix this before I let them out. In the end I decided to pull all of the planks out and attach the left over weldmesh to the planks. I then put them back and twisted the ends of the wire mesh around the existing wire fence. Now the back of the garden is looking a lot safer. Now there’s no way for the girls to escape…
After dinner I looked out of the window and Meg had managed to get over the netting and into the main part of the garden – looks like their little enclosure isn’t so perfect after all! I can’t figure out how she got out – I’m not sure whether she jumped the net or jumped up onto the coop roof and then down the other side. Hopefully if she does it again I will be watching.
On the plus side, when I got home from work today there were 3 perfect, un-cracked eggs in the little nest area that I made inside the coop.
May 12th, 2009 . Posted in Chickens | 1 Comment »
Tags: Chickens, coop, cracked, eggs, fence, nest box, netting
The Good News
Yesterday I got an odd egg in the nest area. It was rough and had lots of red/brown speckles on it – I though it might be Daisy’s first egg.
Is this Daisy's first egg?
This morning when I let the chickens out there was already a cracked egg in the run (I wrote about it in my previous post) so when I came back at lunch time to see this I was pleasantly surprised:
Eggs in the nest area
It looks like the nest is working and the egg on the right it the biggest one I have had so far!
The Bad News
After I cleaned out the chickens today, I was doing a bit of gardening when I heard a flapping of wings. I looked round and Victoria had managed to fly over the netting that I put up yesterday. I chased her around the garden for a bit until I finally managed to catch her and put her back over the other side. As I was putting her over, I leaned on the netting and the string snapped! Well that lasted a long time!
I blame Victoria!
I took down the netting and decided to think out a way to improve it. I decided that the next attempt would need a stronger chord, and would need to be higher off of the ground, so I got out my drill and some bits of wood and this is what I came up with:
Version 2 of my net fence
This is much better than what I did last time – the rope is a lot stronger and the fence is a bit higher. It looks like the rope is not tight enough but this is as tight as I can get it. The reason that it sags is that the netting is pegged tightly into the ground and is pulling down on the rope. If I tightened it any more I think the wood would snap!
The other advantage to the new setup is that it is easier for me to get in and out. Where the netting attaches onto the coop, I have purposefully left the bottom quite loose – instead of being pegged into the ground it is attached to the coop about 1 foot off of the ground. This means that when I move the flower pots off of the bottom of the net I can just about squeeze under it without having to lay face down in chicken poop.