This Here Is Chiseling Weather

Huh. It seems that winter has decided to put in an appearance here after all. For the last few days the temperature has struggled to get much above freezing. Of course, this means that our central heating decided to shut down. Impeccable timing, our appliances. However, the human suffering is nothing compared to that of the chooks.

Chickens are surprisingly hardy creatures. They can tolerate very cold temperatures, as long as they are dry and out of any cruel winds. But they are utterly dependent on help from their keepers. I maintain that you haven't earned your chicken keeping stripes until you have trudged through snow in your pyjamas at 7am to make sure your hens have some non-frozen water to drink. Bonus points if you get up during gales to check that the roof is still on the coop.

So, this morning I braved the thick frost to clean out my girls. I knew I was in trouble when my fingers got stuck to the run door latch. That's how cold it is. The hens muttered blearily at me, and had to be encouraged to leave the coop so that I could clean. Once evicted, they sat at my feet like pissed off tea cosies and made themselves as awkwardly placed as possible. Running the chicken assault course gauntlet to clear the soiled newspaper from the coop floor was no easy feat, let me tell you.

Once the paper was out, I found myself with a familiar problem. The hens had used one corner of their sleeping quarters for their most, er, energetic of expulsions. This charming pile of excrement was now solidified and welded to the coop floor and wall. I hit it a bit with the dustpan and brush with predictably rubbish results. With a resigned sigh, I fetched the edger.

Now, to be fair, a wallpaper scraper would be more effective and less troublesome. But we don't seem to have one. So the only thing with a steel edge I can find is the border edger. Which has bent, because we're on solid clay and it's a cheap tool.

Weilding the edger like a welly wearing warrior, I set about Mount Poo. Instead of cleanly coming away in one solid lump, my efforts merely shaved it. I was basically chiseling a poo sculpture. I ended up with dessicated chicken faeces, blowing in spirals around me. Nice. But eventually, the poo mountain was shaved away and swept in to the bin. Of course, by now I can no longer feel my fingers.

In these temperatures I tend to layer the nest boxes with extra wood shavings, just to make sure that if things get dire the girls can use them as extra insulation. While slinging handfuls of bedding in them with my numb claw hands, I found an egg. Hardly news, what with it being a chicken coop. But what was different about this egg was that it had frozen solid. And in that process, cracked. So the shell was zig zagged with a delicate pattern, and the inside was frozen jelly. I was going to take a picture, but the demon hound leapt up as I was examining it and ate it. Gulp. In one swallow. He didn't even look sorry.

We are predicted a heavy snow fall tomorrow, so at least I know that my girls are prepared. There is poultry spice on their feed, and mealworms and pasta on the menu for their before bed snack.

C'mon, winter. Do your worst.

It's A Question Of Maths

I've been thinking about numbers a lot in the last week. Namely, the numbers 10 and under. I've been considering how much the difference between, say, 10 and 6, actually matters. I mean, if you're talking about millions of pounds, it probably has a greater impact than if you were say, talking about Mars Bars. An extra 4 million pounds might make the difference between a mansion and a mansion with a swimming pool and stables perhaps. But an extra 4 Mars Bars just means that you're likely to be sick as well as have a stomach ache. You see? On a small scale, there isn't much between 10 and 6.

Which leads me to consider rehoming any of my girls. Because at the moment, I have 10 small chickens residing in the Palace. I had decided to rehome up to 4 of my girls in order to make less of a scary impact on my new neighbours. I was thinking along the lines of noise reduction, looking less like I was moving a farm in and showing some compromise. But it suddenly struck me. If any of my new neighbours are going to object to the birds, it won't be the amount they will object to. It will be the whole idea of clucking poultry living next door. It's a very rare occurence that all 10 hens make a racket together, and they barely make any noise at all during the autumn and winter months. So perhaps it makes no sense to rehome some birds now, when a serious complaint might mean that all birds need rehoming.

In short, I'm ninety percent certain that I'm going to take all of my birds to the new house and play it by ear. If anyone has concerns, I can address them as and when. Because if I rehome birds, and then move in and find myself surrounded by chicken lovers, I will be very sad indeed.

It's all for one, and one for all from now on.

Seriously Unimpressed

When I look out in to my garden, I see a six inch covering of snow. Everything is white and sparkly and beautiful. Icicles hang from the Palace's roof and frosted spiders webs decorate the fence. Where once there was water there is now ice. And where once there were eight chickens pootling about the garden there are now....well, no chickens pootling about the garden.

The chooks are refusing point blank to engage with the weather in any way, shape or form. They make brief excursions out in to the run to eat and drink, but that's it. The rest of the time they are holed up in the coop no doubt muttering darkly about the lack of sunshine and heat. I make frequent visits to break the ice in the drinker and check on my feathered friends. No amount of bribery will bring them out of the Palace. I even tried throwing an enticing handful of corn out on to the frozen tundra, but they watched the arc of the treat fly through the air like specatators at Wimbledon and then stared at me. The message was clear: you'll have to do better than that.

Keeping them clean and warm has been a bit of a challenge if I'm honest. The newspaper I use under the perch was frozen to the coop floor this morning and when it finally came loose, peeled off in a solid sheet. Thankfully the copious amount of poo was similairly frozen and adhered to said sheet. I found myself in the strange position of trying to fold this befouled tabloid in to the compost bin. It wasn't as brittle as you'd expect.  The girls watched all of this from the perches in the run and complained bitterly about being temporarily evicted from their quarters. Replacing the paper and perch, I threw in a few handfuls of woodshavings to help with the extra dung being produced by eight housebound hens.

Here's hoping that the arctic conditions let up soon.

Tracking Down The Perfect Palace

Now that the decision to stay put has been made, I have spent the last week trying to organise a new abode for the ladies. The six older girls currently reside in the Convent quite happily, but there is not room for the chooklets to join them. The Convent run is approximately 20 sqaure feet in size, which is adequate for six small hens as long as they get plenty of free ranging opportunities. Adding two more to the current set up would be overcrowding, and lead to stress in the flock. Stress leads to health problems and bullying (I'm sure I don't need to go in to the evils of battery farming chickens here, so I won't).

Therefore, I have been looking at my options. In an ideal world, my chook palace would be walk in, with a six foot ceiling height. With a footprint of approx. 6 x 9 feet, it would give my girls a floor space of 54sqft. This is a decent amount of space for birds that might never free range (although my girls will always have the opportunity to undo all of my gardening efforts). It will also be built like Fort Knox, allowing total peace of mind when we travel.

I managed to find a few examples online, but the price made the ever tolerant husband go a funny colour. Thinking outside the box, I decided to make contact with a few local joiners, in the hope that they could build me exactly what I wanted for a slightly less cardiac arrest-inducing price.

It often slips my mind that other people aren't chicken obsessed. Its become such a normal part of our every day lives to step over squatting hens when hanging out the washing, or to find random feathers under the sofa, that I just assume that others also know everything there is to know about chooks. So when I started blathering on about pop holes, nest boxes and wind breaks to the joiner stood in my kitchen and he looked at me like I was slightly mad, I think it was a shock for both of us. I resorted to showing him an expensive online example. He was still a little nonplussed, and muttered about research before hightailing it for the safety of his transit van. His quote came in the next day at several hundred pounds over budget. I suspect that he didn't really want to build my chook palace.

The second joiner was much more enthusiastic, and even made several sensible suggestions himself. When he left, I felt a warm glow of satisfaction that my needs had been understood. Unfortunately, it was a fleeting satisfaction, as his quote came in at over a thousand pounds. I didn't even show the ever tolerant husband that one.

The third joiner has disappeared in to the sunset with his tape measure and sketch pad, never to be heard of again. Well, by the madchickenlady anyway. Honestly, you'd think that people had never seen a chicken before. Admittedly, Maude did try to sit on his shoulder, but shes a sociable bird. Also, he was wearing a hoop earring. Maude likes earrings.

So, it looks like the expensive internet options are actually the more affordable. Amazingly, the ever tolerant husband seems resigned to having his wallet hoovered out in the near future. I am determined to have the chook palace in situ by the end of May.

We are no longer moving, but the girls are.

New Beginnings

This week we have had some serious interest in our house. At the time of writing, it hasn't yet come to anything, but it has got me thinking. Perhaps a more rational person would be fretting over mortgages, or whether the furniture would fit into a prospective new home, or even whether the survey will throw up some horror. Not me. What has kept me awake at night is the logistics involved with moving seven small chickens.

In my defence, even the ever tolerant husband has been giving it some thought. When viewing a prospective home, he has remarked that the area nearest the garage would make the best chook garden. Without him even realising it, the hens have become a major consideration for him, too.

In an ideal world, and moving of the hens will be done under cover of darkness. Stress is a major problem with birds, and if they are dopey so much the better. The shock of waking up in new surroundings will be great enough without enduring being packed in to crates and embarking on a car journey in daylight. However, the reality is that on moving day, I have to somehow pack up the girls, dismantle the coop, transport it and reassemble it, and then move the hens. This is on top of the usual moving hassles.

It might be simpler all round to just buy a new coop.....

The British Summer Returns

After last weeks burning temperatures, the British weather has done an about turn. It's raining. A lot. The garden is appreciating the wet, and the plants are replenishing their scorched leaves. The chooks, however, are not so impressed.

Feather footed birds tend to hate the wet. Their long foot feathers get matted together making getting around difficult. As a result, I have a disgruntled flock. Mabel and Maude, being a bit bigger, are able to jump from one place of relative dryness to another, but the others have to plow through the soggy grass which is by now at breast height. They bok with with ill humour, stopping every few feet to preen their feet in an effort to stop them getting knotted together. Looking miserable, they make only brief forays into the run for food and water. The rest of the time, they huddle in the coop.

Mini and Belinda are both broody, so are welded to the nest. Maeve is in a bit of a dilemma. She likes to keep outside of pecking distance from the others, but is finding it hard to do her road runner impression out in the open. As a result, she's spending a lot of her time perched in the coop, ready to flee if any of the others jump up next to her. My littlest hen is in a state of high alert, and is being quite pecky. To try and remind her that I'm a friend, and not a psychotic flock mate, I'm hand feeding her some corn while stroking her back. She is tolerating me, just. She did however karate kick my mother when she visited last week. Maeve may be the recipient of the first chicken ASBO.

New Chicks On The Block

There is more or less constant screeching in the garden now. I know for a fact that the neighbours are reaching the end of their tether, with at least one 'Shaddup!!!' yelled out of a window. The girls are most put out.

A new bird family has moved into the area. We've yet to track down the exact site of the nest, but the racket those babies make is something else. The chooks are uncharacteristically quiet, even cutting short their egg laying celebration songs, because frankly, they can't compete. They have taken to bad temperedly bokking lowly as they strut around their domain, glancing up at the roof and neighbouring trees, trying to work out where the interlopers are.

I'm used to the girls' various sounds. They are familiar enough to me now that I can tell their 'voices' apart, and usually why they are making a racket. Luckily, my neighbours seem to find Belinda's 'Ooooohhhhh Nooooooooooo!' pre egg laying chuntering soothing, and Doris's 'Aaarghhh! Look! A cloud!' alarmist rantings comical. No one is as fond of the new bird song.

It is particularly loud, shrill and repetitive. It also starts at sun up. Is it wrong that part of me is delighted? Who will complain about my, by comparison, extremely reasonable ladies?

An Early Morning Visitor

Now that Maeve is in the Convent with the other girls, I have been leaving the pop hole open so that should they decide to attempt chickenicide she can escape into the run. This has worked well for the last week or so, so last night I thought nothing of leaving this arrangement in place.

This morning, I was woken at 6am by an almighty racket. I assumed it was Doris making an egg announcement, but blearily made my way down to hush them. The neighbours have been fab about the chooks, but I could see this dawn chorus ending in complaints. I shuffled out in the early morning sunshine to the coop, and opened the door. All of the girls bar Maeve were sitting on the floor, silent. Maeve was doing her best road runner impression around the run, obviously thinking that I'd come down to let them out. I sleepily muttered a 'shush!' then went back to bed.

At a more respectable hour, when I was a lot more with it, I went out to open the run. That's when I noticed that the side gate was unlocked, and open. This was my over sight, as the kids were playing out and I was too lazy to keep opening the front door to them. Coupled with having an old friend stay over with a bottle of wine, I completely forgot to secure the side gate. Looking back into the run, I suddenly realised that there were quite a lot of feathers blowing about, including a beautiful flight feather which could only have come from Maude.

With a sudden feeling of dread, I opened the coop to do a head count. All girls were present and correct, and I could see no obvious damage to Maude. I suspect that either a cat, or a fox, wandered into the garden courtesy of the side gate early this morning, and that the commotion was an alarm call. In her panic, Maude has bashed herself about and torn out a good few feathers. That'll teach me to get too complacent.

On a happier note, Belinda has been granted an early release and has gotten over her broodiness. Mini will be occupying her cell by the end of today.

One problem with this gorgeous weather and free ranging chooks are the flies. I poo pick daily from the lawn and run, but the copious droppings in the flower beds are a little harder to access. There are now a cloud of vile blue bottles buzzing around the shrubbery. This is an untenable situation.

A solution must be found.

Garden v Farmyard

I had this notion that I could keep chickens in my back garden as sort of living statues. They would artfully pose in the borders, adding a certain rustic charm to the view from the kitchen window. I would occassionally throw them a handful of corn, and they would cluck gently all day before taking themselves off to bed at dusk, so that we could sit outside and have a barbie. Oh, the naivety.

Chickens are only like living statues if the statues in question leave their own weight in poo all over the garden. Seriously, they are manure machines. And they don't stick to the borders. In fact, their absolute favourite place to poo is just outside the back door, where they stand glaring in at me until I fetch them something nice to eat. I can regularly be seen sweeping the decking and lawn with a yard brush, looking like a complete fruitcake. The chooks watch me with interest, before running over to the newly swept ground to check for interesting and tasty bugs. To make room for these delicious morsels, they will of course need to poo. Great.

We have a charming wooden coop for the hens, that I have nicknamed 'The Convent'. It has an attatched covered run, enabling me to leave the girls outside if I'm not at home. In the run, I use horse bedding. They love to dig/scratch around in this stuff, and it absorbs the poo (Poo is becoming a bit of a theme, don't you think?) Despite the ever tolerant husband putting a little enclosure around the bottom of the run, they still manage to fire an enormous amount of this bedding out into the garden. Seriously, it's carnage. Now that they are laying, they also like to get lumps of this bedding and deposit it around the garden as temporary nests.

The hens and I are at war over ownership of the garden. At first glance, it appears that they are winning.