Finally the chicken shed is finished. I will need to paint it again as the rain washed off some of the paint, we need a really dry day to dry everything out. Tonight we went down to our neighbours and picked up the 5 chickens. They have been successfully introduced to their new home, although the run is not finished because the ground is waterlogged after heavy rainfall this afternoon. One of the black bantams managed to pull her claw (the nail part so it will regrow) off in the move but it has stopped bleeding, thank goodness.
They have not been used to perches, but when we checked through the window about an hour after we put them in the shed, all the hens were on the perch but the cockerel Rocky (after Chicken Run) was still on the floor. I will check before I go to bed to see if he is up there as well. They had a try of their new food (organic layers pellets) and I have boiled up some potato peelings to go with some veg scraps left over from dinner the other day. I will add that to some pellets along with the Poultry Spice conditioning powder. At least one of the hens is laying, so hopefully they will enjoy their new nest boxes and make good use of them.
We don't have enough chainlink to finish the run, so we ae thinking about getting some 3 ft chicken wire. overlapping it and using that. Chicken wire is quite cheap, 50m of 38mm by 900mm mesh is £25 plus £10 postage, far cheaper than chain link. It obviously isn't as strong and won't last so long but it will do for now.
It's really exciting having chickens again. They made such a noise when Phil caught them, you'd have thought he was killing them. Hopefully they will get quite tame, I'd like to be able to hand feed them.
Off to bed now, I'm really tired because I dug a trench all round the run to take the netting. Pictures tomorrow.
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