Ex-battery hens update

Finally the new ex-barn hens have been accepted by the ex-batts. They still pick on them occasionally but not nearly as much,and they are totally integrated both day and night. The 3 ex-barns still stick together while free ranging.


















                      Zinnia
Zinnia is starting to grow new feathers, and so are the other bald hens. This is Zinnia now, I will post another picture when she is all feathered up. The feathers are just little black stubbs in their skin at the moment. 11 eggs today, nearly a record.

Update on everything

Well, I haven't had time to post in quite a while as we've been busy with chickens. Last week, we picked up 3 more hens from the BHWT. These were Barn hens, but they are much balder than the ex-batts. They run around and jump a lot more, but they are very timid. We have had a problem with the dominant hens in the ex-batts bullying them, so much so that we have had to separate them during the day and just put the new ones in the shed at dusk when the others are getting ready for bed. We allow them all to free range together as they don't do much bullying when they are distracted by foraging and scratching about. It seems to be working as there is less squawking at night now. I have been getting up every morning at 6am in order to remove the new hens before they gett picked on. Tomorrow I will leave them a while longer.

We went to the Rare Poultry Breeds show at Melton Mowbray today. We met up with some of the members of the Poultry Garden Forum. We bid on a trio of hen Nankins, but they went for £45 which was too much for us. Another member of the Poultry Garden breeds Nankins so I have contacted her to see if she has any hens or hatching eggs for sale. She is in Somerset so it might be possible to detour when we are going down to Sarah's on Casie's birthday.

I am going to stay at Sarah's for a week after Casie's Birthday party. That will be lovely, hopefully the weather will be good and we can do lots of gardening as well as admin for Sarah's business. Her new garden is huge, so will take a lot of preparation this year. Poor Phil will have to look after all the animals while I am away.

We are going to try hatching some Nankin eggs as soon as we have built an incubator. We have a polystyrene box with a lid which is about the right size, we just have to put some bulbs in to heat it, or we can try the reptile basking light which is around somewhere. We really just need a thermometer and thermostat. We will have to make a brooder as well for the chicks when they have hatched

We lost one of the Angoras a few weeks ago, but Aragon was old so it wasn't unexpected, but Jasper has suddenly lost weight and all his fur fell out. we took him to the Vets  as he lost weight so quickly. She couldn't find anything wrong with him so gave him some wormer, probably because I asked if it could be worms. He has to have the paste every day for 9 days. He is still with us, and I don't think he has lost any more weight. I will weigh him tomorrow and then every day after that to see if he is putting any weight back on. His fur is growing back very gradually. Thistle did much the same a few weeks ago but has put all the weight back on and regrown her fur. She didn't lose much as much weight though.

Ex-battery hens

The ex-bats shed is up after having been cleaned and disinfected. We picked up our 7 ex-bat girls on 27th Feb. Zinnia, Petunia, Lobelia, Loretta (Hermaphrodite), Daisy, Dandelion and Daffodil.             

They have a temporary run until we get the bigger one built.

First one out was Lobelia

I shot some videos with my phone

The Nankin house is done and they have been in residence a week.

We intend to make the ex-bats run big enough to incorporate the Nankin house/run and eventually have the Nankins in with the ex-bats. Del boy isn't big enough to hurt the bigger ex-bats.

The ex-bats have been laying quite well, usually at least 3 eggs a day, sometimes more. They are realy funny creatures, but it's lovely to see hens who have been shut in tiny cages for the last year roaming around and scratching and pecking. They squabble a bit and pick on poor Zinnia who is the baldest. She is obviously well down the pecking order. I'm not sure who is in charge yet. Dandelion likes to nest in the corner amongst the straw (we haven't got round to adding nest boxes yet), she picks up pieces of straw and throws them on to her back, it's quite entertaining to watch.

Loretta (who we were told is a Hermaphrodite) just seems to amble about, very laid back, s/he doesn't join in the squabbles. We have to wait and see if s/he starts to exhibit cockerel behaviour. Apparently in hens only one ovary of the two is working. If that gets damaged testosterone builds up and the chicken changes sex. They are never fertile and don't crow, although they will try and tread the hens and otherwise behave like cockerels.

We hope to add a nest box and perches tomorrow. The perch will be low down to start with and will be moved up to the correct height next week when they are used to it.

There is another ex-bat rehoming on March 20th and we have decided we have room for 3 more girls so will put our name down.

We have called the shed where the Araucanas and Silkie crosses live Cluckingham Palace.

The Blossom gang as we call them have been out in the garden quite a bit and now expect to be let out when we open them up in the morning. 2 of the Bantams are laying and one of the Araucanas. We are getting up to 7 eggs a day and should be able to sell some of them to help pay for the chicken feed.

On a sad note, we had to euthanase our oldest rabbit Aragon, a white Angora. He was old when we got him 3 years ago. He was only expected to live 6 months. so he didn't do badly. He was a greedy old boy. His one delight in life was to stuff his face all day long. He fell out of his cage more than once he was so eager to get to his food. I went in to feed them yesterday morning and he didn't come rushing out so I opened his bedroom door. He was lying there on his side, hardly breathing and covered in sawdust. He must have collapsed in the night and was trying to get up and just scrabbling in the messy sawdust.

I took him out and cleaned all the sawdust off him. I tried to give him some water from a syringe, but he wouldn't swallow at all so we decided to take him to the vet's. I was hoping he would just slip away on his own, but he was a stubborn little man and wouldn't give up even after the injection.

He has gone over the Rainbow Bridge now so should be jumping about in the fresh grass, young and healthy again.

Update on chickens/eBay/treadles

Phil is still making the Nankin house, the run is  finished and the Nankins were in it this afternoon. Hopefully the shed will be finished tomorrow evening. I am repairing the ex batts shed which has a few worn battens. I hope to be able to finish that tomorrow and put the shed together so I can paint the outside and dry the inside.

I have an electric Hague linker and a Bond knitting machine on eBay which seem to be doing quite well. I have had shipping enquiries for the linker from Russia, Texas, Cyprus, Australia and Germany. It seems a very popular item. I found that although the electric linker was good I prefer the hand linker.

I am restoring a treadle for a friend of my daughter's. It has suffered some water damage on the top so I have had to strip off the polished finish down to bare wood. I was told I could bleach wood using washing soda and hydrogen peroxide, so I shall be trying that tomorrow. The fold over top had bad veneer damage, lots of bubbles and areas where the veneer had lifted, I tried ironing it down, but some of the bubbles were too bad so I soaked the veneer, steamed it with the iron and removed it. Tomorrow I will soak it again to remove the bubbles and dry it between 2 sheets of wood to flatten it, then reglue it and fill in any gaps where the veneer has broken. The irons aren't too bad, just need  a good clean and wiping over with linseed oil. The machine needs a good clean and some attention to the chrome work with emery cloth and wire wool soaked in metal polish. Hopefully that will clean all the old rust and dirt off.

Sarah is going to a trade show at Biringham next Tuesday. She wants me to go down for a couple of days to look after Rowan while her and Casie pack and is going to collect me on her way back from Birmingham. We have to go to look at some sewing machines in Rushden on the way back to London. I will dismantle the finished treadle and take that with me so Liz can have it before Sarah goes to Devon on 1st March.

I still have to restore another treadle, this one is very bad, I tried to patch the whole veneer on one end but it looks bad so I'm going to take all the veneer off and replace it with some very thin plywood I've had for some time. I have already reveneered the foldover top with it and it looks good. There is a cut in the top where it looks as if someone tried to saw across the end of the table. The raised part of the top and the front flap will also need reveneering to match. The irons for that will need a good going over with a wire brush as they are quite rusty. Hopefully I will only need to clean it with vinegar and then linseed oil it. I haven't decided which machine to put in that, either a Singer 15 Sphinx, Singer 15 Filigree or 66 Lotus.

Soon we will have to go up the allotment and rotavate so we can get some seeds in and prepare the asparagus bed. There aren't enough hours in the day to do all I want and need to do.

Enough writing for 1 day. I need to go to bed as we are getting up at 7am now so we can open up the chickens.

More chickens

Over the weekend we went to a Poultry show in West Haddon, Northants. They had lots of different breeds in the show and also some for sale. I had been looking online to try and get some rare breed chickens and had been having trouble finding any for sale. Lo and behold, a trio of Nankins (very rare and on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust critical list, which means less than 100 hens in the UK) was up for sale. We talked to Paul who bought them as hatching eggs last June. They hatched in July. They are very pretty and they were very cheap, £30 for the 3. Most rare breed trios cost around £75.

So we are now the proud owners of some very rare chickens













Nankins are true Bantams and one of the oldest breeds.

Garden/chickens

Today I repaired the chain link fence I removed last week, and tomorrow it will go up on the chicken run as long as the weather is dry.  I want to get the roof netting stitched to the fence before we go down to Devon for the day. Once that is done I feel the chickens will be more secure. The chicken wire has sagged and the fox could get under the roof netting and over the chicken wire.

We are rehoming some ex-battery chickens in March so we have to start on a run for them. Phil said he will make some frames to stretch chicken wire on so it doesn't sag. Chain link is so expensive and chicken wire is a lot cheaper. We have to get the shed from Denise's Mum's garden so we can make a door for it and check it all over for any damage.


The strong winds have died down this afternoon, thank goodness, but it is still quite warm out. My hands are aching from twisting the chain link fence as I repaired it.

Gardening

We have done hardly anything in the garden for the last 2/3 years, apart from mowing the grass. This year we have started early because of building the chicken run and having to sort out the end of the garden. The fruit bushes which came back when we gave up our second allotment will be going back onto our first. The area will be dug over and seeded, once the grass has grown the chickens will be allowed to free range. We also have to repair the bottom fence which has started falling apart. It was only made as a temporary measure from old larch lap fencing laths.

We need to put up a new fence at the end of Phil's greenhouse right across the garden to keep the chickens down that end. Possibly fine trellis with a gate. I have moved the peach tree so it will be south of the fence and should get more sun and shelter from the fence. I can put bubble wrap on the trellis behind it to keep it warmer. One of the fig trees will go the other side of the path. I have 3 as when I moved it it had layered itself. Sarah is having the other 2 for her new gaden in Devon which I believe is south facing so they should do well. Hopefully putting the fig facing south in our garden will encourage it to fruit as I have only ever seen one fruit on it in 13 years.

I have taken out the old chainlink fence which screens the greenhouse from the top end of the garden. This will be used in the chicken run when I have repaired it (the shrubs have grown up and rooted through the links so we had to cut them in several places. Fortunately I have a small spare section for repairs. I had to remove the cold frame and sort out the plants which came from it (we have lost a lot of small plants in the very cold weather). I then had to rip up the old landscape fabric and dig out the bottom of the fence which was buried. I was very tired when I finished this but it looks a whole lot better. Yesterday I sorted out the pots behind the greenhouse and took out all the broken terracotta pots for use as drainage. Why does it always look so bad while you are tidying the garden?

Went to the auction tonight but only bought a kids tool bench. A Singer 99 hand crank sewing machine went for £25, it's not worth paying that to go on eBay, although it was in very good condition. Tomorrow I may have a day off from gardening and take photos of stuff to put on eBay. It's over 3 months since I put anything on and I have got out of the habit of it, which makes it a real effort.

The weather is not very nice tonight, there is a gale blowing, Forecast is for rain and gales tomorrw, so it might be a good day for indoor work.