Chicken poo!

If you're a keeper of chickens you will know that it's imperative to keep their surroundings clean and pest-free. Good hen-husbandry or housekeeping helps the chickens fight off red spider mite and other parasites which can kill vulnerable hens. On a day to day basis you need to clean off their droppings board (hens do most of their expelling of waster matter overnight hence a board that sits underneath their perch that you can easily slide out to clean is better than letting it drop onto the floor) but in this weather it's proved slightly problematic. I can slide out the droppings board from under the hens' perch but the droppings have all frozen onto the board itself. I've been out there trying to chip off a mound of chicken poo with a trowel to no avail. Sigh!

Winter continues........,

This morning we woke to temperatures of -4 degrees. As always, with a coating of what seems like dusted icing sugar over the garden, it looks very pretty but, brrrr, is it cold!
I spent ten minutes in my chilly conservatory with the neighbour's cat, transfixed by the sight of a myriad birds flying in and out of the shrubs, latching onto the feeders, swopping places with the ever present queue of blue tits to hammer away at the peanuts. The cleverer ones nip down the feeder tube and take an entire peanut in their beak. Luke is filling the peanut feeders (two of them) every morning. As I look out now there are three birds on one feeder and two on the other with three in the shrub, one standing atop of the broom handle and one flying from one feeder to the other. They are incredibly industrious but it seems a nicer life than getting into a car every morning and evening to work all day to earn enough to buy convenience food because there's not much time to cook by the time we get home. On the plus side we haven't got a hungry cat in the shadows, waiting for a bird to land close by. The shrub looks like it's dancing with it's branches swinging when a bird either lands or takes off from them.

Signs of life

I haven't any photos to back this up but yesterday, walking along a main road, I spied my first signs of new life almost hidden in the verge. Bundles of splindly stems emerging from the earth, some topped with almost open daffodils looking fragile yet defiant, like tiny ballet dancers - all legs and a shining face.

We've got overnight frosts again this week and I've been walking around my garden in the vain hope of finding some new growth so to see that promise of Spring (although still too early) was a delight. Having planted hundreds of Spring bulbs in later Autumn it'll soon hopefully be a crowd pleaser in my borders.And then the promise of lighter nights and..., Summer! Bliss.

A buzzard scare.

Woah, we had a narrow squeak last weekend. You may know that we have had to separate our chickens due to two of the three not getting along any longer. So, during the day one of the hens goes into the greenhouse (don't worry, it's an extra large greenhouse so she has much more space then in her usual run and of course, this time of year it's not too hot). They take it in turns to go in the greenhouse and we're trying to put them together again but at present it's not working. They'll sleep on the same perch in the comfort of their house but once they are awake they have to be separated. Part of our rehabilitation process is to allow them all out in the garden at the same time; it's large enough that the cowardly one can run off to a quiet corner away from the threat.
Last weekend I let the three peck around the garden together for an hour or two but wasn't as vigilant as usual as I was tinkering in the house when I looked out of the window and watched a huge buzzard land between our shed and greenhouse. I could see Sweetie, our littlest chicken in the greenhouse, not four feet away from this enormous bird of prey. Fortunately for Sweetie there was glass between them and no way for the buzzard to get her but where were the other two chicks? I scoured the garden for them but neither was visible so I shouted and clapped to scare off the intruder. Without the threat to our hens I would have raced for my camera because it was a majestic sight and a rare occurrence to have it land in our garden but I had to protect the chickens. It didn't seem too startled at my shouts but launched itself up into the air, flew slowly in a side swoop over my garden and then beat it's wings a few times to take it over the field and into the trees.
I knew that it didn't have a chicken but apart from Sweetie who had been caught enjoying a dust bath in the greenhouse I couldn't see the other two girls. Five minutes of racing around the garden looking for alive chickens or signs of a disturbance I chanced upon one of the chickens, Buckster, hiding in the undergrowth. She seemed pretty scared so I helped her back into her safe run along with Sweetie who raced up to the house and hid herself away. Buckster was making a racket and no amount of bribing with seeds or comforting words could still her crowing. I went everywhere to look for Shakira, Luke's favourite hen but to no avail. Where was she?
I went into Jack's garden, looked down his alley, checked all this shrubs and went over his wall to the adjoining field but there was no trace of her. For thirty five minutes I hunted for her, calling, cooing, shaking peanuts and seeds and calling her name but couldn't find her anywhere. After about twenty five minutes and three thorough searches I started to think she really had been snatched and was imagining her being pulled apart by that huge buzzard whose wing span I would have put at 5 feet.
Buckster still wouldn't calm down and so I decided to let her out with me close by to see if this would settle her and as soon as I opened the run door she ran back into the undergrowth I had found her in and when she came back out she was being closely followed by Shakira, our missing chicken! What a relief!
She is the largest chicken we have yet had hidden herself so well that it was nigh on impossible to find her. Only Buckster seemed to be able to entice her out. How thrilled was I to see her.  A narrow escape.

Having written to the Practical Poultry magazine asking about Buzzard threats this was the reply I received:
"chickens will be very frightened by the Buzzard but in most cases the buzzard is more of a scavenger, they are basically only interested in some food that is already dead or injured. The feet on the bird are much smaller than most birds of prey due to this fact that they are idle and like a easy meal.

But of course there is always the exception to the rule and this can depend on just how hungry the bird is but this would be a very rare occasion and you frightening him away will make the bird very wary from returning.

If the bird had been a hawk or Red tail then you would have a serious problem but there is one thing that you can do to help protect the birds and stop him from visiting again.

Try this as a preventative, fasten some wire or string across the top of your pens and drill some old CD discs, hang these at intervals on the string making sure they flick and move about in the wind (this is why I suggest making holes in them not using the centre hole as makes them to rigid) these work perfectly as the wind moves them and they flash light this will put of the birds guaranteed.

I have used this in the USA with Red Tailed Hawks which are not bothered about attacking in daylight even when you are in the pen with the birds but by using this method it stopped the attacks."