blonde poker forum

anyone keep chickens???   i  impulse bought 3 chickens for the kids yesterday!!!!

i rushed home kicked out all the bikes and junk from the kids playhouse they to old for it anyways !!

now we have a chicken house !!

i done what the man said put a shelf 3 foot up (he said they like that)
questions

1.The shelf do they need a ramp to get to it or will they jump?
2.Can they stay in the garden all day whilst i at work or do i need to build a run for them.
3.if there left in the garden all day will foxes get um we do have a lot of fox in this area or is that just at night?
4.will they/can they eat food scraps left overs ...as well as there chicken feed.
5.is there anything i need to know or should do like now.....lol

thanks in advance....

Hey - chickens are actually a lot more fun than people realise: if you handle them and interact with them plenty they get really really tame.

First warning - Be prepared for them to wreck your garden! If you have any form of a decent garden with flowerbeds and plants then get a run for them because they will eat every plant and trash every bed as well as rake your lawn and cover everything in droppings.

If your garden is like a wasteland then no worries! You will rarely see a fox in the day so they should be fine but they need to be inside at night. I would give them some form of ramp or steps to get up to the nesting ledge and you also need to provide them with some form of nesting box (lined with straw) each where they will lay their eggs.

Don't know how old yours are but they dont lay eggs til at least 18 weeks old, sometimes older.

They will eat pretty much anything leftover from your kitchen, including stale bread, leftover roast spuds and cooked veg and even meat - they're not vegetarians! You will also see them all fighting if the find a snail in the garden, they will all try and getit off each other as they love to eat them after smashing the shell on the floor!

Make sure they have a shallow bowl of clean water accessible as well. Their eggs will be a totally different colour to eggs you buy in the shops and much tastier as well. As long as chickens are warm and well fed they will always be happy, they don't need anything more than that.

Pretty much that, they're ever so easy to keep and kids love them.  Quite nice seeing them pottering around the garden, even if they do trash it a bit.

what I learned about keeping chickens

-if you leave them out at night they die
-when they die they apparently explode, pieces of them (mostly feathers but a few fleshy bits too) will be found scattered all around not only your garden but also the playing fields of the nearby primary school

If they misbehave just threaten them with a bottle of peri-peri sauce.

LOL although I feel a bit sick.
As I said previously, don't leave them out at night or a fox will kill them and spread them round your garden and the local primary school :)

thank you very much .....

i came home and let out the chickens and started to do some work in the shed,my eldest came home and said

"dad why is one of the chickens on the fence"....lol is this normal is it going to run away ?? do have to make it higher?? its  a 6 foot fence

they are 10 months old
not layed any eggs yet....
i have made a ledge/shelf and sectioned it off put straw it it is this what you mean??

Yeah my mate keeps chickens and his garden is now a shithole of a mudbath now. Also I hope they are hens, otherwise your neighbours are gonna be pissed off with you real fast!

my brother in law has chickens. he's carpeted their little house and vacuums it every day. think he may be a bit odd

he's odd Gatso!

You can get a spikey thing to put on the fence Lee.  We got some plastic ones from ebay cheap enough.  Ours kept jumping on there and crapping in next doors garden - he wasn't too pleased :D 

thanks mate will try this

went to put the chickens away when it got dark tonight and was really shocked to find them in the shed on the shelf i put up
 ...obviously tired took themselves to bed.

Chickens love spaghetti and its great fun feeding them it - if you dangle it a little bit above them they'll jump up for it - could be fun to do with the kids.

Ours jump up onto our windowsill and tap the glass asking for food - they can be pretty amusing, like everyone said, actually pretty cool pets!

As already mentioned above, the eggs are amazing, really really yellow yolks, nothing like shop bought ones at all.

I live in the countryside so its fine if they jump over the wall into the neighbouring field, they always come back too, atleast ours do, guess its like cats, as long as they know where their main source of food is they'll come back for more! Although we have had a little bantam go missing for a few weeks, until we finally found her sitting on a massive pile of eggs under a bush!

Hope they don't wreck your garden too much - only downside, they poo everywhere!

Chickens are great to keep. I had 7 bantams before they "exploded" a la gatso.
They were a nervous breed so weren't tame at all but hugely satisfying to watch. There is a lot of info around to help with a little google help. I feel that yours may be grateful for a perch, dowling may do the trick.

already found out about the poo everywhere lol
looking forward to the eggs for brekkie tomorrow i hope!

Forgot to mention they can wander but have an amazing instinct for knowing where home is and always come back, and yes, they will put themselves to bed every night as soon as it gets dusk.

The pecking on the windows is funny. When I had the last pub the chickens wandered round the car park all day quite happliy and used to jump into the raised flower bed round the conservatory windows and knock on the glass to the diners inside. Found this actually encouraged people to order chicken as they then thought it was fresh :)

Oddest thing was, the car park had a raggy hedge on one side and no gate so the chickens could get out anytime they liked yet they rarely ventured across our boundary line. There was also a family of feral cats living there (it was a big car park!) and although they regularly killed wood pigeons  - and grey squirrels - they never went near the chickens.

If you have lined the shelf with straw then you may find you need to add a little lip/edge to stop eggs rolling off after being laid too close to the edge.

You need to clip their wings stop em flying off, sorry not wings just one of em, sounds a bit daunting but its easy. Any fox's?

thanks loads for this really helpfull advice

sounds like you have had a lot of fun n fresh eggs
silly question ....do they lay eggs at night ..no eggs yet!

clip wings .....to stop them flying away omg

we have foxes regularly in our garden so the play house is very secure ..just worried in the day

They can lay at any time but may take some time to get into it.  At the moment ours seem to be laying at night (or early morning) but in the summer they often pop into their house during the day to lay an egg for us.

Lee im assuming they already had their wings clipped if they 10 months old as mine were done as soon as they were fully feathered, but if not, your vet will do it, ask if you can borrow a cat carrier or two to transport them. Sounds cruel but catch them by their legs and pop them upside down to carry them in and out of box/vet/anywhere. My daughter used to pick them up like pets and cuddle them but i wouldnt recommend it as they have pretty sharp claws! They really dont mind being carried upside down - well none of them have ever argued with me yet...

mine laid early morning. How come yours were ten months old? Im wondering if you have been fobbed off with duff layers lol! What are you feeding them? Mine never laid an egg ion layers pellets but once they were eating food scraps as well they started to lay, but they were probably about 6 months before they laid their first egg.

thanks for all this mouth
i am feeding them the chicken feed that he gave me and any scraps we have at the min.

will have to take a trip to the vets cos yesterday i get home from work and Ali (Mrs fish) is laughing saying we have naughty chickens.....
one went over next doors she got it back then knock at the door and a gentleman said ...is this yours  with a chicken in a crisp box.

one sat on the fence so Ali try to get it down it was playing a game with her jump up and down when she came anywhere close

BUT WE HAVE ONE EGG TODAY
looks like its beef after all this sunday!!  (just joking)

Easy peasy clipping their wings. Needs 2 of you, one to old the chicken the other fans out the wing. With a good pair of scissors cut the ends off 2 maybe 3". Look on youtube, enyoy your egg, nowt like em.  Few years back i used to share an allotment. Me and mate got some chickens and like you used to go to the nest box full of anticipation. No eggs for 4 weeks. I boiled an egg and went down to the allotment and popped it in the nest box. Phone call from excited mate weve got one, Knock on door he had come down to give me the egg. No i tell him you found it you have it. Poor fucker went home to do himself chips and egg. Phone call rfom him, heyup they are laying em hard boiled, he had a chip sarnie.

Wing clipping. Clip one side only. (Otherwise they will still fly even if they're clipped almost bald).

The trick is to unbalance them

Tom. One of my feet is slightly bigger than the other. This finally explains my unbalanced state to me. Thank you :)

I've been patiently waiting for a "Foot in mouth" joke opportunity. This was almost it.

lol think ill take em vets and pay thanks loads tho

i know some guys who claim to have had

I'm aiming for subtle...

Pics of egg please.

Also pics of chickens and garden now and then in a few months when it's wrecked.

will do this no bother ..in fact i took photo of converted play house... but it says file to big when i try and post .....tell me how to change or take smaller file photo and it will be done ???

Upload to photobucket/imageshack

Post link on here rather than attach to post.

Problem solved.

Or just use this, make it smaller (image -> image size) and save it as a jpeg (file -> save)

http://pixlr.com/

one converted playhouse (rushed due to snap purchace of said chickens)

here is eggs one broke before photo !!!

Awww they look lovely :)

I have 2 chickens now in the hope of finally being able to eat the odd egg again (I'm vegan) and to give my rabbit company (he lives free in the garden) and the parrots something to look at (they too live in the garden). They all get on really well, although I did catch the rabbit humping one today!

I dont like the idea of having the wings clipped.  One of my parrots cant fly now and has only one wing due to a bad wing clip when young.  Doesnt a wing clip cause trauma? 

Anyway here are a few pics :)

http://yfrog.com/gzs4fp

http://yfrog.com/h4jslip

you should build a run of some kind as they will in time make a mess of your lawn but make sure you dig a shallow pond in the middle then buy a couple of ducks as they get along very well with chickens and would make the kids happy
when you have kept them for a few months buy a couple of pigs as they are also good pets this will make the kids very happy
then turn the rest of the garden into a vegetable patch this will take loads of your time so less time playing poker and will save you loads of $$$$
and last save all the chicken sh*t and rub it on your head is it makes your hair grow

Zelda. You're such a big girls blouse sometimes.

I still love you though.

xx

PS its a well known fact that chickens don't like the colour blue and the stress of a blue house will make the eggs taste a little bitter and very yellow so please paint it green or light brown

Betty bought a bit of butter
but she found the butter bitter
so she bought a bit of better butter
to make the bitter butter better.

Haha Red!  Shush you love my soft side really :)

eartoplay I think you should learn that jokes are meant to be funny.  You just wasted 30 seconds of my life!  Bet I am not the first to say that either!

:)

I've spent so many nights thinking about your soft side.


Sigh....

Ha :)

Was just about to write something but decided not to :p

I'm a good at guessing.  ;)

How is life treating you Red?  Poker and life treating you well?

Life, wonderful.

Poker, who cares?

Glad you are content and happy - that makes me happy :)

is it easy to clip the wings of chickens or best take to the vet ...would it cost  much

one person hold chicken upside down by legs.

spread out one wing

clip 3-4 flight feathers and make sure not to clip to high, about the top 3rd of the wing and leave the 2 outer feathers alone

sounds painfull can it harm them if not done correctly

It's reasonably straight forward but if you're unsure let someone who know's what they're doing do it the first time and make sure you watch carefully.

Make sure you only do the one wing.

thanks very much

one of my chickens did not come out of the hutch/house all day yesterday or this morning ???
confused is there a problem??
please help

Is she a layer? If so, is she egg bound?

Have you examined her?

Has she gone broody?

Is she ill?

Is she dead?

yes she is a layer whats egg bound mean??
not examind her
she ain't coming out sitting as if to lay!
she not dead.!!

Is she puffed up a bit in the nest? Sounds like she's broody.  Ours do that from time to time.  There's probably a way to get them over it quicker but I just chuck her out on a daily basis and gather any eggs and let her get on with it.    Usually over it in a week or so.

yes feathers puffed up i picked her up and put her outside and she seems OK
but she has been there all day again.
many thanks