My First Egg!

Oh my goodness Nigella, our Catalana hen has laid her first egg today and it is simply beautiful.

I caught her earlier behaving very strange, I walked down the garden and they didn´t come running to me as they usually do so. At first I thought they were all down the garden together, until I spotted the other 2 girls, Henny Penny and Dehlia beside the shed digging in the dirt and collecting grass!

I began to get worried and I was thinking all sorts, such as a dog had gotten them or they had managed to get out, I even thought they could be in Mark's van, who was here today helping us with our roof.

As I was slowly starting to panic, Gordon Ramsay stuck his head out of the chicken house - I was then even more confused as this is the most unusual place for them to be inside their house at that time of day, which I think was around 4.30pm.

I went around the back of the house and lifted out one of the wooden doors, for easy access to the eggs - hahhaha harrrrr - now, before we get excited she had not laid her egg at this point but while I was being nosey I spotted she was nest making and then felt awful I had disturbed her so I carefully put the door back on and snuck away back to the house. I half expected Nigella to follow me as she always does when I am outside - thinking I have sweetcorn, in fact she probably looks at me and sees sweetcorn!

An hour later I went back down for a wander to find the chickens and again I could not find them. Fortunately they were further down the garden, where we have been showing them to go so I quickly looked in the house and there it was - THE GOLDEN EGG hehehe. I am so chuffed as the chickens have been with us 12 days - whoop whoop!

I started shouting for Chris and squealing with delight but as Chris was working he didn´t see me, only heard me so he jumped up because he thought I had fallen over or something! But there I was, grinning from ear to ear outside the front door with a warm egg in my hands - pure joy!

We look forward to more egg laying from here on in and I hope you enjoy the images :)

What Do Chickens Eat?

Well I think it is probably easier to tell you what chickens don’t eat. They should not have green potato peelings, banana skins, mouldy bread, citrus fruits, coffee filter waste or grass from the lawn mower. As you will see that means the list of what they do eat is quite extensive and believe me after 2 weeks of having chickens you will never look at left over food again in the same light.

At the end of every meal I now carefully divide the left-overs between the guinea pigs and the chickens. Left over cereal from breakfast, into the chicken food tupperware box, half eaten cookie that fell on the floor, into the chicken box, all vegetables, salad, bread, sauces, rice, cheese, fruit, cakes and their very favourite sweet corn ! I do not think twice now about getting on my hands and knees to pick up 3 grains of fallen sweet-corn from under the table instead of reaching for Mr Dyson the hoover as I see how much joy one single grain of corn can bring the chickens. When we go out to restaurants and cafes Keiana is never a big eater and now (much to the embarrassment of my husband I might add) I take a little bag with me and when she is full she declares’ the rest is for Maisy and her friends mummy’. When I look around at the left over food on other peoples’ plates I just pray that all restaurants have a flock of chickens outside as it breaks my heart to see so much food wasted.

As well as the fresh food they get access to grain each day, are allowed to eat the shrubs, insects, worms and grass in their run and also I give them the left over egg shells which they adore and are apparently are good to help them form harder shells on their own eggs. We place all this food on an extra large plate (actually the lid off our water collector) as it is best not to put it directly on the ground but believe me your children will not learn wonderful table manners by watching chickens eat.

They are straight away in there with there feet, clawing backwards and sifting through to find what they like best. We have since adopted another family of three chickens, this time white Chinese Silkies and little Snowy had a bright orange Mohican for 2 days after she dived right under my box when I was emptying some left over baked beans on to their plate– it did not seem to bother her, rather – good I’ll save that bit for later!
 
Author: Shelley O´Brien who lives in Belgium and has just joined our gardening forum for some great advice on chickens, pointer dogs and guinea pigs, she has kindly donated us some great content for the blog to help others with their wildlife :) Thanks Shelley, we appreciate your wonderful words of Chicken wisdom!

The Chickens Arrive in Monda!

We have been living in Monda now since 2007 and ever since we moved in we have both wanted chickens but you know what it is like when you move house, cash is tight, problems arise that must be fixed, mortgage has to be paid, business has to continue and the list keeps getting larger! Chickens just had to wait so we could afford the cash to have the coop build along with their house and me being me I wanted a nice house, not some crappy expensive box you buy in the shop, so we had our friend, who is an expert carpenter, build the coop and the house.

The whole project has taken 2 weeks, however, this is not all day, every day, but they do take some planning. We have had a lot of rain during these weeks so we have also had many "rain days" which stops work outside.

Needless to say the result is perfect, just what we wanted and also great for me. I have Scoliosis, which is a curvature of the spine. I had surgery 21 years ago but I still have problems with my lumbar spine so bending down to get into a chicken coop was always going to present me with issues, this is the reason we needed a coop so large to accommodate the height I needed it to be so I didn´t have to bend down to enter the chicken's coop. The house itself was also bespokely designed by my friend, Mark Murray, who took into consideration my Scoliosis, which is why the back of the chicken house is easily accessible for me. There are 3 back panels which easily come out so I can reach inside to clean the house and collect eggs - ingenious!

We have no idea what to do with chickens but we are slowly learning, and as each day goes by we will learn more. We did little research into which chickens we should buy and what their requirements are, we are looking forward to learning from our mistakes (providing they are not bad ones!), the house is secure and safe, we know what we should not feed them and also what treats they like.

We believe our chickens to be Catalana Hens and a Booted Bantam, but we may be informed otherwise in the not too distant future by a Spanish neighbour! LOL

Join our Gardening Forum and discuss your chickens with us and offer any tips you might have

I will now explain what we did, step by step to achieve our work of art for a chicken coop :)

Chicken Coop Building and Carpentry

Step 1

Design Your Layout: Where is the house going to go, what materials it is going to be made from, how big do you require it, do you need to stand in it like me or would it be OK lower and how much this is going to cost, remember you have to allow for labour costs, either hour or day rates. We chose a piece of land next to our shed so we could butt the chicken coop up to one side of the shed. This was for 3 reasons, the main one being shelter for the chickens, less wood to buy as we could use the shed wall as part of the coop and the third reason was to use a piece of land that was never going to be garden and put it to some good use!

Step 2
Preparation: Prepare the land where your chicken coop is going to be built, you will need to do some digging at this stage and lay out where the wood is going to go. We decided to include an Olive tree inside the coop, for no other reason than to make it look nice, so we had to do some contemplating on how that was going to work. We also wanted to provide a sheltered area for the winter months and of course shade for the hot months too. We had some old corrugated roof laying around the land so that was a good way to recycle that.

Step 3
Framework: Dig holes for your framework posts to nestle in to and then build your framework and the door.







Step 4
Chick House Construction: The house was a surprise, our carpenter made the house at home and then brought it round here in sections. I was told to stay in the shed while he put all the sections together to complete the house. I have been so excited about the chicken coop for a long time that I burst into tears when I saw it, the house is exactly as we wanted it and how I had imagined it was going to look.


Step 5
Wood Staining: Ensure you have at least 3 pots of stain, we used pine but you can choose whatever you like. We did not stain the inside of the chicken house for fear of them not liking the smell and then not laying eggs! We used 2 pots of stain on the chicken house. I say 3 because we are also planning on staining the framework itself, especially the door ends (as per instruction from our carpenter).


Step 6
Chicken Wire: Now the framework is built and the roof is on the section that you wish to keep dry, get the chicken wire on the go and start making it rat and fox proof! Wrap the chicken wire around your wooden posts carefully, we used U nails for fixing the chicken wire to our posts - fiddly little buggers that they are!



Step 7

Buying Chickens: The real exciting bit comes now but be prepared for the experience in Spain as you get your chickens in a bag, all in together! Being an animal lover I hated that, I know it is OK and they were and are fine but I would have preferred them in a cat box so if I go again I will take my own with me.



What You Will Need
Wood
Chicken Wire
Wood Stain
Corrugated Iron
Bitchumen
U Nails
Nails
ScrewsStraw
Feeders for water and food
Latches and hinges

Wood
10 of 240x4.5x4.5
2 of Plywood
20 of 2.50x4.5
Total: €196.00

Wood Stain
3 Tins of Stain (Pine)
Total: €40.80

Chicken Wire
2 metres of chicken wire
Total: €37.50

Latches, Hinges, Screws  €20 depending on what you choose of course

Chickens and Feeders
1 Booted Bantam
3 Catalana Hens
1 Feeder
1 Water Feeder
Chicken Food 40KG
Bail of shavings
Total: €83.50

Chickens also require perches for sleeping at night inside their houses so we used bits of wood that we have kicking around the land. We made one for their house and one for their coop as some fun for them. We are also planning on hanging CDs off this perch along with some balls for entertainment but we will share that when we have done it!

I have placed some images below of the chickens and other images I wanted to share

 Booted Bantam - Gordon Ramsay

Booted Bantam - Gordon Ramsay again, close up of his colours

Catalana Hens - this is Nigella

Our beautiful chicken house, where they sleep at night

The chicken coop itself so they have a run also

I have a photo album on Facebook if you want to see further photos Chicken Coop Building