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 :)

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

Gardening UK, Moving & House Clearance

Hi its Gill

Sorry I didn´t get time to do a blog last week, there is too much to do with the moving, let alone blogs.I am moving house as you know if you follow me already, but this is the most stressful move I have ever done. When you are widowed you feel so alone and unable to cope, maybe its because I am now a pensioner. I hate saying that because I am so young in my head it just doesn´t seem right! The trouble is that I need to get back to Four Marks because my daughter is having my second grandchild next spring and I had wanted to be living nearer her.

I could afford a flat but would die without a garden!!! I am about £30,000 short for a small house. I have looked in neighbouring Alton but the ones I can afford are in such rough areas and yes I am may be being a snob but I don´t want to live there. I just don´t know what to do and would love some feedback from you all if possible.

The only alternative I can see is to buy on a pensioners mobile home estate. The houses are lovely but everyone has white hair and I dont feel ready to retire to a place like that. I had thought that maybe I could buy a small piece of land in Four Marks for £100,000 and put a wooden mobile home on it. Unfortunately all the builders gobble up any land available!!!!!

The garden is still a nightmare of a mess but I do intend to get it straight for the new people, they have 3 children and they will be wanting to play out there.

I did go out with Irene and Wendy on Wednesday to a garden centre, I would have gone insane if I hadnt got out of the house. We went to Secretts in Godalming. This is a nice place to go because they have a good range of shrubs, flowers, bulbs, Christmas stuff, and nice food. The only bad thing I have to say about them is that their bedding pansies and violas were £3.49 for 6 and they are £2.99 in most places.

On the way home we went into Hilliers in Liss because I wanted a bag of grit for my cacti. They didnt have their Christmas stuff out which was a shame because we cannot resist buying decorations. The tables holding the flowers outside looked absolutely lovely, a miriad of colours everywhere you looked, very nicely presented.

Well all I can say with the gardening is to make the most of this lovely weather and carry on clearing away all the spent plants and generally tidying up.

I will do my best to do a blog next week but know you will forgive me if I don´t get time. Take care all, happy gardening. Luv Gill xx

Chickens Learning About Nature

Hello everyone, its Gill,

I hope you have all been enjoying your gardens in the last week. Mine looks like a disaster zone at the moment, we let the chickens out of their run yesterday and they created mayhem!!! I will be tidying up today so no problems. My lovely chickens are going to a new home in the next 8 weeks. We sold our house on Saturday and as neither of us can have them at our new abodes they have to move on. Luckily my daughter Michelle has a friend with acres of land and she is kindly taking them on. I have already shed a tear, you grow so close to them, they all have different characters, and are more intelligent than people think, although being thick at the same time, if you understand what I mean lol!!! I will miss 'Lucky' my bantam more than anything. When I was a small child we had chickens, mind you I grew to hate them because I fell in their run when I was about 3, I can actually remember it, and I thought they would eat me. Ridiculous but when you are small they must seem huge. My two Aunties in Crawley had them, Auntie Dorothy and Auntie Bess. I loved going over to Auntie Bess' she had 8 children and it always seemed that there wasn't a second without noise everywhere, I absolutely loved it there. We used to chase after the chickens, naughty us, but we were young then. There was always a huge plate of chicken for dinner. Of course my favourite part as always was collecting the eggs.

One of the reasons for me getting the chickens was because I was opening up a bag of compost that I had folded the top down on after using it before, and out came a spider. I am scared of spiders, I mean really scared. This was a black widow, I froze on the spot, then stood up and went to my brother and sister in law who were staying with me at the time, and told them. My brother did what all brothers do, laugh, but my sister in law said, "Look at her face she's serious". We went back to the bag and of course it had gone. I got straight on to the net and found that it was a false black widow. All I remember was that its body looked like a shiny black marble, perfectly round. They are prevalent in the south of England and have been here for about 35 years, apparently the first one coming over in someone's suitcase after holidaying. (how they know that I will never know). Hence the chickens, nothing grows or lives anywhere near them lol. Yesterday when I was in the garden with them, I heard a little scream and found 'pepper' pecking at a little frog. Poor little thing, I saved it, I didnt know they could scream.

Obviously the main reason for people loving gardening comes from their parents, but also what we used to call the 'nature table' that we had as infants. Most schools unfortunately don't have them now. Also nature walks, I loved going on those learning the names of all the plants in the area. They apparently can't do these now because of 'health and safety' what absolute RUBBISH. Never did us any harm, in fact it started off the seeds in our brains for the love of all things to do with nature.

I cannot tell you how much I love to see old gnarled trees, and I am certain that came from my infant teacher, I know I learned the names of them from her. I can remember a marshy place not far from our school absolutely full of oxlips. I have some now in my rockery, I bought them from the garden centre, I wouldn't dream of digging them up from the wild.

I have the predicament at the moment of which plants to take with me, and which to leave. At least it will be the right time of the year to dig up small trees and bulbs (my lilies and gladioli) mainly. I am hoping that my friend Wendy will take all of them to stand in her garden until I make up my mind what to do next. I hope that my son and his wife sell their house soon then I could have a wooden chalet in the garden of their new house. Luckily I have several places I can go until we all get sorted. My plants are my main priority right now.

If you have patches in your grass, March and September are the best months to seed your lawn.

Okay folks thats it for this week. I won't be doing a blog next week, sorry. I am going to France tomorrow to visit my brother who now lives there, for a week. Hope you have good weather and get all the tidying up jobs done in the garden. Take care,

Gill