Storm, storm go away!

Just when we thought it was safe to go outside and replace the roof panels from the last storm, in comes Storm Doris and whips off another one! My partner had thought that when he had replaced the panel lost from Storm Angus he had tightens down the hatches on the rest of the roof. Unfortunately we weren’t expecting such strong winds, and once again it ripped off one of the roof panels from the chicken enclosure. Instead of taking the whole panel clean off, this time it snapped at an angle so it will take a bit more time to take off and repair.

Storm Doris damage

After the wind died down the next day, I thought it would be a nice treat for the chooks to have the run of the garden. They loved scratching through the wood chip and grass to find all the tasty bugs bought to the surface by the rain. This meant that Smudge dog had to stay in but she was desperate to be out and playing with her friends.

Mummy, I want to go out and play!

Despite the storm, the weather has been improving and getting warmer. With the girls being over their moult as well, egg production has started back up. I tried using them up in last weeks recipe for Chocolate Mousse but I can’t stay on top of how many we’re getting in. Going to have to start selling them again!

Eggs Galore!

Speaking of moulting, a certain Smudge dog has started shedding her winter fur. We popped into the pet shop today to grab her a brush to help with the loose fur (and where she got fussed over by everyone). She also got a bone or two to distract her whilst I brushed her as I wasn’t sure how she would react to brushing but she seemed to be pretty chilled about it. Good thing as it looks like she really needed it from the amount I got off of her.

It’s been another busy, blustery week. Hopefully that’s the last of the bad weather for the year and we can get on with being happy, content chickens 🙂

Christmas Review

After a hectic couple of months it’s great to finally get back to blogging. I have a few bits to report from over the Christmas period:

If you remember we lost a roof panel over after a huge windy storm. Over Christmas we finally had some time to replace it and get the enclosure watertight again. To hold some of the muddy floor together from the rain that had come through when the roof came off, we put some wood chip down on the floor. The girls have really enjoyed scratching around in the wood chip and not sinking into mud.

With it being Christmas, it was only fair that that the animals got a taste of the festive season. Smudge got her own advent calendar which she soon learnt meant getting an extra treat with breakfast. The chickens got some sprouts on a string which was hung up in their enclosure to give them a different way to eat their greens.

For Christmas, my boyfriend and I, unbeknown to each other, bought each other chicken related gifts. We both got each other egg storage, I got him a wire chicken basket and he got me wooden box. The only awkward thing now is that the chooks have packed up production for the winter due to moulting and it being very cold.

With the cold comes the snow! The chickens have already seen some snow in their lifetime but for Smudge puppy this is the first time she has seen snow. We woke up on 13th Jan to a pathetic amount of snow, but snow on the ground nonetheless. She seemed to enjoy it but I think if we had more she would be able to make more of it. Today we had a lot of flurries and we got caught in them on our walk. She seemed to enjoy chasing and eating the flakes bless her!

Hopefully I’ll be able to be a bit more regular with my blog rather than catching up on two months worth of activities in one post! For now I shall leave you with a very merry Smudge puppy:

Moulting on the Job

Please excuse us whilst we moult. We’re a little scruffy….

but we still like getting up to mischief…. like coming into the house…

and having a good nap under the table…

Smudge also likes a good nap and snuggle on the sofa.

As for me, I’ve been treated to a few chicken themed goodies!

Unfortunately since my last post though (which I’ll admit was a while ago), we have lost one of our girls. I’m sad to say that our dear Blossom, one of our little Warrens, has left us. She just went over night without warning and we still don’t know what caused it. She is missed so much, even Smudge had taken to hanging out up near the chicken enclosure after she died to comfort the other girls. This now brings our little flock to 7. RIP our little Blossom.

Other than that, not much else to report. With a lot of fruits ripening we’re planning to do lots of interesting brewings soon that I’m hoping to document so keep an eye out for that entry next.

Thank you Followers!

After a big stint to hand in my Masters project, I’m finally back to writing about the chickens! Yay, I’ve missed being able to be expressive and fun rather than scientific and factual.

So whilst I’ve been otherwise distracted, the chooks have been a bit quiet on the old social media. But that hasn’t stopped people from following them and the girls and myself can’t thank you all enough for the support!

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A post shared by Hannah Simmons (@hansims36)

Instagram has exploded, there are now 129 followers keeping up with the girls and their pictures on their account @hannahshens . Their live clucking has also attracted a lot of attention, with 70 followers on their Twitter account @HannahsHens . The slowest grower has been this blog with only 9 followers 😦 .

It’s so easy to follow the girls on any social media, there are links Twitter and Instagram on the side menu here or search for HannahsHens on the app!

And following the blog is super easy too: if you’re on WordPress there’s a button at the very top of the side menu that adds the blog to your Reader. If you’re not on WordPress you can still follow the blog and have an email sent to you whenever a new post is added. To do that, at the top of the side menu there’s a box to enter your email into and WordPress will send you an automatic email to confirm that you want to follow the blog, it’s that simple!

Again thanks to everyone already following. It means so much to all of us at Hannah’s Hens that you’ve taken the time to be part of our little gang and we hope that you are enjoying hearing about the girls!

Eggy madness

This week I’ve been trying to use up the eggs that we’ve been getting from the girls. It seems that we’re getting about 4-5 eggs per day now so the fridge fills up faster than you think. So to get through them, for the first time in my life I’ve been cooking with eggs!

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be putting up the recipes on how to make these scrummy yummy eggy so you can make these too and whatever else I get to making with the eggs.

Here’s a sample of what I’ve been making:

Brownies

Eggs Benedict with Hollandaise sauce

Victoria Sponge

Bacon Egg Cups

But because I still had loads of eggs left I’ve started to sell them at £1 for 6 eggs! Already had some good feedback about them so I’m looking forward to more satisfied customers!

Don’t forget to get all the up-to-date news on the hen’s Twitter and Instagram accounts. To follow just click the links in the right hand menu. Happy clucking!

The Ladies have Names!

The ladies have been with us for nearly two weeks now and we finally have names for them! Took us long enough but we wanted to make sure they would suit the girls. Here we go, the official introduction:

The Black Rocks Brian and Shaniqua

These girls were named by our friend. We have a girl with quite a boy looking face so she has been nick-named Brian, her full official name is Briany though. The other Black Rock has been named Shaniqua because she is fierce like the female WWE wrestler!

Briany at the front and Shaniqua at the back, standing with their buddy Snowflake.

The Mottled Leghorns Ginger and Babs

A group of chickens wouldn’t be complete without a few named after the chickens in “Chicken Run”! I thought that the Mottled Leghorns deserved these prestigious names as they have the personalities for Ginger and Babs. The larger and bossier girl will obviously be Ginger. The other one is a little more clumsy and dippy so I thought that she was a perfect Babs.

Camera shy Miss Ginger

The one and only Babs

The Warrens Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup

We have three Warrens so we needed a famous trio to name them after. There was the an idea of naming them after the three good fairies from Sleeping Beauty, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather. However, this was just not good enough, so after a little more thinking I remembered one of my favourite shows from my childhood, the Powerpuff Girls and their names are chicken perfection! There is clearly leader and has darker tail feathers than the other girls so she is Blossom. There’s a girl who’s very airy-fairy and she’s a definite Bubbles. The last girl is very moody, she comes up to me clucking away and her feathers are quite darker than the other girls so she is Buttercup.

The gorgeous Warrens, from front to back, Buttercup, Blossom and Bubbles

The Araucana Snowflake

This is the only name that just happened at of chance. As she’s the only white chicken she just landed with the name Snowflake. A bit funny as she seems to be the most aggressive to have a very girly name.

Pure White Snowflake

Other chicken news this week include the girls coming into the house for a little explore. I’d let them out of the enclosure for a bit of free-ranging and left the back doors open as it was a nice day. Next thing I know, the babies had hopped in through the door and wondered through to the kitchen! Then the rest of the gang followed shortly behind and I had a living room full of hens!

The Pioneers of Exploration

That’s a lot of Chickens

The big step was last night where I thought I would try earning the girls trust a bit more by trying to get them to eat food that I’m holding. I took a scoop of mixed chicken feed in a box and held it out. To my surprise, after a week of trying with no success, the girls came up to me and started pecking straight out of the box with only a little bit of hesitation. I’m such a proud chicken mama!

Another day, another treat!

More chicken news to come, don’t forget to stay up-to-date with the hens with live clucking on Twitter and Instagram. To follow them just click on the links in the menu at the top of the page. Happy Clucking!

The Chickens Have Landed

After a long day yesterday, we now have chickens scratching around the enclosure!

We were up early to make sure we were at the farmers auction in plenty of time to pick our favourite ladies. Obviously attire for the day was wellies, jumpers and a flat-cap to get us into the farming feeling!

There were so many breeds and colours that at first we were spoilt for choice. After a while though a few started to stand out to us, there were four lots that we liked in particular: 3 Warrens that were only 18 week old, 2 Black Rock Hens, 2 Mottled Leghorns and a cream Araucana. 

Whilst at an auction it’s not good to get too attached to something before it’s yours, we were so lucky with these hens we’d liked the looks of because we actually got them. That’s right, we are now the proud owners of 8 lovely hens.

The Warrens

The Black Rocks

One of the Mottled Leghorns

The Cream Araucana

They’re not used to being in the garden yet so we left them in the enclosure with some food and water once we got them back to have some down time. Also they didn’t know that the coop was their bed so we’ll have to pop them in the coop for the first couple of nights, like we did last night, until they can sort themselves out.

All the chucks getting ready for bed

A quick cuddle before putting them to bed

Once we’ve learnt how to tell the ones of the same breed apart and got to know their personalities a bit more we’ll think about names. I’m thinking along the names of Chicken Run, “Ginger”, “Babs”, “Bunty”…. The rest will be named by my boyfriend and our house mate. I’m so happy now that the chickens are here and I can’t wait to record the adventures of our new chicken family and get some more photos!

How to build a chicken enclosure for under £300

After a little bit more work the enclosure is now chicken ready! All the wire is on the front, the padlock is on the door and the coop is repaired. Now all we need is the chickens, which should be with us on Tuesday afternoon! In the meantime, if you’re thinking about getting chickens or just want to update your coop and give the chucks a little protected space, here’s how we made our chicken enclosure.

For the coop, we saved one that had been broken by a storm and was just about to be burnt. We cleaned it up, painted it a nice blue and put it back together. We were lucky to get a second hand coop which didn’t really need too much fixing, so we didn’t need to fork out too much for it, just £20 for the Cuprinol Forget-me-not blue paint.

Next we started building the enclosure. We bought 30 pieces of 2.4m long timber (10cm wide X 5cm thick) from B&Q for £70, which has a good deal on at the moment if you buy more than 20 pieces, it brings the price down to £2 each! The roof was a rectangle 2.4m X 4.8m (the 4.8m was made of two pieces of wood fixed together). The rectangle was then split into 18 smaller 0.77m X 0.7m rectangles to give the roof strength so that it could be freestanding other than being attached to the garden fences.

A half section of the roof. It was easier to lift on in halves

All the wood was held together with metal plates and angles. Straight metal plates were used either side of a joint and metal angles were screwed into every inside corner. This added some real needed strength, which without would have caused the roof to cave in from its own weight.

On to the roof structure, 9 plastic roof sheets were screwed down. These were 3m long by 0.5m wide and £8 each from Wickes. The plastic sheets should help keep the rain off and stop the enclosure from becoming a mud bath.

The front of the enclosure was made in a similar way as the roof, with a large a large outer frame (4.8m X 1.9m) split into 5 sections, 4 supporting (2 sections of 2.27m X 0.95m and 2 of 1.47m X 0.95) and one for the door of 1.7m X 0.78. We used the timber to make the door as well. All joints and inside corners were supported by metal plates and angles as describe for the roof.

We had to remember to put the coop inside before putting up the front as we would not be able to to get it through afterwards

Once the front had been secured to the fences, the roof was lifted on and secured to the front and all of the fences. As the fence panels were not very wide, we added some extra supports along the fence where we could attach the roof onto with more metal angles. The extra supports at the back were longer than the front so that the water drained off into our garden, not the drive behind the garden. In the future, we’re planing to build a raised plant bed to catch the water and stop the ground from soaking through.

After being strapped down to stop the roof from taking off in the wind, we attached aviary mesh using metal staples to the front. The mesh was £35 for 3ft wide x 15m long, the wire was 1.6mm in diameter and in 1 x 1in squares. It was easily cut into the right sized striped using wire cutters. I can really recommend the online supplier that we got our mesh from hillsofdevon.co.uk as their website was really easy to use and understand and the wire arrived well before the estimated time of arrival.

Just the door to finish

I’m so happy with the finished product. I know a lot of the time I say that “we did this” and “we did that” but mostly it was my boyfriend that did all the construction work. He did a wonderful job and did most of the work with just an electric drill and a hammer, couldn’t have been a simple job once he got to grips with the design.

Nearly Ready…

 

Including the price of all the screws used and metal joining plates, which came to £107 from Wickes and our local DIY store (where we got more for our money) the total price for the enclosure came to £284 pounds. For how much work you have to put in and how few DIY skills are needed, the results look fantastic! There’s still a little bit to go like making sure that it’s also rat proof and painting the wood to make it weather proof but these can be done whilst we have the chickens.

With the enclosure ready, the next post will be when we actually have the chickens. Tuesday is the day, so expected lots of photos and happy thoughts! 🙂

 

It’s Erect!

After weeks of plan changes, windy weather and multiple trips to the DIY store, the chicken enclosure is finally up! And looking rather damn fabulous if I do say so myself!

Before wire and finished roof

Nearly Ready…

Just the door to finish

There’s still a few bits left to do; some wire to put on the door of the enclosure and fixing the coop after the wind blew the roof off, but the main bulk of the construction is done. I’ll do a whole post in the future on how we built it but for now I’m just going to hype up how close we are to getting chickens.

If all goes well we should be off to pick our chickens up next Tuesday!!! I’m so excited now, it’s finally happening, by this time next week there will be chickens in the garden. Whilst the day can be filled with finishing the enclosure, the evening will now be filled with researching chicken breeds. We’ve been told about a few breeds but always open to suggestions, so as first time keepers what would people recommend?

Can’t wait for the chickens now, keep watching for their arrival very soon!!!

Speckled eggs: On trend for Easter

This Easter, the trendy design that seems to be everywhere is speckled eggs. There are so many sweet treats along the speckled egg theme, from cupcakes to cookies, macaroons, and obviously the original speckled egg product, mini eggs! That’s not to mention all the Easter decorations: wreaths, table centre pieces and even nail art! Speckled eggs are definitely in! 

Egg wreath, Table centre piece, Nail polish from Models Own.

Cake recipe, Macaroons, Cupcakes and Mini eggs available from Tesco.

As with many of our trends, speckled egg products are something that we’ve taken the idea for from nature. As many birds produce eggs during the Easter period, it’s makes sense that we associate eggs with spring and Easter. The beauty of speckled eggs has not gone unnoticed until now though, they were first made popular by Victorians trying to obtain many specimens for their collections. Many of these collections are now kept safe in private collections and museums. Due to the law of 1981, all wild birds eggs are now protected and must not be taken from the nests, so if you do come across any wild bird eggs, please don’t go moving them (for more info see the RSPB website).

There are many birds that produce speckled eggs, including some breeds of chickens, robins, blackbirds and many ground dwelling birds, such as quails.

It is commonly thought that they produce speckled eggs to help with camouflaging the eggs and concealing them from predators that would see them on the ground. Quails have this down to an art, by selecting an area to lay their eggs in that matches the speckled pattern on her eggs (summary of the study here). However, new ideas have arisen that suggest that the specks indicate where the shell is at its weakest and actually help to strengthen the shell, as seen in great tit eggs (for a summary of the study click here).

Cuckoos are possibly my favourite example though of why their eggs are speckled. If you’re not aware, cuckoos lay their eggs in another species’ nest so that the cuckoo offspring are raised by the host parents and not the real cuckoo parents. To ensure that the egg is not detected, cuckoos can imitate other bird eggs right down to the speckled patterning to conceal their egg’s identity within a host nest! More information on host species and cuckoo egg mimicry can be found here.

Whilst pretty to us, speckled eggs are an adaptation to the environment and situation that the birds are in. Hopefully with the protective laws, they’ll be around for us to admir for years to come (and make tasty chocolate treats that look like them)!

From us all at Hannah’s Hens, we wish you a Happy Easter!