The Girls- 2 weeks on

We've been hen owners for 2 weeks today! Not long you might think, but I feel like I've leant so much about them in this short space of time.
They all have very different personalities and have become so tame in such a short space of time, even knocking on the kitchen door last night expecting to be let in, cheeky lot!!

Betty (L) & Delilah (R)

We don't seem to have a definite 'Head Girl' yet. Betty and Tina seem to share the role. Betty was the one who came out of the crate shouting! The other three were pretty quiet but she was, and still is, the most vocal. She sometimes pecks at the others when they're trying to feed and seems to prefer to scrape the pellets out of the feeder and then eat them off of the floor.
Delilah gave us real cause for concern last weekend. Mr P mentioned that one of the hens was sleeping by the tree and we didn't think anything of it. Later R came in and said that one of the hens wouldn't move, again I thought nothing of it and told him to leave the hens be. It was only later when the children came in saying she still hadn't moved I thought I'd better go and check. Poor Delilah, she was curled up and her tail was down, almost tucked underneath her, the poor thing really looked sorry for herself. I went to pick her up and she didn't move an inch, which for Delilah is unheard of as she's the timid one of the bunch. We decided to bring her into the house to keep a watch on her and housed her in Bruno's travel crate overnight. She wouldn't eat or drink and we really thought that we'd be down to three hens by the morning. I found a poultry forum, signed up and got some advice. The comments gave a variety of possible causes and ideas of things we could do. Thankfully Delilah was still with us the next morning and I thought it best to return her to the flock so that they wouldn't treat her like a new hen. We were spending the day in the garden so we kept a close eye on her and syringe fed her tiny amounts of water through the day. Betty stayed close to her throughout the day and was nestling into her in the run and nudging her as if to say "you'll be ok". It was very endearing.  By teatime she had started to scratch around in the ground with the others, but her tail was still down. I'm delighted to say she now seems to have a made a full recovery and through being handled has become a much more confident hen, in fact she was the first one to try and come into the kitchen after knocking on the door!

Tina the terror!

Tina, is our other candidate for head girl, and I think she's the one laying, however she is, as it says above, a terror! She is incredibly curious, so much so that M & I had to go and retrieve her from the gardens at the back of ours. Luckily the owner found it highly amusing having the pair of us trying to catch a chicken in his back garden! When I clean out the hen house she watches my every move and even tried to push me out of the way at the weekend and the minute I'm finished she goes straight in a rearranges it all! Oh and then there's the corn that they have for their afternoon treat. It's a handful for Tina and a handful for the other three to share, as long as Tina doesn't finish hers first!

Cheeky Chickarito

Yes, it was Chi-charito, like the football player but that didn't last long at all! Chickarito is fearless she chases Bruno and even attempted to take a stick off of him in the garden at the weekend, she was a close second behind Delilah on trying to get into the kitchen and can often be seen legging up the garden, wings flapping causing the others to do the same. I'm sure she just does it for fun!

And the eggs, yes we've had a few. I think Delilah's troubles might have been down to a soft shelled egg as we've found about six in the hen house. We've also had three small but perfectly formed eggs and two whoppers, both with double yolks.

Little and Large

All in all the last two weeks have been great. I'm really attached to the hens and could watch them all day long, they really are very funny characters and a constant source of entertainment. I was asking a very dear friend for lots of advice about keeping hens, as she's had hers for some years now. I think the best bit of advice she gave me was to dive in, and I'm so pleased we did.

The Gallery - Easter

This week I'm joining in with Tara's fantastic Gallery blog on the theme of Easter.

Mr P was at home for the first week of the holidays and spent a few days at the beginning of the week building a fantastic Hen House for the much anticipated arrivals to our garden. Mid week he treated the children (MB, L & R) to a session at AirKix

They all had a great time & it was very entertaining to watch! M had already said that she didn't feel that it was something she'd like to do, so unbeknown to her our lovely Mr P decided he'd get her a long sort-after pair of Converse. She was delighted!

 The hens were collected on Thursday and so far have been a great source of entertainment! They've settled really well and today we came home to our first egg.

This is Delilah (and Betty can just been seen taking a dust bath!)

There's been lots of activity in the kitchen too. Mr P got stuck in and made some sweet pastry tartes. Some were turned into frangipane tartes and others filled with rhubarb and custard.
He made his first even batch of scones, which have to be the lightest little scones I have ever eaten and were far too moreish

There were also cherry scones, a rhubarb orange & almond cake and home made pizza's as well as these

Chocolate macaroons

All I can say is they didn't last long!
We also had our annual family trip to Haydock Races where a good time was had by all.
So we had quite a busy Easter week. Sadly this week Mr P is back to work and the children and are are doing mundane routine things like eye tests & dental check ups! Roll on the weekend :o)
Pop over to  Tara Cain's BLOG to see all the other entries

Here come the girls!

So at last we have the hens we've been waiting for! The lovely Farmer John called us around 4pm to say we could head over to his place to collect the girls. The children and I were close to bursting with excitement by the time he phoned so it wasn't a minute too soon. We took the short drive to John's farm, who I have to say is a really lovely gentleman, Mr P knows him from him coming into the workshop to collect sawdust for use on the farm.  When Mr P mentioned in passing that we were building a coup for chickens and he said he'd happily get some for us from his usual poultry supplier. It was a big help as we are new to hen keeping and I would have been worried about choosing healthy birds. He suggested we get Light Sussex Hens so we took his advice.

We collected the girls, all ready for us in a crate and after a chat and the children trying to catch the lambs in the pen (John said if they could catch one they could take it home, I need not have been alarmed!) we headed for home.

I'm delighted to say they seem very happy in their new home. There was lots of scratching at the earth one hen started taking a dust bath straight away and they've had a go at eating and drinking. The dog even managed to wheedle his way into the run for a sniff, neither party seemed distressed at meeting the other so we're off to a good start! Now they're all safely tucked up in the coup for the night so I'll leave you with some pictures of the latest additions to the family!

Oh the names!! I nearly forgot!! M has called hers Betty (Green ring), L has called hers Delilah (Pink ring) R called his Chicharito (Red ring) & MB called hers Tina (Purple ring)

L - Tina R- Betty (see how clean she is.......)

Betty taking a dust bath. Not so clean now!

Tina - front Chicharito- R & Delilah at the back

Betty, still bathing & Delilah

Tina

Delilah

Chicharito

I look forward to posting about them again soon & letting you know how they're getting on!

The Hen House

I'm so excited, Mr P just called me into the garden to show me the Hen House, it's finished!
To directly quote Mr P, last week he said to me "You know it won't be a palace don't you? It's only going to be made from rough scrap wood." He really should have more faith in himself! True, the Hen House is made from scraps and off-cuts of wood that would usually have ended up in the tip and also true is the only thing we've paid for are some hook and eye catches costing a couple of pounds, but what we did have on our side is the wonderful and talented Mr P! He's priceless.

At the weekend we cleared the back of the garden and Mr P made a start on constructing the house. This past couple of days despite the horrid weather, he's done an amazing job of building something that I think most hens would certainly like to call home!

The Hen House

Their Run goes right behind the big tree with ground perfect for scratching around in

Safe & Sound. All closed up for the night

Opened up for easy access & cleaning

Perches and Nesting boxes

Removable flap for easy egg collection

There's a door next to the house so that we can go into the run, which is actually about twice the size you can see!

Now tell me that's not a palace for hens!! All we need now are the chooks, four Light Sussex ladies, who have already been named by the children and should be arriving to their new pad on Thursday.
Isn't it amazing what some people can do with things that other people throw away. I'm so proud of my Mr P, he's worked so hard and done a fantastic job.

NB Mr P has, quite rightly asked that I give acknowledgement to The Syders Blog Post as it was the main source of inspiration for our own thrifty chicken house. Many thanks Mama and Papa Syder xxx

Birthday Weekend

This weekend was Mr P's birthday, yesterday to be precise. The weather was cooler than it has been, but still nice for the time of year so we all got out in the garden. We're getting prepared for the arrival of our new hens later this week (fingers crossed). When we first moved up, Bruno was in his 'Houdini' stage and regularly escaped from the garden so we completely blocked off the back and it's stayed that way ever since. Removing the boarding and cutting back the trees behind have added about 5-6 feet to the length of our garden and it's in this space that we will be putting the hen house. It's shady spot under the enormous tree that grows at the end of our garden and the ground underneath seems to have done very well by being left to nature. Hopefully it will be perfect for the hens to scratch around in.

There was quite a lot of dried up old wood so we decided to have a small bonfire. It certainly took the chill out of the air and the children went off to the corner shop in search of marshmallows.

Toasted Marshmallows on our camp fire

It was lovely all being out in the garden, everyone was helping in their own way and Mr P was working incredibly hard as we had to remove a 2 metre concrete post that turned out to be buried a metre into the ground making it 3 metres of concrete that weighed a ton! The time went so quickly and it was only when I popped back into the house that I realised it was close to 8pm and none of us had eaten since lunch, apart from the marshmallows! Time flies as the saying goes.

Yesterday we'd planned a visit to Jodrell Bank for Mr P's birthday. His parents came along too and the weather was lovely despite the cool breeze.

The Lovell Telescope

A printout of readings being taken by the telescope

Interactive touch-screen learning

Dinner after a lovely day

We headed back to Mr P's parents after a nice meal to round off the day.
I'd made some Rolo Cupcakes for Mr P's birthday. They were similar to the Snickers Cupcakes I'd made for him before but instead of peanut butter in the icing I used dulce de leche in the butter cream & topped them off with a Rolo.

So all in all we had a lovely weekend and best of all it doesn't end there. The children are on Easter holidays and Mr P is off with us all week, so there are plenty more adventures to come I'm sure.