Crash course in chook keeping please

[Nic]

Hi all,

I know nothing about chooks, but vendor of our new house is leaving 5 with the house. Happy to keep them, but need to brush up (by that I mean learn anything!) about chickens.

Can anyone recommend a good book?

They are totally free range at the moment & not very well cared for & living on the floor of a scrap filled garage, so tips for immediate housing & any initial checks we should be doing greatly received.

 

[Nudibranch]

Poor chickens, but well done you for taking them on. Chickens - the essential guide by Suzie Baldwin is fairly comprehensive and easy reading. Can you catch them? Check eyes, ears, beaks and bums, also have a look between their feathers. Are they laying at the moment? Any idea of breed? Can you section part of the garage off temporarily with netting or similar? If so I'd install a temporary perch or two, and an old fruit box with a bit of straw for a nestbox. Or a lot of farm stores sell hen houses. Just avoid the flimsy types you see in garden centres and pet shops, they look pretty but would probably fall to bits within 6 months! Easybed makes good litter. They should be fine on ordinary layers pellets, I give mine a feed of mixed corn in the evening also (good bribery for getting them in their pen). They need grit and a good sized water container. Otherwise they are pretty easy to keep. If you find any sign of red mite (check perches at night) you can easily treat them with a spray.

 

[Nic]

Thanks for the reply, I'll get that one ordered.

No idea if they can be caught yet, we get the keys next week, but they weren't bothered by us in the slightest. No clue on breed, but think they are different breeds. One was a sort of speckled black & some normal chicken red (sorry, shall learn terms!)

They won't be able to stay in the garage as it is a health hazard & will be cleaned out straight away. We'll get them a wooden coop & run to keep them safely out of harms way (by harm I mean terrier, moving lorry & digger!)

 

[Honey08]

The Right Way to Keep Chickens by Virginia Shirt is a good book, as is Beginners Guide to Chickens by Lee Faber. But for quicker advice, The British Hens Welfare Trust have a lot of info on their website that I found really useful when we got our hens (some of it is geared to ex-batts). www.bhwt.co.uk. Pets at home also have free leaflets on chicken care.

When did we stop saying hens in this country and start saying chickens!?

 

[Nic]

Thanks Honey, I'm Scottish so they've always been Chooks!

 

[Adopter]

When we moved to our house a kind neighbour though it a good idea to give us some batams. We knew nothing about keeping them, but they did survive and even breed.
We used an old garden shed to keep them in until we could do better.

Now I have a super building put up by my OH which has a chicken pen, goose pen, hay store and feed store. The base and walls have blocks up to three rows, but the rest is wooden.

It was a real advantage last winter to have them in a building where I could work under cover sorting them out, stand upright and not have water frozen all the time.

What I am trying to say is you do not need a bespoke hen house, you can adapt other wooden sheds easily!