So we adopted our girls in April and they bring us so much joy, eggs and beautiful fertiliser !!!!
Changing up the boredom busters for the girls, next level 🤣🐓😍👊
I hang treats off the fence for the Chooks , but added a few bamboo stakes and hooks to make it even more interesting for the girls. They do free range in the afternoons but during the day in the run they need to be stimulated 🐓🥰
Clever idea @mich1972! I'm sure they'll happily peck away for hours on those.
Great stuff.
Mitchell
We have expanded the Chook Run and the Girls have more room to free range. We had them on the lawn as well but moved them into the garden as we did not want them to ruin the lawn.
We have added a basic gate made from the Reo Mesh and star pickets and wire. Then we open it up in the afternoons for the girls to work the soil 🐓🐓
Chook heaven @mich1972. Many thanks for the update. I'm sure the girl's happiness is reflected in the quality of their eggs.
Jason
Love the combinations that you use - what is Snoozle? Do you grow your wormwood in a particular position? Mine have not grown from seedlings and would love them to get bigger!How do you find the charcoal ... that's a new one for me and I've had my girls for a couple of years. I don't use diamanthus earth as the powder can get into their respiratory tract and cause illness. I use drops (made up of essential oils) that I manage the mites with.
Hi @Caron Thank You. We love our girls !!! Snoozle is pine wood shavings I buy from our stock feeders and we use it for their nesting in the Coop . Yes grow our own Wormwood it’s a great stinky shrub that I chop up and add the the coop. I grow it in a sunny position. The charcoal is great and does help. I don’t use DE as you have to be careful with respiratory problems with the girls and yourself !!!
Thanks for the tips - aaah yes I’ve used wood shavings, I currently use river sand on the floor of my coop - they love it, it hides odour and great in the wet weather we currently have in Qld as it dries quickly ...thanks for sharing, I’ve found owning the girls is always a learning curve and it’s great to share info with / learn from other chicken people!
Well I might try some river sand !!!!!!!! 😊😊
I've not read of charcoal before being used, I might need to look into it.
The house we bought had a caged dog run, so I turned that into a chicken Run with a coop and run for them. I have a cracked blue kiddy pool with sand for dust baths that they love, and use the deep litter method. An inch of builders sand, pine bark, saw dust, hay, they love getting a fresh mini bale of hay.
They also go I to our veggie garden a few times a week to help clean up the weeds as we only grew lettuce, beetroot, and silverbeet over winter, so they have a field day with the weeds, they wonder the lawn too and cluck away.
Being winter we went a month with an egg or two a day, but they are back to three eggs a day, so one each.
We also have a bought coop that had three pekins till two disappeared when we were away overnight, but getting two four month old aracuna's tomorrow to join little miss as the Hyline girls pick on her, hopefully by spring we have some bright blue eggs in the mix! Our four youngest kids have autism and they love the chickens
Coop Life 🐓 Been adding chopped up Lavender to the coop to freshen up and also help as a natural insect repellent !!
Coop Life !!!!! Time too pull out perches from the Coop and replace with new ones.
Scraped out the flooring, cleaned up the concrete slabs.
Added fresh new pine shavings for the floor and nesting, along with straw. Added Charcoal to help deodorise.
Added heaps of chopped up Wormwood to help repel mites and lice.
It is important to keep up your hygiene practices in the Chicken Coop and look after your Chooks.
Hi @mich1972
Thank you so much for the Chook update! It's great to see that they are doing well. Nothing like a bit of a refresh to keep the chooks happy.
Eric
Great idea with the lavender @mich1972!
I am loving the shot of the freshened up flooring with the very happy egg next to it.
Katie
Thank you @EricL
I am sure there are a lot of Workshop friends here that have chickens or are thinking about keeping them. Also , the Charcoal works a treat for deodorising and absorbing smell and also good for the girls to eat for tummy health 😊
Thank You @KatieC
You need to keep it clean regularly. That egg is a fake as we put it in the nest when we first rescued our girls so it encouraged them to lay in there 😃
Hi Workshop friends !! Coop Life 😊
We have 4 new additions to our family
2 x Andalusians 5 months old
2 x Sussex 5 months old
Still high temperatures daily here in Perth so oh our main focus is keeping the girls hydrated and safe from the hot weather. Thankfully they have plenty of shade. 😊
Hi @mich1972,
Your girls are just GORGEOUS! They look very happy in their new home.
Do you think you'll need to expand your coop soon?
unfortunately 6 girls are the limit 😆 gosh we would love more. Keeping backyard chickens isn’t just about collecting eggs, they are great pets and part of the family. They truly make us happy 😃 🐓🐓🐓
Yes our Chooks are spoilt ! I planted up a large Hanging Basket full of Spinach, Silverbeet, Mizuna , Lettuce, Rocket. Hung it up on the Mulberry branch in the Chook Run. High enough that they have to stretch out to eat the Greens. another Boredom Buster for our Backyard Chickens.
Good morning Workshop Community Friends. Here in Perth the days are getting warmer and longer sunlight hours. Our beautiful girls are starting to lay eggs again !! They have had a nice winter break 😆 Oh to have fresh eggs again. It’s also time to give the Coop a good cleaning. I will be removing all the old straw bedding , adding that to the garden. Sweeping it out, ect. Adding new straw, along with plenty of Wormwood ( repels mites and fleas ). I like to clean the Coop regularly, but after Winter and the extra bedding that’s in there, it needs a really good deep cleaning. It’s important to keep your Chicken Coop clean for the girls.
Thanks for the update, @mich1972! I trust the girls will enjoy a fresh spring cleaning of their coop. Do post some pictures when you are done.
I've recently cleared out a large portion of my property that could easily home a few chickens and a large run. I'm very tempted to consider the idea. I'm sure my young children would love them. My two-year-old son adores any farm animal and farm work. I recently took them to a working hobby farm that's open to the public, and he was in his element.
Will share when it’s done @MitchellMc I’m going to the Stockfeeders tomorrow to pick up more straw. Oh I hope you add Chickens to your family , your kids will definitely enjoy them 😃🐓🐓
Nice @mich1972
I have my back yard divided into 2 with a chicken wire fence to keep the dog on one side.
6 girls on the left hand side with their own coop.
3 girls in the dog side (she leaves them alone) with their own coop.
1 girl lives in my enclosed orchard alone, as she's small and the dog thinks she's a toy. Ugh! She does great stripping the orchard of grass and weeds and any soil living bugs.
I was never a fan of chickens until 5 years ago when illness stopped me working and staying at home and now they are my little mates.
All but the orchard girl free range in the yards and get locked up at night as we border a forest and national park and foxes are active here.
I cut fresh Rosemary and put it in the coops and nesting boxes and it seems to keep away things like mites. Smells nice too.
Two of the girls continued to lay this Winter, which was a bonus. I freeze excess eggs in batches of 4 eggs whished for the non laying season, so it was nice to have a trickle of fresh ones this Winter.
Cleaning the coops could feel like work, but I always look forward to adding it to my compost and I make a wicked chook poo tea for the garden too.
@MitchellMc they are fun, specially if you have kids and not much work to look after really. Can't complain about fresh eggs too. The yolks are so bright!
Good morning @Aussie-Garden thats awesome !!!! Would love to see photos of your girls and their chicken run. Hopefully you are all well and enjoying your Garden 😃🐓🌿
Love the update! I lost most of my girls last year after the floods due to tumours. I havent had the heart to adopt any more. Currently getting the house ready to sell and once relocated start again. Love the posts!! For now will live my chicken life through here 🐓🐓🐓
I'm so sorry to hear that @Caron. That must have been a very unpleasant experience.
Glad to see you are living vicariously through our member's posts.
Awesome idea @MitchellMc @mich1972 @Caron @KatieC @Aussie-Garden My eldest daughter has chickens free roaming and we, my (intellectually disabled) daughter would love to do the same. My younger daughter is pushing me to get some and the way the price of eggs just keeps going up & up I am considering the idea.
BUT and here's the big buts I don't have a lot of room left here, as well as having small yappy dogs. I have an area at the back of our pool yard. It's a very old pool and wondered if this area would be suitable for chickens? The yard is fenced off from the dogs, but they could still see them and would be barking at them for a while till they got used to the.. (we hope)
BUT
1) how or would the chicken deal with barking dogs for a while till the dogs got used to them? and settled down?
2) would the chickens be okay in the same yard with an inground salt water pool?
3) the pool yard is beside the small veggie garden, is that a good idea as they could possibly get in to the vegies
4) the yard it's self, is over 12mts x 6mt approx. of course most of that is pool and behind and along the back fence are fruit trees.
Years ago we hand silkies and they pottered around the yard happy as - but we didn't have dogs then. So this is a big concern, BUT is it just unrealistic?
Thanks for any advice folks..
This Oldgal
@mich1972
So enjoyed reading about your feathered children.. Such joy..
Thank you for sharing..
This oldgal
@Caron
Sorry to read of your loss. Very sad.. the floods certainly had a huge impact on so many..
I would dearly love to do the same. If not just for me but my special needs daughter and young grandchildren.. More so if we handled them lots to keep them nice and tame..
I hope in time you are able to get another brood happening..
this Oldgal
G'day @Old-gal24
Hmmm, interesting as the dogs complicate things a little.
1) I would assume the chickens s would move away from the fence with barking dogs and ignore them, but it would worry me that it is stressing them out.
I don't know if you can obscure the view with old sheets or something?
2) I would imagine that the chickens could flap and fly their way out of the water if they fell in. My girls will flap and fly up onto things, but I've not seen them in water though. Maybe have a couple of things floating for them to reach safety? YouTube might have videos to check on chickens with water/pools. There will be lots of poop around the pool to deal with.
3) My girls free range around lots of veggie beds, but I use chicken wire or the white fruit tree netting either as a border about waist high or over the top of my beds. Anything that grows near the fencing or nets, usually gets pecked and eaten. No biggie as it's usually outer leaves.
4) I have 1 chicken in an enclosed orchard and she keeps all the grass and weeds down under the fruit trees, it's great! Maybe they'll do the same with your fruit trees. Without seeing the yard, I'd imagine that they'd do ok in that area, but not too many. People keep them in smaller spaces with less ability to move around.
I'm not sure what you can do without seeing it all, but good luck and they are such good companions and the eggs are always a bonus!
- Daz.
