Here Come the girls

Here are our 3 lovely ladies.

let me introduce you to;

Jordan

Gwen

Lola

this is me, with Lola the Hen, and Emily.

Here is Robert with Gwen the hen.

cluck cluck

Here is emily trying to coax them out of their hen house.

The Hens spent their first day in the chichen shed. By the next day they had ventured outside, and were loving scratching the grass, and eating the little bugs they had found. Today it has rained so they spent most of the day inside. Come evening, we lock them away to make sure they are safe.

sssssshhhhh they are sleeping

At last the day has come, when the chicken shed is finally completed, and best of all 3 little ladies turned up.  

The breed is called Lomans.  they are a light brown colour with somespeckled white feathers.  We have some namesto call them, but as they were settling in for the night we wanted to let them rest.  they seem a little bemsed at the moment, but imsure they will be sparky come morning, and then they can have their first try living outside. I cant wait.

Facts i hav found out about lomans

Loman will lay in reasonably large quantities for most of the year. They are also good choices to start with as they are low-maintenance birds.

hybrid hens are 15+ weeks old, generally they will begin to lay at approx 20 weeks

They will lay around 250 eggs each in their first year.

They can last about 5 years.

they are bread so they are quiet.

From15-20 weeks is the best time to tame them.

more facts ill pass on as i learn them

Are we there yet?

the question I am asking. We hoped we could have the chickens this weekend, but the weather has let us down, and next weekend will be filled with the final construction of the chicken shed.

To keep me motivated i just need to look back at what we have achieved so far.

Here are the nesting boxes, e made a hinge ready to collect our fresh eggs.

This is the front view of the nesting boxes with the perch in front.

Outside the shed is all painted, and the chicken run has been built.

Please feel free to admire.

It looks finished you say, well, the list of jobs to do are:-

• Flatten the land so the run is level
• remove the nettles
• make opening in shed, and a door to open and close
• paint the run
• paint the wood inside the shed
• fill the gaps under the shed

The jobs only look small, but they are time consuming, so unless we have good weather this week, it looks like our chickens will be with us the weekend of 05 September.

Rain rain go away

Its been non stop raining.  How can you paint in the rain?  Lets hope for a sunny weekend so we can get this party started.

Naming ceremony

The weather let us down this evening. The wettest august on record. Im not surprised to be honest.

So we came to talking as some one mentioned that surely we shouldnt be allowed to keep chickens as they are classed as livestock. Well sunshine the message is, they are pets. They will have names, and you certainly do not eat your pets. Laying eggs is just the added brucey bonus. So what do we call our chickens? Any suggestions?

Celebrities are popular with jordan, Kylie and Shakira coming tops. Sci fi has also been mentioned such as Tosh, Rose and Cordelia. We would love Emily to pick some names, but she only knows the words Baa baa, yes , and juice. Maybe we have to wait and see some characteristics they have before we name them. Any suggestions for names greatly appreciated.

You can hire this outfitonly £30 may be we could have this for our naming ceremony.                                                

  

The plans on paper

So here is the wood.

The inside of the chicken shed

the outdoor workshop

The beginnings of the nesting box

Half way House

Well its now the end of the weekend, and our big idea was to be finished all painted and ready to receive the chickens.  Sadly this is not the case, as i have been a bit too ambitious with my sizes.

Today we completed the morrocan themed nesting box.  It has a hinged lid so egg collection will be easy.  Next up we built a lovely perch.  These birds are going to love it.  The door was hung on the inside of the shed, so no chucks can now escape.

The grand design was the chicken run.  Its massive if going by Hughs idea that you can house 16 battery hens a square meter that mean we can get 64 chickens in easily.  

Our Run is big, its going to have top loading, and side loading doors, and get on this we made a little hole in the top as i have a spare parasol for them so they don't get too wet or windy. The chicken wire is on the sides, and that is a job in itself.  I'm not the best hammerer, and its more like miss 2 hit 1.  We thought we would have had it all completed but alas we had to finish the day and out our tools away.  Its a bank holiday weekend next week tho so lets go full steam ahead and see what we can make, we have the task of painting everything too.  

The drinkers and waterers are on ordered. The food and grit has arrived, and we ordered a small bag of mite powder from ebay.  Can you believe they sell it there. Its better to have it in than not at all or waiting 4 days for an order from the pet shop.  

Emily had eggy bread again today, ready for our diet of protein.

Id show you some more pictures if i knew how to work it, so mabey next time. On our update.

How much is wood?

So today was the day we took our little drawings and sketchings for our chicken house to the timber yard.The man was very helpful, and no wonder when he said £150....... for some wood and a bit of chicken wire.  Admitedly the coop is 4 times bigger than the norm, and it is our little good life dream, so we paid up, and filled both our cars with our wood.

We went to my dads, and he had dismantled his shed already for us, and we walked back to our house with even more wood.  

The neighbours must think we are trying to cage a gorilla rather than a few small chicks.

So where do we start, well, the holes in the shed needed filling, and some rotten wood replacing.  Half the shed was then painted, then we had a break for lunch.

The afternoon came and it was time to be creative.  The frame from my dads shed was put in first as a start.  A few batons, a few nails, and wayhay its a start.Next up, a nest box.  Robert aka Jesus did a stirling start to this, his idea is also to make the front look like some Morroccan hideaway with arch cut outs.  get on him.  Then the rain came, and although we were working undercover under the arbour, it was time to down tools for the day.

Hopefully tomorrow we will have the same momentum and imagination to rock out a lovely chicken shed.

Welcome

Hello,

and welcome to my blog.  Well what is the big idea?  The idea has been rattling around for a while,that one day i could be the good life and live of the land.  What finalised my decision was everything is on the up, food, petrol, energy bills, the credit crunch is here to bite us, so what better way to start than to you guessed it have a few hens to have fresh free range eggs everyday.  Eventually id like to branch out and grow veg, but one step at a time, and its probably a crazy step to begin with, but you have to start some where.

My family used to have chickens when i was a little girl, and that was the norm.  Now the little Hens are making a comeback with us townies.  I want to pass on the excitement to my little girl as you wake each morning to count and collect your fresh eggs for breakfast.

You cant just get hens, like you can with say a cat, there are a few things you need to plan, for starters they need a house, food, drinking bottles, everything has to be rodent proof, mite free, and fox proof.

Since making the decision to go GLI that's the good life initiative, we have been busy.  a new shed was needed so the old shed could be cleared out, and this then turned into the chicken shed.  A new flagged area was made, the new shed was delivered, and the old shed is now empty.  We are making the house for them ourselves.  We have done several diy projects, and feel confident we can make a good home for them.  

Today the food has been ordered for them, some corn , I hope they like it, also some mite powder, i don't want them to get sick, and some grit.  yes that's right Grit, as i have learned hens have no teeth and therefore need something coarse to help break their food down.

On speaking to various people about my GLi, it turns out my dad knows  a man, yes that's right, and he raises chickens to go and live in a battery farm.  This said man has some chickens ready in 3 - 4 weeks, and the satisfying thing is i would be rescuing around 3 of them from a life of battery hell. I have no idea their colour or breed as of yet, but i am imagining they look like this:

My dad says the way they will be fed and cared for with a new warm home, and lovely corn,he cant wait to eat them, i told him to back off my chucks.

We have a busy weekend ahead as we build our coop.

The designs are on paper, here we go its good luck to the good life initiative 2008.