Yesterday, as soon as we heard about the Avian Influenza Prevention Zone being implemented in England, I started to put into place the processes that we have planned for since the end of the last 'lockdown'. I grabbed my camera and made a video of our action plan and what we are doing on our little smallholding because although we live in Wales, we are close to the border and I expect the Welsh government to follow suit before too long (as they did last year). I made a couple of errors in my video and the guidance is that poultry keepers that have over 500 birds have to take additional measures, NOT the much higher figure that I give in the video. Our action plan we hope complies to the rules for those with less than 500 birds. Last year there seemed to be a great deal of confusion about whether the Prevention Zone applied to backyard poultry keepers or those with just a few pets. This year DEFRA have been much clearer in their instructions and state that it applies to all poultry owners whether kept as pets or livestock. So far, (as at midday 19th January 2018) there is not a complete lockdown, there are increased biosecurity measures needed, but as I read the guidance of what we need to do, all areas to which birds have access must be enclosed by netting to prevent contact with wild birds - so this surely must include netting overhead or the wild birds could just fly into the poultry areas. We have spent the year with the chicken pens looking increasingly like a scene from Glastonbury festival, with tented covers billowing around in the wind, but I am comfortable that their areas will be secure enough for them to be able to have some access to outside even should a total lockdown be announced. The pens have been covered from above for a while now. For full information about the AI Prevention Zone and the latest situation, see DEFRA Prevention Zone information https://www.gov.uk/guidance/avian-influenza-bird-flu#prevention-zone
The Welsh Government have just posted this statement to their site - no prevention zone at the moment. http://gov.wales/topics/environmentcountryside/ahw/disease/avianflu/?lang=en But as we live so close to England I'm going to work on the basis that wild birds don't actually know about the border between the two countries and continue to get everything covered up.
I'm rather sad to see us have to use the covered runs and all the other biosecurity measures, I had hoped that this year we would get to spring and think 'well all of that hard work was a waste of time', as it turns out it wasn't wasted time, it was work well done. As Christmas came and went and there was no sign of bird flu in Britain I became increasingly cheerful that our bird population were not going to be hit by it. Anyway, I think it's time for a cuppa!
Hooray, DEFRA have made an announcement about what will happen from 28th February with regard to poultry being kept inside and under cover. For England they have published an interactive map which allows us to look at whether our poultry are being kept in lower risk areas or higher risk areas. Once we know which area we are in, we can then read their guidelines about what we need to do from 1st March onwards. If you are in England, click here for the interactive map In Wales, where we live, poultry keepers will be required to complete a self-assessment of biosecurity measures on their premises and we will need to keep our birds separated from wild birds until the end of April. The mandatory self-assessment form can be found here So for us this means that I need to look again at whether the disinfectant that we have in various spots around the smallholding need moving, whether we need additional foot dips, hand disinfectant bottles etc. At the start of the lockdown I put a bale of straw on the ground outside our front gate and soaked it with Virkon S, a DEFRA approved disinfectant and we have foot dip bowls outside each of the chicken and duck housing. We have the birds in their condo and palace and the ducks in their run, covered and inaccessible by wild birds and some of the birds have covered runs to give them access to grass. All this will continue, but we really need to create some more covered pens on the grass so that the birds can access to more fresh air and to be able to eat some grass, scratch around in the soil and get a better variety in their diet.
The difference that having access to grass makes has been surprising. I took this photo while cooking breakfast this morning. The egg on the left is from the condo and covered run where the girls have had no access to grass since 6th December and the egg on the right is from the chicken palace where the birds have had access to some grass (although they razed it to the ground fairly quickly and since then they've only had little green shoots as the grass has regrown). The eggs from the birds that haven't had grass are decidedly watery in texture and the yolks are much lighter in colour and less rich. Luckily I have had areas of grass covered to protect it from wild bird poop for some time, so I will be able to use these areas for the girls (and boys) to forage on. I learnt yesterday from reading the self-assessment form that the N5H8 Avian Flu strain can remain active in wild bird poop for up to 50 days, so only grass that has been covered since the start of January will be okay to use immediately. I wish that this had been more widely advertised earlier during lockdown, I could have covered more grass as early as December if I had known that the grass would need to be covered for so long to ensure it's safety for the birds. Still, it is what it is and we know for next year and will cover areas of grass from early October onwards so that if a lockdown happens (and I suspect it will) at the end of 2017, we will be prepared for it and the birds won't have such a prolonged period in a restricted space.
Mr J and I have started to create a permanent walkway from the chicken palace towards one of the chicken fields. Working on the basis that protecting the birds overhead all year round may become the way forward for us, we are making another walkway, much like the one we created from the stable (read about it here). Unlike the previous walkway, this one is more or less free-standing, it is fixed to the palace wall at one end but there isn't a nice long supportive side wall to attach it to, so we will have to find an alternative way to ensure it doesn't get knocked down by the wind that whistles across this site. We will also need to build several gates into this new walkway as it will pass across our natural pathway from the Food Forest to the chicken's fields. Now gates are not our strong point, so I think I will probably buy either a tall pre-made gate or use pre-made poultry pen panels and strap them together with cable ties to make a gate as I have done on the chicken palace front door. Poultry health update Thankfully all of our birds have remained healthy throughout the lockdown period. The young Jersey Giant chicks that hatched in November have never been out on grass, so I am looking forward to moving them into the chicken palace with the other Jersey Giants and seeing them experience grass for the first time. The seven chicks that hatched at the end of January are growing rapidly and all look very healthy. One of them (an Appenzeller Spitxhauben) had splayed legs, but I took advice from folks in an online poultry support community and treated the problem which now seems to be completely corrected. The next batch of chicks are currently in the incubator and are due to hatch in a week's time. These eggs are a mixture of white Jersey Giants, Silver Laced Wyandottes and eggs from the girls in the chicken palace. They may be white Jersey Giants, they may be Australorp (although I doubt it as I don't think the males were active until very recently), they may be a cross between White and the Australorp girls or White and Dieselette (who is hybrid cross with some bantam genes). Dieselette is only in the chicken palace as she is the best friend of one of the Australorp girls and when I tried separating them, they both became impressive escape artists and found their way back to each other. Anyway, it means that we will have some chicks that we are sure of their breed and others that will be a surprise. The ducks are healthy although very obviously highly frustrated at being confined to their covered pen. Mr J and I will be digging a pond and then covering it with a netted pen so that next time they are confined we can at least offer them access to a pond that we are confident has had no wild bird poop land in it. To date it is still only Mrs Warne that is laying eggs, she goes through phases of laying daily and then a week or two of laying every other day. We are still waiting for the young ducks to start laying eggs, I imagine that they will start in the next month. Anyway, as I type it sounds as though there may be a break in the rain, so I'm heading out to collect any eggs that have been laid and of course, as I will have to walk past the kettle, I was also make a cuppa.
If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.
I've been inspired by so many people over the years and most recently by a bunch of homesteaders and smallholders via the wonderful magic of the internet. Early in 2016 I started searching online for advice, information and inspiration and found that there are several (quite a lot actually) folks who share their daily working practices, knowledge and hard-learnt lessons online via blogs, websites and vlogs. We had already decided on the direction and way that we wanted our smallholding to work, to use no artificial chemicals, fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides etc., to raise as much of our own food as possible and to keep chickens and ducks for their eggs. Raising meat birds came as a slightly later decision and as a natural progression of the way we were living. I made so many mistakes in those early months, I followed completely correct advice and ideas that I had seen online from American vloggers, only to discover little by little that many of those practices are not allowed in the UK. So I thought it may be interesting and perhaps, useful to look at some of the differences in the practices of keeping chickens between the UK and USA as I understand them. Please feel free to comment below if I am mistaken about any of these differences, it would be interesting to learn more. Registering your birds. In the UK we have to register our premises and also our flocks as soon as we have 50 birds, that's not just chickens but all the poultry we keep. When we started keeping chickens I couldn't imagine how we would ever have that many birds, but it doesn't take long to build up to 49 birds, particularly if you are keeping meat birds and hatching chicks and ducklings. I don't know whether you have to register your premises and flocks in USA, perhaps someone could comment and let me know. Feeding the birds. In UK we cannot feed kitchen scraps to poultry. It is fine to feed fruit and vegetables from the garden to our birds, but not if they have passed through a domestic or commercial kitchen before being given to the birds. Here's the APHA (Animal and Plant Health Agency) information about kitchen scraps. This also means that we shouldn't feed crushed eggshells back to our birds. So in our house, cooked food goes into a biodegradable bag (and then plastic bin) and is taken away weekly by the local authority services. As I understand it, the cooked food is sent to processing plants for Anaerobic Digestion producing Biogas which is used as a power source or In Vessel Composting which produces a soil conditioner. Thus reducing land-fill and reducing the amount of fossil fuels required for power. This great little animation explains the processes.
Because we have a good composting system in our garden, we put all of our raw fruit and vegetable kitchen scraps onto a compost heap. Likewise, we can't let our birds scratch through and eat any compost heaps that have kitchen scraps put into them. So I keep one or two heaps that have kitchen scraps in them which the birds are not allowed to access.
The other compost heaps have nothing that has been in the kitchen and the birds have access to these (usually). We make these heaps inside a ring of straw bales - on our smallholding we call these heaps the Circles of Love.
Washing & storing eggs. In UK (and the rest of Europe) eggs are not washed and are not refrigerated. There is a protective layer on eggs that prevents bacteria from entering the shell, keeping them safe to eat for some time (weeks!). Washing eggs removes that protective layer and means that those eggs would need to be kept cool to stop the bacteria from forming. So our eggs are collected and put into boxes and kept at room temperature. If for any reason eggs do get refrigerated, they need to be kept that way because if they then warm up again there is a risk that bacterial growth may start.
Processing meat birds. In UK on smallholdings (homesteads), backyards and small farms we have to dislocate the neck of a bird rather than using only a sharp knife, so the killing cones that make dispatch relatively simple in USA (and other countries) are only useful here to put a bird into after dislocation, to allow them to bleed out. Here are the UK government guidelines for slaughter at home. We can only dispatch a limited number of birds per day (70 birds) and larger, commercial farms have different regulations, which I am not familiar with at all.
The lockdown issue. Since 6th December 2016 all poultry keepers (commercial keepers, smallholders or homesteaders and backyard keepers) in the UK have had to keep their birds under cover, preferably housed, but at the very least completely away from all contact with wild birds. This is because of the threat (and now reality) of Avian Flu H5N8 which has been found in birds as far away as China, India and more recently mainland Europe. Here's DEFRA's latest situation information. In Europe (and the UK is still part of Europe) steps have been taken to try to reduce the spread of H5N8 which has included the mass culling of birds across regions. Here in UK there haven't been many cases of this strain of Avian Flu, but there have been some and the proceedures that follow an outbreak are heartbreaking for the owners of the birds (all birds on the premises are culled immediately upon confirmation of the disease). We are heading towards ten weeks of the birds being in lockdown and the current regulations may or may not be changed on 28th February (the date that DEFRA have given for reassessment of the situation). After that date eggs which have previously been sold as 'Free Range' (which is what I think may be called Pasture Fed or Pasture Raised in USA) will not longer be allowed to carry that label. I understand that the majority of eggs in Europe are now Free Range eggs and so the industry could be devastated if the lockdown continues after a 12 week period as this is the maximum time that birds are allowed to be kept inside in a 12 month period and still be called Free Range. We can only wait and see what happens nearer the 28th February.
So there are a few differences between UK and USA in terms of how we can keep our poultry, but when all is said and done, in my opinion the most important thing that we all have to do (on both sides of the Atlantic) is to keep and treat our birds safely and humanely. Edit - this post is receiving a high volume of views - hooray! Please could you leave a quick comment and let me know where you found the link to my blog and what country you live in, it would be really interesting to see how far and wide it's being read. Thanks!
If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.
Last Monday I spent the afternoon moving some pallets to the edge of the vegetable garden to complete the pallet fence with compost bays. I was very pleased with how nicely it finished off the vegetable garden.
The pallets held down one side of weed suppressing membrane and on Tuesday I moved several barrow loads of wood chippings (from our trees that were taken down last month) to cover the membrane and complete this side of the vegetable garden. It looked splendid and I was very excited to have quite so much space in which to make compost. Late Tuesday afternoon we learnt that Defra had announced a 'Prevention Zone' to protect our poultry from the risk of Avian Flu. It took me quite a while to find out what was needed to be done to comply and the announcements that I saw said it covered England. Mr J and I realised that if Wales didn't have such measures, it very soon would. And Wednesday morning I found the relevant information saying that it applied to Wales and Scotland too. So after careful reading I came to the conclusion that I would need to find a way to keep the birds inside a covered area for the next month at the very least. Reading between the lines, I suspect that this situation may well continue for longer. Our birds are kept in four separate areas, one for each breeding flock and so we needed to create four separate pens for them. What a headache! But, looking for a positive in all this chaos, it has meant that we've had a long hard think about which birds we really value and we've assessed whether we want to keep all the birds or reduce the number of different breeds that we keep. In the end, I decided to put the chickens into two areas and the ducks in their own pen. So armed with strong resolve and somewhat weak body I started to tackle the task. The irony of this announcement coming a few hours before Mr J went back to work for the week didn't pass me by. There is an urgency to getting the birds under cover and so regardless of my body being in the throws of another hashimoto's attack and regardless of having used just about all my energy making the pallet fence, my plan for the rest of the week curled up on the sofa had been scuppered as Mr J works four days a week and he was returning to work on Wednesday morning. It was time for me to dig deep and get on with it!
I started by putting chicken wire around the top section of the stable where up to now it had been open.
The gate was only waist high so that also needed extending to full height. I am so pleased that we have collected so much scrap wood this year, it meant that I could rummage around in the piggery and find suitable pieces of reclaimed timber to use. There are still nails in the wood and I didn't have the strength to lever them out, so I wrapped duct tape around them to protect our hands and act as a warning to be careful handling that section of wood. This week I have wished over and over that we had electric drill/screwdriver (one of those ones with a battery pack so they can be easily used where there is no power supply), because using a manual screwdriver for this kind of task was rather soul destroying. The chickens will still be sleeping in their shed, so I moved their flexible fence to give them a narrow corridor between the shed and stable along which to travel morning and evening. This corridor will then be covered and enclosed to ensure that the chickens are protected from contact with wild birds. I hung their vermin proof feeding station from a beam and placed buckets of water with apple cider vinegar and garlic on to a pallet (so it's less likely to have wood shavings kicked into it.
They don't seem terribly impressed at their sudden confinement. The Cream Legbar girls aren't too bothered as they prefer to be out of the wind and rain, but the boys and the other chickens are looking quite stressed. I am sure that they will settle down, especially once I have the walkway covered and enclosed as they will then have access to at least a small area outside. Mr J and I spent Wednesday evening trying to work out where and how to create a covered area for the Jersey Giants and Australorps. We spent half an hour or so looking at the back piggery, but it's roofing panels have deteriorated significantly over the last year and there are large oil drums of 'we don't know what' that could well be toxic to birds, so we talked about ways to fence off that part of the piggery to allow the birds to use the rest of it. It looked like a nightmare of a job and I was already feeling fairly fragile. Thursday morning I had a lightbulb moment, I had realised how to turn the outbuilding that I've refer to as my garden room into a comfortable place for the black and white birds. I took out the wood, hazel poles, bags of bags, paddling pool and a host of 'stuff' that we had dumped there to be put away once we had somewhere for these things to live. The dry wood I stored in the wood store in the stables and I put everything outside the old barn door (which doesn't open, so I wasn't blocking it). Once clear it became obvious that this would be an ideal chicken palace. So with the drizzle steadily soaking me through I went to the vegetable garden and dismantled the lovely pallet fence that I put up only four days earlier!
I had almost run out of cable ties having used so many to create the fence, so was careful about not waste them, placing all the pallets before actually securing them together.
I used the gate that I'd made by lashing together chicken wire panels which had been between the two chicken fields, but as it wasn't going to be needed for the next month, this seemed the simplest way to make a door. I found the longest piece of wood that we had, but still it wasn't quite long enough to reach the top of the outbuilding, so I created a small base from two pieces of wood which, once bedded into the ground at just the right place, allowed the upright wood to be wedged into place. In this photo you can see that I hadn't quite managed to knock it vertical yet. I put a piece of 2"x1" across the top of the door to stop the door falling out and another length of wood (2"x4") to brace the vertical length. It was still pretty wobbly and needed securing at the top, but I didn't feel well enough to be climbling ladders so I sent a message to the tree surgeon to see if he was free to help me for a short time. As the chicken house is wider than the doorway I needed to move it inside before putting up the second side of pallets. This meant moving the Jersey Giants who, by this time, were looking very stressed at all the change going on. I moved them into the field that Big Red and his girls had been in and Little White continued to crow his stressed and mournful crow while he watched me push his house out of his field and into the outbuilding. I moved the last few pallets into place and was so tired that I started crying as I screwed them into place. I was relieved to hear Mr J's van come along our lane only to realise that it wasn't him, it was our friend the tree surgeon coming to help. There is something about having someone you don't know terribly well arrive, it makes you put on a smile and not show how rotten you are feeling and that is exactly what I did. And it helped to have somebody else there, I felt less overwhelmed by how much still needed to be done. He hopped up his ladder and straightened the vertical post, securing it with a fixing plate that I had ready. Then he stapled chicken wire from the roof downwards across the full width of the outbuilding.
When Mr J got home he carried more bales of wood shavings and chopped rape seed stems (bedding often used for horses) to the outbuilding. I had managed to spread the contents of two below and around the chicken house, but run out of strength to carry enough to cover the whole floor area. The light was fading fast, but there was just enough light to carry the Jersey Giants to their new accommodation and put them in the house for the night. I ached all over and headed inside to start cooking our supper and looked forward to having a long hot soak in a bath. After supper we watched a little television and then I headed to the bathroom. This was going to be the best bath - ever!
Or not. As I turned off the hot water tap, it came away in my hand with water gushing at full flow into the bath. To avoid flooding the bathroom I pulled out the plug. We searched for an isolating valve for the bath, but there wasn't one, so Mr J turned off the water at the mains. Too late I realised that now I had no water in the bath and so that was the end of my hot soaky bath idea. It seemed that this week was just going to throw everything it could at me to make life awkward. I went to bed feeling rather sorry for myself and as I lay there in a cold achy grump I started thinking about just how much worse things could be. Sometimes it's good to give yourself a mental kick in the pants, I pulled myself out of my sorry mood and fell into a deep sleep. On Friday morning before I let the birds out of their house, I fixed the final row of chicken wire into place securing the bottom of it to the pallets and overlapping it by about fifteen inches with the top section put on by the tree surgeon. I secured the overlap in a few places to ensure that the birds wouldn't be able to get out and created a makeshift lock (with baling twine and a hook) for the door. Then I let the birds out to explore their new temporary home.
I moved the Australorps into the new chicken palace, Little White greeted each one by letting them know who is boss. There was a bit of jostling and shoving, but nothing violent, but then if I was a chicken, even one as big as an Australorp cockerel, I don't think I'd take my chances against Little White, he is a very large bird. Then I turned my attention to the ducks. I lifted the flexible netting that has been around one third of the vegetable garden (the short side at the far end of the veg area and along the side by the duck enclosure) and moved it to create a narrow passageway from the duck house into the small enclosure where the ducklings were in the summer. This means that the ducks avoid walking under the trees where wild birds like to sit and deposit their droppings below. The ducks are very upset by all the change, they now have an area about forty feet square, but that will reduce by at least half. Tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon Mr J and I will create a makeshift covered enclosure for the ducks. I have run out of strength to carry any more pallets, so will need to rely on him to move them from the garden to around the duck pond. We have looked at the options of buying an enclosure, which I think will be the answer in the long term, but we need to get the ducks under cover as soon as possible, so a rough framework covered on the outside with chicken wire and covered over the top with a tarp, some corrugated metal panels and a rigid, clear, twin wall plastic panel will have to do. It will keep them safe even if it doesn't look pretty and we will have complied with the Defra order. I have hung a bottle of hand gel on the gate for visitors to use and we've bought an approved disinfectant for a foot dip before we enter the birds' enclosures. Hopefully, we now comply with all the biosecurity measures that we need to. I plan to spend most of next week on the sofa or in bed to recover from the stress and physical strain of the last few days. But before then we have one other event to enjoy. Tomorrow morning we are heading to Bristol for several reasons. Firstly I want to visit my parents' grave because I like to place a Christmas wreath on their grave. Then we are going to a shop to buy a few essentials that we will need in the next couple of weeks. After that we will be heading to collect our two new family members.
Monty (front) and Tabitha are nine years old, their last owner has passed away and we jumped at the opportunity to give them a home. Hopefully they will be happy to curl up on the sofa with me as they get to know us over the next week or so.
- - - - -
If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.
