Pallet fence for the vegetable garden

Back at the start of December I finished creating the pallet fence along one side of the vegetable garden (read about it here).

And just four days later took it apart again to use the pallets to build the front of the chicken palace because the Avian Flu Prevention Zone measures were enforced.

Last Tuesday, we managed to collect some more pallets from the local business that we buy the pallets from and yesterday I decided to rebuild the fence around the vegetable garden.

The weather was glorious yesterday, it was frosty start but the sun threw a deep pink colour across the smallholding making the frost twinkle. After I had done the morning chores and Mr J had gone to work, I carried the pallets to the annual vegetable garden, put them into place ensuring that I had a pallet at right angles to the fence between each fence pallet and tied them together. 

To go around a corkscrew willow tree that is slap bang in the middle of the fence line, I used a double length pallet so that I didn't need to put a cross brace where the tree is planted.

I was so pleased to have some fresh air and sunshine that when I went back inside I opened the patio door and the ground floor windows to air the house. 

To celebrate the winter sunshine and that so many of the chickens have come into lay, either back into lay or laying for the first time, I decided to have an egg salad for lunch. Both the smaller chickens that we hatched at the end of July last year that are a cross between the bantam cockerel we had for a short while and either Jack or Diesel (I can't remember which of them) have started laying this week. Two of the Jersey Giant girls have started laying, one of the Australorp chickens (we call her Mrs O) has been laying for around two weeks. A couple of the Cream Legbar girls starting laying again last week, which is fabulous as I had got to the point of thinking that they would never lay again. So we are now collecting around 9 - 12 eggs a day and I expect this to rise as the light levels increase and the days get longer.

I get a huge amount of satisfaction from being able to go to the garden and gather food for our meals and yesterday while a couple of eggs were cooking, I collected some salad leaves from the greenhouse and some lamb's lettuce (corn salad) and spring onions from the vegetable garden.

The rest of the day I was busied myself with cleaning out the chicken house in the field (that is currently home to our meat bird). I was somewhat alarmed to discover that there is red mite in the house, so I cleaned it out as much as I could and sprinkled diatomaceous earth (DE) all around the corners, the perch supports and all the usual hiding spots for red mite. After I had put fresh sawdust in the henhouse, I sprinkled some more DE over the sawdust in the areas that I know the bird sits. Hopefully that will prevent him being bitten by the mites and it will kill them off. Once he has been dispatched, Mr J and I will take the house apart and treat all of the wood including in the joint sections that I can't reach by puffing and sprinkling the DE while the house it together.

Having dealt with the red mite situation as much as I can right now, I went inside, peeled off my outer clothing and put it straight into the washing machine so that I didn't transfer the mite from the house in the field to the other henhouses. I have seen no evidence of mite in the other houses, so wanted to take as many precautions as possible to prevent the spread.

Clean clothing on, I headed back outside just in time to greet our friend the tree surgeon who had arrived with a large trailer load of wood chippings. These comprise mostly of hedging plants and have a fairly high leylandii content, so I don't want that to go onto the garden soil, but these chippings are ideal for use on the pathways in the vegetable garden. The pathways have a weed suppressing membrane over the ground and chippings over the membrane. The chippings will break down over the next couple of years and then I will add it to the soil and then I can put down new chippings on the pathways.

This arrangement with the tree surgeon seems ideal. For his customers who want the waste wood cleared away from their property, he needs to either store the chippings, take them to a tip (which has a cost implication for him) or he can deliver them to someone who can make use of them (me!). I now have a long term source of wood chippings and once the pathways are all covered, I can leave the heaps of chippings in situ for a year or so to let it break down before adding it to the garden. When he delivers chippings that do not have a leylandii in them I can make wood chip heaps in the chicken fields and let them scratch through the chippings (which they love to do), turning them (which they are very good at doing), adding their manure (which they do naturally) and helping it to break down quickly.

It was a very satisfying day and exhausted, I fell asleep on the sofa by 9pm. If you'd like to see my day on today's vlog you can find it here or click on the video below.

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Chicken walkway Part 2

Having made a start on the new chicken walkway on Friday, (read about it here) we spent part of the weekend and most of Monday working on it too.

For the first time since we moved here I spotted a ship or perhaps it is a boat, whichever it is, it was a vessel on the River Severn beneath the Second Severn Crossing. Little events like this are important to me, I find a huge amount of pleasure in just enjoying the moment.

 Late on Sunday afternoon, after the chickens had been locked safely into their houses, I 
strengthened the door to the chicken palace. It is made from three pre-fabricated panels that I have strapped together with cable ties. I've now added 2x1 wood along each side to hold panels rigid and to give me something to which I can attach hinges. 

Mr J continued to knock upright posts into the ground and then we fixed cross bars and roof supports to them. The walkway/run measures 8.25m long and 2.25m wide, it's a bit of a beast. We had to work our way around the pallet on the floor as it protects a drain access (man hole type thing) which doesn't have a metal cover on it, just a piece of rotting wood over it and the rotting pallet over that. One of my tasks this week is to find a suitable metal cover for the drain access.

Once we'd got all the posts into the ground and the horizontal bars and roof supports, Mr J cut the excess off the top of the posts., 

While he cut the uprights, I cut two lengths of chicken wire and used cable ties to join them to create one large sheet of chicken wire to cover the roof area.

We wrestled the chicken wire roof into place and secured it with a few strategically placed cable ties. It took a bit of jiggling around and more than several choice phrases, but it is now at least over the roof struts ready to be fully secured into place.

Then I stapled chicken wire around the lower part of the run, it continues across the ground by about 40cms which will help to secure the chicken wire to the ground and hopefully deter any digging predators.

Mr J then put together a door frame and I covered it with 1/4 inch wire mesh.

Today I have continued to secure the roofing wire to the beams, trying to pull the tension across the width as I go. I then attached some clear plastic and windbreak fabric to the upper section of the side. I didn't have enough of either material to complete the job, but that will do until I buy some more windbreak fabric. I will fix chicken wire to the outside of the upper section too, but on a day that is less rainy.

So we still need to hang the door and put the scaffold netting over the top of it, but it's almost completed. The girls have been very curious about what we are doing and I'm looking forward to being able to let them out to play in it.

Of course I have overdone it this week and Mr J is back to work tomorrow after his first well-earned week of holiday from work since he began his job at the start of August. Finishing the walkway may have to wait a few days while I rest and recuperate. 

I'll start that process by putting the kettle on and making a cuppa!

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How Chicken Maths works

So what exactly is Chicken Maths?

It's easier to show you than to give an exact explanation. Chicken Maths happens when you get your first three chickens.

 Just like we did! Then for no particular reason you feel the need to have a few more chickens. 

Photo Credit. Merv Parry

 So you get half a dozen more and then you need a second coop.

 And then you realise that you probably need a spare coop for isolation in the case of illness or injury. 

And then you need to extend the run on your coop to give the young birds more space to run around.

  So, even though they are under the cover of an outbuilding you create secure rainproof space for them. And you get a cockerel.

Photo Credit David Morgan

 Then you see a breed of chicken that you really like and you buy a small incubator to hatch some eggs.

 And you hatch just a couple of chicks to add to your collection of birds that six months ago was just your first three chickens.

 And then the incubator breaks, so you may as well replace it with one that can incubate more eggs at a time.

Then you spot a breed of chicken that you know you just have to have.

Photo credit Breeder's photo

  And somehow you find some eggs of this lovely new breed are starting to hatch in your incubator.

 And you end up with a dozen little chicks running around, so now you have twenty-four chickens.

 And to house your growing collection of birds, you need another, slightly larger chicken house.

 And somewhere along the line you find that you have become a crazy chicken lady.

Even though most of your hatch turns out to be boys, that's okay, because they can be table birds and anyway, you find some commercial free-range hens that would be going to slaughter and you decide to rehome four to give you more eggs over winter. 

Of course you come home with nine of them.

As time goes on, some of the boys become table birds and your flock diminishes a little. Then you have a good think about your birds and you decide that the laying flock is pretty dull to look at and you fancy something more colourful and interesting to join the merry throng, so you start to look at what other breeds you might have to liven things up.

Photo credit - seller's photo from advert for hatching eggs

 I really like white birds and black birds, so a combination of those is ideal. These Light Sussex are a common chicken, but would be a nice addition.

Photo credit - seller's photo from advert for hatching eggs

 But then, spotty birds with punky hair-dos would be fun too. These are called Silver Crested Appenzeller Spitxhauben.

Photo credit

And Silver Laced Wyandottes are beautiful and somehow they become a must-have bird too.

So the incubator comes out of storage and gets plugged in again with some eggs in it to introduce some more variety into the flock. And so it goes on...

My suggestion is to be prepared to fall in love with chickens and just accept that Chicken Maths happens.

Please note that all my own photos were taken prior to the Avian Flu Prevention Zone order and our birds are now kept inside as required by law. 

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A baker's dozen, Hatchwatch July 2016

It's been a jolly exciting few days. The eggs in the incubator were due to hatch this week, as were the eggs under the broody hen. I've spent a lot of the week finding distractions, so that I didn't just sit on a chair in front of the incubator willing the eggs to hatch, because as we have learnt, staring at the eggs doesn't make the chicks come any faster.

We had some more topsoil delivered on Monday, so I have created the next raised bed by putting down a layer a cardboard and covering it with topsoil and compost.


Into this bed I have planted some winter squashes, which may just about have enough time to produce some small squashes to store for winter. I've also put in a few perennial herbs too. 

The last of the broad beans have been harvested, blanched and frozen and the garlic has been lifted and is now ripening and drying ready to be plaited or stored in netting bags for use throughout the year. Mr J and I eat a lot of garlic, I like it roasted we so can easily use two or three bulbs of garlic a week.

On Wednesday the first little chick hatched, it was one of the Cream Legbar's eggs (crossed with the bantam cockerel that we had for a few weeks). It is tiny, a tiny little ball of fluff, it looks like a black fluffy small golf ball, but it's feisty and was ready to come out of it's little egg (and it was little in comparison to all the other eggs). 

Later in the day another chick arrived. I am assuming that it is one of Jack's eggs, but we won't know until the hatch is completed and we can check which eggs have or haven't hatched. It is the colour of champagne and looks like a typical Easter chick, now we are a tad confused because we don't have a white or champagne colour hen so can only assume that it's colouring comes from the parents of the mother. Whatever the reason that it is a pale one, I am delighted because I have a preference for white birds.

Following these two hen's eggs hatching, our first duckling hatched. Mr J and I sat quietly watching it emerge from its shell. I wasn't prepared for how sweet it would be and in comparison to the chicks, it was huge! 

On Wednesday afternoon we went to collect another batch of spend brewery grain and hops which I will use to create another compost heap or two. I've decided that I need to use a better mixture of green and brown materials with the spent grain to encourage faster composting, but we are struggling to find much brown material at the moment.

However in the evening we took delivery of our first load of wood chippings, hopefully it is the first of many. As a thank you to the tree surgeon who is giving us the chippings, I made up a veg box and included a few eggs, which he took with him when he left. The first pile of wood chippings included quite a lot of Leylandii, which we had discussed beforehand and I was happy to take them as they will be used on the pathways and so shouldn't be a problem for our soil and plants.
The wood chipping pile also has a large section of broadleaf tree leaves, which I was delighted to agree to having as I can use them in the compost piles and of chipped broadleaf tree branches which will be ideal to mix with the spent grain and some straw from the duck house in the compost heap.

When I got up on Thursday morning I immediately checked the incubator and was delighted that a second duckling had hatched. I went out to open up the henhouses and when I came back in another chick had hatched and by nine o'clock in the morning, another one had hatched. They were both Australorp chicks and will be companions for the one that hatched in the previous batch of eggs and is now four weeks old. I headed back outside and moved some of the wood chippings onto pathways between the vegetable beds and around the perennial border, when I came back in an hour later, chick number four had hatched.

Trying to keep busy, I bottled up the elderflower wine that we made. We now have 21 bottles of wine stored away that will be ready to drink in a few months.

 As the day went on, more chicks pipped (made a small hole in the shell) which was very exciting as we were already happy to have so many healthy looking little chicks. 

We finished setting up the secure pen for the ducks in the stable, complete with a heated lamp to keep them warm and got the nursery box ready for the chicks in the boot room. Late afternoon we moved the two ducklings and the oldest two chicks to their new accommodation. The little chicks immediately looked at home, snuggling under the brooder, cheeping away to each other. 

The ducklings however, looked cold and forlorn, so Mr J ran to into the house and found a suitable soft toy to put in with them. Almost as soon as they had the soft toy in the pen, they ran to it and sat down beside it. Snoopy toy is offering them comfort. But they still looked cold, so I placed towels over the top ends of the pen which would stop so much heat being leeched into the atmosphere and very quickly, the ducklings started to look warmer. It's a constant learning process here and despite being able to read masses of information and watch countless videos giving me a good idea of what to do, it is only with experience that we actually learn what works and what doesn't.

So by bedtime on Thursday we had eight chicks and two ducklings. We moved the two chicks that had hatched on Wednesday to the nursery box in the boot room, which made a little more space in the incubator and overnight another Australorp chick hatched.

Friday morning (today as I type) my daughter, her partner and my two grandsons came to visit us on their way home from a few days in Mid Wales. Grandson number one was very good about being quiet and not frightening the chicks and very good at counting them in the incubator. 

It was great to be able to show him a photo of the tractor that had come to deliver the wood chippings, but I suspect Mr J and I had been more excited about the tractor than he was.

After they had left, Mr J and I checked on the broody hen in her house and she had moved off the eggs to the main body of the hen house (leaving the eggs in the nesting box). Knowing that she couldn't have been off them for too long, I decided to remove them rather than let them go off and potentially cause an infection in the hen house. As we lifted one out, it cheeped! So we raced back into the house and put it into the incubator. We quickly candled the other eggs which were infertile so we disposed of those ones.

Within five minutes, the egg from the hen house had hatched. Another of the pale champagne colour, which was now the third one this colour. One in the nursery brooder box, one in the incubator and the hatched egg in the broody hen's house.  

We were beginning to lose count of the chicks and it was getting too crowded in the incubator, a lesson that I have learnt for next time (to put in fewer eggs at a time if we are going to have large breed birds in there), so we took six of the Australorps out and put them into a bucket to transfer to the nursery brooder. 

Didn't take them too long to settle in and find their food! 

To ensure that the incubator didn't become too dry, I sprayed some warm water on to the broken eggshells which increased the humidity without getting the chicks that were still in there damp. We noticed that there were two more eggs pipping and one was looking very dry. So I took the gamble and sprayed some warm water on to that egg in the hope that this would soften the membrane that had started to dry out. And about half an hour later the 'dry' egg was broken open by a small but perfect looking Australorp. We were now up to eight chicks in the nursery brooder box, three in the incubator and one under the broody hen.

The chick in the last egg that has pipped is still struggling its way out of the shell. It is heartbreaking to see a bird that is strong enough to break through the shell then fail to actually get out. But, I have come to realise that if it is not strong enough to hatch, then it's probably not strong enough to survive. 

I will update this blog as and when I have further news from the incubator.

Present and future planning

While I was working in the garden yesterday morning, the postman delivered a parcel. I didn't notice him arrive and leave the package by the boot room door, so when I went inside to make a cuppa, there it was on the doorstep, waiting for us.

We had ordered some bits and pieces online, but we weren't expecting them to arrive yet, so I was curious about the parcel. Inside the padded bag was a letter from Mr J's niece, Helen. Amongst her news, she wrote that she had read on my blog that I wanted a compost thermometer and decided to send me one as a gift.

So, I sat at the kitchen table with tears in my eyes because I was so touched by Helen's generosity and thoughtfulness. It is so often the small acts of kindness that mean more than grand gestures, those moments when we reach out to others and connect with them at a personal level that are so special.

After a cuppa, I headed back out to the kitchen garden, compost thermometer in hand. I plunged the thermometer into the compost heap pumpkin patch that we made a couple of days ago and the temperature was 52 degrees, a heat sufficient to break down the materials in the compost heap. The older compost heaps though were a different story. Both the compost bays with spent grain and straw have cooled to well below a temperature that will aid the breaking down of the materials, which might explain the less than pleasant aroma near them.

So I need to find some green materials to add to the compost bays, there are plenty of weeds that I can lift from behind the piggeries to add to the compost bays, but I don't think just adding it on top will be enough to restart the decomposition. So over the next few days, I will dismantle the compost bays (one at a time), turn the contents of the bays and add in plenty of green material. I may need to add an accelerator too. I don't have any comfrey large enough to use, so will cut down some stinging nettles from one of the patches that we have left in place as a home for the local butterfly population. The 'stinger' patches are big enough to be able to harvest several bucket loads without depleting them too much.

In the middle of last month, we created an outdoor run for the chicks, so that they could spend a little time each day (weather permitting) outside in the fresh air. You can read about it here (Fences, hedges, paths and structures). We made it by strapping together some of the panels that my daughter's chicken house had with it when we brought the henhouse from her home to ours. The chicks no longer need it as they are now housed in the chicken field in their own house with fixed run prior to joining the flock.

This meant that the panels were available to use for something else if we needed them. And, yesterday we put them to good use. Our next batch of chicks are due in six days time and our plan is to keep them in the safe enclosure that we created in the boot room for the first few days. Big Red and Little White lived in this enclosure for a month and I took them outside from about 10 days old for a little while each day before returning them to the warmth of the brooder in the boot room.

This time however, we expect there to be a few more chicks (hopefully a dozen or more) and we don't want the noise and smell of a several small chickens to fill the house, so we have decided to have them in the boot room for up to a week before moving them to the chicken condo in the former stables. To have them in the chicken condo safely we needed to create a pen in which they'll have room to run around but also be safe from any predators and from the older chickens for the first few weeks.

So Mr J measured and cut a sheet of ply wood and fixed it to the panels to make a base. I then covered it with chicken wire and folded it around the sides to make it less easy for any rats to gnaw through the wood to access the little chicks inside.

Then we turned it the right way up and put it onto a double length pallet that we'd been given by the man who had delivered the plywood panels to us last month. A couple of screws fixed through the base of the new pen into the pallet secured it and stopped it from wobbling from side to side.

We thought about fixing shallow sides around the pen to reduce draughts, but decided that we can lean these offcuts of plywood if need be, but the pen is inside the stable and so is fairly sheltered already and if it gets particularly windy, I can just prop these offcuts around the pen and then remove them when it calms down again. Mr J fixed the central roof panel in place and I will use cable ties to fix each of the roof end panels in place leaving one side tied with string. This way both roof end panels can be lifted up (as though they are hinged) for easy access for cleaning the pen, feeding the chicks and changing their water for fresh. The chicks will live in this pen from the end of week one until they are four to five weeks old when we'll move them to housing outside so that they can start seeing the other chickens and they all get used to each other. As we have done with Big Red and Little White, I will allow the new chicks to experience outside for a while each day (once they are big enough) in a run that we'll make in the next few weeks. 

We placed the brooder into the run to check where would be the best place for the electrics to live. Mr J found a small  bedside table in the barn to use to sit the extension lead and plug on together with the adaptor for the brooder. By putting them on the lower shelf of the bedside table, they will be raised off the floor and also sheltered from any rain drops that may leak through the roof. We think we've placed it where there are no leaks, but you never know!

I divided the stable into two by using old pieces of conservatory roof and a run panel that isn't being used (yet). The chickens looked a bit miffed for a while, but soon realised that I had moved their favourite dust bathing material into their half and settled down to flick dust over themselves in their almost daily ritual of dust bathing. A fresh layer of wood shavings on the floor around the new pen gave it a smart look, which I am sure won't last for long, but yesterday it looked smart and ready for the new arrivals.

Picture Credit www.barterandsons.com.au

Last night I made one final check of the eggs in the incubator to remove any that are infertile, the last thing I want at this stage is an egg exploding over the others. I am very disappointed with the Australorp eggs that we bought. We paid £45 for a dozen eggs and only four were fertile, whilst we paid £15 for a dozen white Jersey Giant eggs and ten are fertile. All we can hope for is that we get some females and a male Australorp so that we can increase the size of the flock. And hopefully, I can find another breeder and be able to either buy a couple of pullets (young females) or some more eggs to hatch.

The White Jersey Giants should hatch well enough, the eggs came from the same breeder as Little White's egg and she is healthy, strong and feisty!

It's dull and rainy this morning, so I think I will tackle a few chores indoors, but first, as always, it must be time for a cuppa.