Avian Flu Prevention Zone 2018 - Our Action Plan

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!

Vegetable cage Chicken run

I am delighted! This morning I spent an hour or so making the first of the chicken runs that I've been planning (read about our planning thoughts here). It was easy to make and relatively cheap too. This one will have a dual purpose. At the start of the year I will put chickens into it so that they can till the soil in a raised bed and fertilise the area, while they are scratching around in the soil and eating the weeds and last of the crops in the bed.

Then, when the chickens have done their thing I can plant the bed with brassicas and put butterfly netting over the chicken run to create a vegetable cage. This should keep our cabbages and other brassicas safe from the voracious appetites of hundred of little green caterpillars.

To make the frame I used 8 x roofing battens 3.9m long and lots of 5cm (2 inch) screws. The total cost of frame was £25.

The uprights are 90cms long and the cross pieces are 105cms long, this was the most economical way of cutting the wood. So, there are 4 full length (390cm) pieces, 8 uprights, 6 cross pieces, 1 long diagonal and two small diagonal pieces. I will probably add two or four more small diagonal braces to add to the strength and stability of the frame, but it started raining and using electrical tools in the rain is a silly idea.

Here's how I put it together (if the video below doesn't work, you can find it on YouTube here)

The next step is to staple chicken wire around three sides (leaving the end without the cross brace uncovered) and to fix windbreak fabric or debris netting to the top. I will then create an end panel that can be held on with either a couple of bungee cords or small hook and eye catches. The end needs to be able to open so that the chickens can be let in to the run in the morning and out again at night. Once I am using it as a vegetable cage I can use cable ties to keep the end panel on it for the season.

I am really rather pleased with my handiwork and even though it has meant that I have been able to do little else today and I hurt all over, it was worth it. I had fun making something that is useful, that allows us to put the chickens to work without them having a free-for-all at their favourite 'all you can eat buffet bar' (our annual vegetable garden).

Projects like this are good for the confidence and spirit. There is something highly satisfying in being creative and when I can make something that is multi-functional, it is even more pleasing. This evening the plan is to have a hot soaky bath to soothe aching limbs, but first of all, it's time for a cuppa!

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I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

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Planning poultry pens

 Mr J and I are so pleased with how well the chicken walkway has worked for us (and the chickens) that we have decided to build further runs in the chickens' fields and to that end I have ordered some more of the roofing battens like those that we used for the walkway.

 Rather than runs that use a building as one wall, the new runs will be freestanding, well not exactly freestanding as they will be anchored into the ground, but they will have four sides made from posts and netting.

Our thinking is that we could create a series of large runs that, during lockdown, will provide covered areas that the chickens can use and for the rest of the year we can leave the doors open for them to access the runs or remainder of the field.

The runs would allow us to keep family groups together which would be especially useful when we want to ensure that a set of females are breeding with a particular cockerel. The downside to this plan is that I will be back to cleaning out several small houses instead of using a deep litter bedding system in the chicken shed. But that seems a small price to pay for being able to ensure that the correct male is with the girls that we want to collect eggs from.

When we made the walkway it was very much a hit and miss affair, we didn't have a firm plan of how we'd do it and just felt our way through it. For the next pen or two, we will have a clearer idea of how to put the wood uprights and cross piece together to make the structure that we want.

The only part that we really struggled with, when making the walkway, was making a door or gate that fitted the allotted space. Making it the correct size was simple enough, but to stop it from twisting out of shape was more tricky, not helped I think, by the uprights each side of the door not being a) completely perpendicular and b) not being completely in line with each other. It's something we will work on for the next pens.

Once the new pens are completed I will section off an area inside each one that the chickens will not have access to and I will grow some vegetables in it. Then when lockdown happens next year, there will be some cabbages or other green leafy vegetables that I can feed to the birds by opening the restricted area a little at a time. And of course, even if there is no prevention zone order next year, the chickens still will be fed the leafy green vegetables during the winter months.

We haven't decided as yet whether the new pens will have a gently sloping roof like the chicken's walkway or a pitched roof like the duck run (above). I think the gently sloping roof option will be easier to build and as neither Mr J or I have advanced construction skills, the simplest option may well be the best.

The other design of run that I will build from this wood is a mobile run about four metres (13 feet) long and one metre (just over 3 feet) wide with handles at each end to help carry it. It will be a low run about 90cms (3 feet) high. This will fit on top of the raised beds in the annual vegetable garden and once lockdown is over, will allow me to put the chickens to work on the raised beds. They can eat the weeds and any crops left in the bed, till the soil and add manure to it. A few chickens should be able to make light work of the bed preparation in a couple of days and each evening they will be allowed to return to their usual house for the night. 

This was fairly successful last year when I made a makeshift run and now we have the opportunity to make sturdier and mobile raised bed chicken runs I am keen to have them ready for the chickens to go into once the lockdown ends.

The raised bed chicken runs will then be used to cover brassica crops to protect them from cabbage white butterflies and cabbage moths, both of which did substantial damage to the January King cabbages and red curly kale. Having dual purpose mobile runs means that we won't need to find a place to store the runs when the chickens are not in them.

The local builder's merchant have just delivered the wood and I'm heading out into the chicken field to do some measuring up. Although, I'll have to walk past the kettle on my way, so perhaps first of all, I should have a cuppa!

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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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Building a duck run

When the Avian Flu Prevention Zone was announced on December 6th I spent a couple of days getting the stable conversion completed so the chickens had their splendid condo and creating the chicken palace, so that was them safely under cover and the ducks had to make do with a very makeshift space with a tarp slung over some bamboo canes, which didn't stand up to the wind and rain very well.

We ordered a large pen which arrived very quickly and had easy to follow instructions for putting it together. It was really a two person job, but as Mr J is out of the house from shortly after dawn to just before dusk on the days that he works, I tackled putting it together.

 Once I had worked out which piece went where the construction was relatively simple.

 The roof sections went together first.

 Followed by legs on one side.

 And then on the other side.

Followed by the base poles. The large heavy duty poles slotted into connecting pieces and were held in place with wing nuts. It took me a couple of hours to build the frame, which I then fixed to the ground using the ground pegs supplied.

Getting the chicken wire over the frame was a different matter. The instructions say its a fiddly job that requires patience and oh boy, they were right! About 1000 cable ties later, the netting was on. The hardest part was getting enough tension across the chicken wire while I also tried to fix it to the frame using a cable tie. 

You can see on the right of the photo that I hadn't yet pulled the chicken wire tight before fixing it to the corner post. The metal of the chicken wire has quietly shaved a layer or two of skin from my hands and I have dozens of tiny cuts on the back of my hands from the spiky ends of the chicken wire. 

The end result is great. The run is 6m by 4m and has a skirt of chicken wire around the outside to discourage burrowing predators.

We've put tarps over the top of it, but have decided that this not only makes it quite dark , but the crinkly, crackling noise that it makes in the wind is not very nice for the ducks, so today I will be ordering some scaffolding netting which will offer protection from any falling wild bird poop, but will let in a little more light and be less noisy.

Yesterday it was announced that the lockdown will continue until the end of February, so I am pleased that we've opted for a more permanent structure to keep the ducks safe and secure. Once the birds are allowed to free range again we can use the pen for raising this year's ducklings, giving them a much larger space than the ducklings had last year, but one that keeps them separate from the adults.

Now that the duck run is ready for the ducks to move from their makeshift space I can turn my attention to creating a pen for the chickens. They have been inside for a month and tempers are starting to fray (their's, not mine). Big White in particular is starting to get aggressive, which is unusual for this breed.

I will create a run from the chicken palace so that the Jersey Giants and Australorps have some outside space. I plan to build a covered run that leads straight off the chicken palace, sanitise the grass, cut a pop hole in the wall of the building and then allow them out each day for some fresh air and scratching.

After that I can work out how to create a similar covered outside space for the chickens in the condo. But, before I head outside to tackle anything else, it's time for a cuppa!

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