Chickens out, spring in

After all the excitement of the last week, a relative calm has descended upon our smallholding. The house is no longer filled with the cheeping and peeping of many little chicks and the cats have once again taken to lounging around in 'relax mode' rather than twitching at every sound of a small bird moving around their small cage behind a shut door.

I have moved the miracle chick together with the other eighteen chicks to the newly reinforced nursery pen in the chicken condo and today is the day that birds are allowed back out into their fields. 

The empty chicken fields have been a slightly sad sight for the last three months while the birds were in lockdown and now that I have completed the required self-assessment form (find info about it here), checked the bio-security measures that we have in place and checked the fields for signs of contamination, the birds are allowed out onto the grass again. We have to keep the ducks and chickens separated, but that's fine, we had done this months ago due to an overly amorous drake (Frederick) and there is now a 35 feet separation zone between the chickens and ducks.

We took the opportunity to use the time the fields were empty to have a think about how best to use the space and we have started to build a walkway from the chicken palace to one area of the field that the Jersey Giants will be using. This will keep the birds safe and also separated from each other because we don't want the breeds mixing unless we've decided that is what we want. 

The Australorps have their own house in one section of the field. The run that I made has been their only access to grass until today and I have now positioned the run so that the chickens can access the run but also their area of the field. Their food and water will be kept under the run, which is covered, so that wild bird poop can't get into their food or water. 

All the other birds will continue to be fed inside their indoor spaces. The mixed flock have a hanging feeder with a lid that is wild bird proof and kept under their covered walkway and the Jersey Giants had one inside the chicken palace, but they were so rough with the feeder that they tore the hanging toggle dispenser out of it, so today I will be making a new one with a smaller hole in the base, so that although it will dispense food more slowly, the toggle won't be able to to be pulled from the base. You can watch how I made the hanging feeder here 

Tomorrow heralds the start of spring and the beginning of the new growing season, I have done some preparation of the annual vegetable garden, but there is quite a lot left to do. We are still enjoying the harvests of last year's sowings, leeks, parsnips, red cabbage, swede and purple sprouting brocolli are still abundant in the garden and we still have food in the freezer and pantry that I preserved last summer and autumn. 

I put a planting plan down onto paper (and online here) which is a rough guide to what I will sow where, but it is not set in stone and I anticipate having to be flexible because some crops may not be out of the ground in time to plant whatever crop I had hoped to put in the space. But a few of the beds are now cleared and ready for seeds or young plants to go into them and it's all starting to look rather promising.

As I type the sun has come out and is beckoning activity, but it would be foolish to put seeds into the soil today. It has been freezing for the last few nights and a hoar frost this morning gave a hint of just how chilly the ground actually is. I think the average temperature outside needs to rise a good few degrees before I would want to put seeds into the ground. 

I can, however, continue to plant seeds in trays to go into the greenhouse. Last year the kitchen table, windowsills and work surfaces in the boot room were packed with seed trays, but this year we have Monty and Tabitha living with us and offering them what they would interpret as neatly laid out litter trays may not be such a smart move. Tabitha in particular is not terribly fond of going outside to empty her bladder when it is very cold, windy or rainy. We've kept a litter tray on the floor of the boot room since the cats arrived with us in December and I suspect that in the cooler months of each year, we may have to resign ourselves to a litter tray for her use.

Anyway, back to thoughts about the annual vegetable garden. There are tasks that I can continue to do outside like creating the last of five raised beds, laying down pathways and covering them with wood chippings, clearing away abandoned 'stuff' that I meant to put away at the tail end of last year, but didn't because other, more pressing, tasks needed our attention. I plan to move the Swiss chard plants and everlasting spinach into the food forest and then sow fresh seeds for them in the annual garden. I want to keep the older plants as they are useful duck and chicken food, but they don't need to be taking up growing space in the annual garden. 

It still feels a privilege to have so much space in which to grow food and having learnt a little about the soil (or lack thereof), the way the light moves around the garden, the natural flow of water through the area and the prevailing winds, I feel that this year the garden may well be even more productive. Mr J and I enjoyed trying different food crops and have been happy to admit that some things may have grown well, but that doesn't mean we actually like the taste of them. And there is little point in growing masses of something that we don't want to eat!

Except for kales, cabbages and squashes, I will be growing plenty of these this year, tucked into corners and empty spaces, into gaps between other crops and the old circles of love (the straw circles we put down for the chickens to scratch in). These kales, cabbages and squash will be used to feed the birds next autumn and winter. We will cover them late in the year to protect them from wild bird poop and then they will be suitable for feeding to our chickens and ducks during next winter's lockdown should that occur. And if it doesn't, well our birds will still eat well during the coolest months. Winter squashes will keep well for months in cool dry conditions, so I plan to store them in crates in the barn and then they should be available for both poultry and human consumption throughout the winter.

All this talk of food is making me hungry and it's not really a meal time as yet, so I guess I'll just have to make do with a cuppa!

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Positives of the lockdown

However frustrating it is that the poultry has to be kept inside and under cover, I have finally started to see some positives of this enforced lockdown.

It has given us time to have a really good look at all of the birds close up. I usually spend a bit of time each time day in the chicken field observing them, making sure that they are all healthy, happy and watching their relationships with each other. And, most of all, I just enjoy watching their funny chicken behaviour. 

Since the lockdown I have been able to watch them from close up rather than at the far end of the field and have noticed relationships developing that I hadn't seen before.

It has given us a chance to discuss what we might do in the future and which birds we really value. 

In the Chicken Condo
Much as though we like having blue eggs, the Cream Legbars offer little in the way of entertainment, company or work. They keep themselves to themselves, don't really mingle with the other layers or us and do very little in terms of tilling the ground. They are the first to bed and last out of the hen shed in the morning, they haven't laid an egg from September until one was laid on 6th January (and none since). So I think we will probably reduce their numbers to just two, so that we still have some blue eggs (when they finally start laying regularly again), but our plans to sell hatching eggs of Cream Legbars may just be set aside. The Cream Legbar that sat on a batch of eggs last year will stay with us, she was an excellent mother and having one girl that is a known broody bird is a good idea.

Jack and Diesel, the girls that we got from my daughter will stay, they were our first birds and will have a home with us for as long as they live and with them we will keep a couple of hyline birds that have proved to be regular layers. For now we will also keep the hybrid birds that we have hatched, two white ones with black flecks on their feathers and a cross between Jack and Big Red, who hopefully will lay olive eggs when the time comes.

In the Chicken Palace
Big White will stay, for now, as the White Jersey Giant cockerel as will his three girls, but when the two young birds, which we hatched ten weeks ago, are older, we will replace Big White with one of them if they are males (which I think that they are) as they are a different bloodline to Big White.

There are two Australorp males in the chicken palace together with two females from different bloodlines and a hybrid that is best friend of one of the Australorps and they seem inseparable. We need to decide which of the two males will remain with the girls fairly quickly so that we can separate them and have them as a small breeding flock to increase our own flock numbers and offer hatching eggs for sale.

In a separate house and run are one youngish white Jersey Giant cockerel and one other young Australorp cockerel, the Australorp male that we reject from the chicken palace will join them in this house and run. These are our meat birds. In yet another small house is a Cream Legbar cockerel. Until yesterday he was with the Jersey Giant and Australorp cockerels, but he has been aggressive and injured the young Jersey Giant. So as we know that he will be dispatched before the weekend, we will keep him separate until dispatch.

Having created a secure space in the stable (the chicken condo) and adapted the outbuilding (the chicken palace) that was going to become my garden room and potting shed, there is no point in undoing the work when the lockdown is lifted. We have also invested in a new duck run, which will stay in place when the ducks are allowed to roam their area of the field again. So now we have three secure areas for the birds and we have had a little bit of time to look at how the field is used, we have an opportunity to assess whether we want to return the birds to the whole of the space that they did have or whether we want to use part of the field in a different way.

We could, for example, create pens in the field over the summer so that the birds have plenty of space to run about, but are areas that we could cover if next year there is a lockdown again. This could give them a better lockdown environment if we can find a way to make a runway from their shed and stable to the pens. This seems like a good idea, but it means that the chickens will be less a part of our overall plan to develop the site. 

Another option would be to build several mobile covered runs that are easy to move around and in early autumn move them to places that we want tilled and fertilised. Then if lockdown happens again next year, we can put some of the birds in each covered run (with a henhouse attached) and they will be able to work the land even during lockdown. The downside to this is that I will have to clean out several small houses on a regular basis rather than one larger shed.

Now that the Australorp and Jersey Giant girls are coming into lay, we don't need as many hybrid birds as we have at the moment, so the lockdown has been useful to allow me to observe the hybrids and find out which ones are laying most regularly and which lay little brown eggs and which lay huge pale eggs. The hybrids that we don't need will be offered to friends, they are still good laying birds, but we don't need to keep nine of them in addition to Jack, Diesel, three girls that we've hatched, a couple of Cream Legbars and the rare breed birds.

The four ducks we have now sleep in the cycle store shed that we converted in the early autumn and each morning they walk through a short covered tunnel into the new duck pen. It's not ideal and in readiness for a potential lockdown next year, I want to create a better tunnel that I have access to and can walk through. It is likely to not look terribly attractive, but we could grow climbers up the outside to soften the look of it.

I've been able to watch how the ducks are interacting, the young drake is just starting to tread on the girls. His technique looks pretty awful, but then, I'm not sure that I could balance on a moving object that isn't terribly keen to be stood on, so perhaps I am not giving him enough credit for his persistence in trying. It seems clear to me that although there is plenty of balancing going on, there is no 'action' as yet.

We have already decided that we want to raise more ducks this year and earlier in the year than we did in 2016. That way we can fill the freezer and I don't have the rushed job of dispatching half a dozen ducks in the fortnight before Christmas.

When the ducks can run around outside the pen once again, we will be able to use the pen as a safe and secure place for the ducklings to grow until they are large enough to join the flock for a few weeks.

I have also been able to spend some time assessing the land, making notes of the areas that the ducks have dibbled so much that they've worn the grass away completely, the places where the rain doesn't drain away very quickly and the young hedging plants that didn't survive the summer.

Having the birds safely tucked away meant that when Jane and I planted a new hedge along part of the western boundary of our little smallholding, we were able to move around freely and didn't need to keep opening and closing gates behind us. Likewise, when we planted a new hedge along the edge of the chicken field, we were able to easily without upsetting the chickens.

So even though having the birds in lockdown isn't much fun for them or us, I thought it was important to remind myself that even in a bad situation there are some positives to be found.

If you have found any other positive side effects of lockdown, please leave a comment below.

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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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