Claire Sutton from thingswemake adds chickens to her garden.
We finally got some chickens! So the thingswemake now includes added eggs.
We have just the two for now, although a couple more are being hatched on our behalf to add to the brood.
We call them ‘The Girls’ to save Ernie (the Border Terrier) thinking of them as walking chicken dinners. So far we are enjoying having them around and are delighted that they seem to be getting to grips with laying eggs. So far they seem to be sharing the job between them and laying one a day, with a couple of double egg bonus days so far. This is great because I love to cook and having our own free range eggs to hand is fabulous. Snowy is still learning how it all works, she laid a few soft shelled ones, plus one in the herb bed and one in a food bowl, but 10 points for trying.
We decided to buy a coop instead of Ed building one, as the cost of the materials was outweighed by the speed and price at which you can buy one online. The only things is, although we knew the measurements, the one we got seems considerably smaller than we thought it would be. It’s perfectly formed but just a bit teeny, which is a problem as we had planned to keep them in the run most of the time. I wasn’t sure I wanted to allow them to wreck the garden and I knew that Ernie would want to love them…around the neck…with his teeth. As it happens within a few hours of them being here we couldn’t resist letting them out to explore our, reasonably well enclosed, garden and now they are out for most of the day.
Firstly we learned that a 4 foot high chicken wire enclosure was neither useful nor ornamental, as ‘Ginger’, named because of her escape planning tendencies, reference ‘Chicken Run’, discovered that she could get onto the coop roof and fly straight over. Having a clipped wing did not stop her aerial antics.
Other things we have already learned in the last few weeks:
– They are really getting quite friendly, they come over and see you and are quite happy to have a cuddle and a stroke.
– Chickens poop…a lot. Each day every square metre of our lawn has a big dollop of chicken doo doo on it, so this gets swept into the borders or scooped into the compost heap as free fertiliser.
– They don’t seem to like sleeping on their perch, they huddle together in the corner of the coop.
– I expected them to be quite noisy. They aren’t, just a little bit of gentle clucking so far.
– They have wood shavings (supplied from Ed’s workshop) in the base of their coop and straw in the nest boxes, somewhere comfy to lay their eggs.
– The first eggs were tiny, but they seem to be limbering up and producing bigger, tougher shelled ones already.
– Their brains may be tiny but are fast learners, they soon learn that you are the providers of corn, as a treat, and will follow you wherever you go.
– They are quite cheeky – peering into the kitchen window and coming to the door to ask for treats already.
– We give them layers pellets in the morning to give them their nutrients and a handful of corn for tea, to raise their body temperature to get them through the night.
– Chickens LOVE wild garlic. They shouldn’t really eat it and I’m afraid it may taint the eggs, but I can’t stop them eating the soft green leaves. They stink of it!
– I live in fear of the dreaded red mites that I have been told about: I have all the products to hand to ward them off.
– Daffodils and various other plants are poisonous to chickens, but it seems to be impossible to stop them having the odd peck at them.
– They dig, all the time. They are constantly scratching with their big clawed feet, chucking my carefully placed composted mulch all over the lawn. I rake it back…daily.
– They are not interested in kitchen scraps. Our chickens, when I was a kid, loved them but these two must get so many tasty grubs in the garden that carrot peelings and bread just don’t float their boat!
– They appear to eat all day, they never stop pecking. I hope that this is because they are pecking tiny slugs and grubs that would have turned into huge slugs and grubs that would eat my plants. I am hoping for a pest free Summer!
– My cute chickens bring all the pheasants to the yard. A huge, beautiful pheasant has flown into the garden twice to check them out. This scares them and they run into their coop.
– The beautifully sifted soil in the raised beds is great for them to scratch in. This is fine for now (I covered the one planted with peas and beans with wire and the lettuce seedlings are under a cloche) but I can see this being an issue soon. We may have to fence off the vegetable beds completely.
So, that’s where we are with our chicken keeping so far. The garden is suffering a little, but hopefully gaining in other ways. If anyone has any tips on ‘gardening with chickens’ please leave them in the comments.
Our next plan is to work on Ernie to try to stop him chasing them. But for now The Girls are a welcome addition to our garden.
Claire, Ed and George at thingswemake.co.uk
