We did it, in under an hour ... well we've had lots of practise, this is the fourth time we've put one of these together :-)
This is the Maggies 24 henhouse from Flyte So Fancy, and our absolute favourite type of henhouse. They are easy to get inside for cleaning, perfectly designed for the chickens and hold 24 of our kind of birds perfectly well, as we have a mix of full sized birds and bantams.
I say this because when we were registered free range egg sellers (we decided to register when our birds numbers got near to 50 at our first farm) the Inspector came out and did all the measurements of land available for the hens, space in the house and the number of nest boxes to ensure we met all the requirements and these houses came in at being 'official' for 22 full sized birds to live in and the four nesting boxes meant they were suitable for 40 birds to lay in. I remember at the time imagining the queue of ten birds for each nesting box!!
We decided to get this additional henhouse and to make a new Chicken World on the hillside so that after the wet winter we have just come through we can rest and reconfigure our usual Chicken World to make it more suitable for the birds and safer for us in any future wet Welsh winters ... and I'm sure we're going to have some ;-)
This second living area has already been nicknamed Chicken Land although this may change in future when the fruit trees are a bit bigger to simply The Orchard, at the moment with the trees being so young it just doesn't feel like an Orchard.
Lovely Hubby is currently still out there putting the wire on the fence posts and making the whole area safer for the birds. This second chicken world will be used whenever we need to rest the other one and can also be pulled into use if we need to segregate birds for any reason, for example if we have cockerels in future that we needed to grow on ready for meat use, and they were getting to an age where they started picking on little Jack. Hatching out your own chicks does mean that you end up with boys as well as girls and I am of the opinion that boys deserve a happy life as well as the girls, even if it is shorter.
Not for me the practice of mincing day old chicks just because they are boys .... once you've seen that video clip you really can't get it out of your head can you :-(
Sue xx
That new hen house looks so good that I wouldn't mind living in it myself.
ReplyDeletewow a chook mansion!
ReplyDeletelooks awesome, those are some lucky chooks!
thanx for sharing
Very smart indeed. I was thinking that people say there are only 2 things certain in life - Death and Taxes, maybe rain in Welsh winters should be added to that list!
ReplyDeleteWe always worked on 6 hens per nest box, like you say 10 would cause a queue or broken eggs.
I reared our male chicks until they started to look like cockerels then put them in a batchelor run. These boys were then raised until full frown then i was taught to dispatch them by bob an old poultry farmer here in the village,
ReplyDeleteHe also taught me how to pluck and prepare the carcasses.
We had them in the freezer for ages....the prof wouldnt eat any of them!
Wow - that's a palace! I was also thinking that an orchard/hill combo would be a good idea for our future chicken run. I was concerned ours would get 'trench foot' or the poultry equivalent this year :(
ReplyDeleteGreat job on Chicken Land. The house is lovely, the birds will feel like they are on holiday.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.
I couldn't have put that up in ten years! Hope your chucks love it!
ReplyDeleteI saw that video clip. Horrendous. On our local news tv programme (look north)there was a piece about not being able to fill vacancies on chicken farms sexing tiny chicks - 40k a year! I wouldn't do that job for all the tea in China after seeing where the males go.
ReplyDeleteYour new Chicken Land looks wonderful. When you're working in the garden and fruit and veg tunnels both the chooks and you will be able to keep an eye on each other!
ReplyDeleteIt looks beautiful, lucky chooks indeed! Happy spring time!
ReplyDeleteKatie x
http://long-may-she-rain.blogspot.co.uk
I think the chicken house is great and I think the orchard area is going to be amazing when the trees grow. I can't get my head around eating any animals that you live with - all my animals would be just pets (I would never make a farmer). Regards, Louise S, Cheshire.
ReplyDeleteIt is a horrific video. I have to say after owning chickens of our own and I hope to continue to do so for the rest of our lives, if we can, if ever the need arose to buy eggs I would make sure they were proper free range hens. Plus the fact they taste so much nicer x x x
ReplyDelete