Chickens Revisited – Enter the Ladies

There were a few things to get out of the way before the chickens arrived. I had to provide food, water, a place to lay eggs and a place to nest. Let’s start with the last. Chickens (and most birds as far as I can gather) prefer to nest as high as possible in their given environment. To accommodate this I built two perches as high as I could under the roof. Not too high, as they need to sit reasonably comfortably when they sleep. Also, I discovered, a square or irregular shaped perch is better than a round one, which they just seem to slide off of. Something else I discovered is that chickens, although sleeping in an almost comatose condition, tend to bang their feet against the perch the whole night. This must have something to do with not “falling off the perch”. Anyway, with all this banging going on I decided to cover the perches in some towelling that I had lying around and they looked like this;

As far as nesting was concerned, chickens like to nest inside an enclosure with sides to stop the eggs from rolling around. I shopped around and found some plastic baskets which I screwed to the loft floor to stop them moving around. This is what they looked like;

You will notice that I have cut out the front of the baskets for easy access and used wood chips for nesting material. I have also used the wood chips on the floor of the enclosure.

At this point let me introduce you (in no particular order) to Andrea, Brenda, Charlene and Debbie (A,B,C and D).

They arrived on a Tuesday evening and started laying almost immediately, always favouring the nest on the left for some reason or other. Some stats of their first few days;

Day #1, 2 eggs

Day#2, 1 egg

Day#3, 1 egg

Day#4, 2 eggs

Day#5, 3 eggs

Day#6, 4 eggs

Day#7, 3 eggs

Currently I get 3-4 eggs every day, which is far more than I can eat!!!

They seem to take turns and lay their eggs in succession one after the other in exactly the same place.

In my next post I will discuss their feeding habits and daily free-range. But for now, Cluck-cluck.

 

Later

 

Synaptoman

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