New Start and Chickens

New Start on the Permaculture Blog...............and Chickens

Well, I've been living at Withybeds now for something over a year. I've not posted anything recently because of the move from Vine Tree Farm.

I had such hopes for that place, but I was constantly swimming against the tide with (some of) the neighbours. Whatever else folks think of what you are doing, when they object to trees being planted on, I can only think the world has gone entirely mad..... I had over a thousand trees planted on that hillside; a mix of native and old orchard trees. And we got complaints. People are just bloody nuts sometimes! It's not as if they didn't know that the hillside is clay and needs to be stablised.....

Never mind - it's a new start and I am carrying on regardless with my permaculture project - but now at a new site.

It's not so large this time. Withybeds has a bit under an acre of ground to work with, but it is just glorious here. And at this size, I can do most of it myself over time. I simply don't need the labour and help that I did before when I was trying to tackle 60 acres.

Anyway, where to start?

First of all - lovely neighbours. Doesn't that count for a lot? They're not too close by; at the far side of the Common, so we don't see too much of them, but when we do, there's always a smile and a bit of chat. It's just nice having them around.

And as a bonus, they keep horses, so that's making a very welcome contribution to the raised veg beds ;-)

The chickens are nicely established and doing well. It's been a bit of a learning curve as it is the first time I have kept chickens. I grew up with ducks, but chickens were a mystery to me. I had in fact intended to get ducks rather than chickens, but it was a rescue situation. The chucks had been more or less abandoned and there was a fox going in after them.

Their "keeper" wasn't even closing the pop hole at night and the fox was running wild in there - not that I begrudge him his living, but there is is field full of rabbits there for him.

Anyway, I caught all the chucks over a couple of days and brought them back to Withybeds.

It was rather awkward.This was happening December 2010 when we had the big freeze here. I had ordered a coop for the chucks, but the snow closed all the ports and the coop didn't arrive until the New Year. Meanwhile, I'd had to bring the chickens over and there was now-where properly ready for them.

So we made up temporary accomodation in the old workshop in the garden. The roof leaked and the wind was wailing through. We rigged up some perches and boxes and I lined everything out with bales of hay. Around this time the temperature dropped to around -19 (centigrade) and about two feet of snow dropped on us.

The oil for the tank wasn't delivered, even though I had ordered in in good time for December, and it cost half as much again as it had previously. Fortunately, we have wood burning stoves, so we didn't actually freeze in the cottage.

The water did freeze however. We are on a private supply here - from a borehole down into the Cotswolds rocks. It froze up and so we had Christmas dinner using melted snow-water. Having a bath was fun too. I had to get out all my jam and stock pans and heat the water over the hob. Eight pans to a bath, and all of it to be carried upstairs.

When I see one at a car boot, I'm going to pick up and old tin bath then at least if we have a big freeze again, we can bath in front of the fire.

I was really worried about the chickens in those temperatures, but what could I do apart from give them the best shelter I could manage and plenty of feed. I gave them everything I could think of to feed them calories - boiled up lentils and peas, jacket potatos, porridge - as well as standard chicken feed.

And do you know, they just completely brushed it off. You would think they would have suffered, exposed to those temperatures. But no, they were bright and chirpy and alert and barely seemed to notice the weather. It was a real lesson in just how hardy chickens are.

Since then the chucks have gone from strength to strength. They look so well and healthy. I love seeing happy animals and these just so obviously have what they need from life.

When the coop did eventually arrive I was not very happy as I realised that it was much smaller than I had envisaged. It was OK for roosting in at night, but the two tiny "runs" that came with it were not at all my idea of how much space the girls needed to roam and be happy. But I was very much on a budget. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I got hold of a job lot of security fencing (the kind they put up round building sites etc) from EBay and constructed "chicken Fort Knox" from it. Six panels fit together to make a run. The original coop I bought sits inside, along with a collection of rabbit hutches I also got secondhand from EBay. The connection to the ground is sealed with chicken wire which runs up the sides of the panels and down along the turf so that any foxes (we do have them here on the Common) cannot dig through.

So the chucks roost in the coop or hutch of their choice (or up on top of the panels in the case of some of the boys). Fort Knox is locked up at night, but the chucks are free to come in and out of their hutches/coops when it suits them. and when I get up, and there's enough daylight that the foxes should have moved along, I open up the Fort and the chucks have the run of that end of the garden.

I can't claim that it is completely safe for them, but it's as close as I can give them to safe whilst still letting them roam and scratch and generally lead a proper "chickeny" life.

I did try to let them have the run of the full garden. However, that didn't work as I couldn't keep them out of the house.

I don't have an "in principle" objection to any animal in the house with me - but I have learned through experience that you cannot house train a chicken, and it is possible to get bored with the smell of ammonia in the kitchen....

Bertie on the Birdtable - Uninivited!

And since they also made themselves at home, whether or not it was anything to with them, they had to be confined to that end of the garden.

That does also leave the small matter of the raised beds which are in that part of the garden. So far I've planted them out twice and the chucks have utterly destroyed them twice. so the next job is to construct "Vegetable Fort Knox" - more on that on another occasion

Whitey Bent on Allium Destruction

But, all that aside, they are such fun to have around. They have so much more personality than I expected, so it's definitely worth a little effort to make things work

Cleaning Up the Olive Tree