Chickens

I love my chickens, I think they are a perfect pet. They are no more difficult to look after than something like a rabbit and you get eggs.

We have 5 chickens, there were 6 but we lost our little Millie during the winter. Millie and Poppy (the red one in the picture below) were our oldest chickens. Millie seemed to have just died in her sleep, she appeared perfectly happy and healthy, but I found her dead in the coop one morning. Poppy is still going strong although she doesn't lay many eggs any more.

The chickens live in an eglu cube which is in a large enclosure that John built in the garden, it is over 6ft high and has netting across the top to stop any foxes from getting in, we lost our first 2 chickens to foxes so we only let them free range in the garden when we are out there with them.

The Eglu cube can take up to 10 chickens and we also have an original eglu which takes 2 (this was Millie and Poppy's original home) we have been adding 2 chickens to our flock each year, this means we always have young girls to give us eggs and the older ladies can enjoy their retirement. We are enjoying 3-4 eggs a day at the moment and are planning to buy 2 new girls in a couple of months, I use lots of eggs in my cooking.

The girls get through a sack of layers pellets a month, they also like a few kitchen scraps (they are eating cooked potato peelings in the photos, one of their favorites) and they love some nice leaves (they eat the outer leaves of cabbages and lettuces and most weeds). Apart from that all they need is fresh water every day and cleaning out once a week, sometime I replace the straw in the nest box more often if it gets dirty.