Making plans

This morning I gave the girls some spinach. I like to give them some greens each morning.

Spinach

They are all looking so beautiful and this is just an excuse to get a photo of the flock really.

We are planning some changes to the coop in the spring. As anyone who follows me regularly will know my girls like to perch high at night and don’t go into their coop. They roost on the high perches over their patio area and at dusk I lift them down and pop them in the coop. I leave a torch inside the pop hole until they settle then remove it and close the door.

I don’t mind putting them in each night but I know they are not best pleased with the arrangement and I often hear them bumping about in the coop before they settle which is probably not great for them. It also makes me reluctant to consider going away for a weekend.

Recently my husband came up with a plan to give them a high shed with high perches and try to encourage them to put themselves to bed at night. This has come about for several reasons. We are thinking towards semi retirement in the near future.

We have worked for seven days a week for many years (we are self employed caterers) and we don’t have holidays and rarely go out. We have been working our socks off to chip away at our mortgage and are now in a position where we should be able to pay it off by April. hurrah! There will be a celebration and we will go out.

We then intend to work less and have already given up doing hot food events and functions where we have to attend. We would like to cut out weekends and gradually slow down a bit. We would also like to make more of our hobbies to enrich our retirement (or semi retirement).

My husband has taken over our back bedroom for his model railway and he would like to make my chicken keeping work as best it possibly can.

The back boundary of the chicken’s run (their patio area) is a large shed that runs the width of our garden and houses our two business freezer’s and crockery and glassware that would cater for two hundred and fifty people plus all sorts of other catering equipment. In front of this shed is our small garden shed. The back of the large shed provides our boundary and is in poor shape. It is however standing on a concrete base.

We don’t need the crockery and equipment now that we are not doing hot food and large functions so the plan is to gradually get rid of it all, which isn’t going to be an easy task!

My husband’s plan is to have a really sturdy fence constructed as our boundary and to have it on a concrete base. We will then lay a path of flags or concrete inside the fence to allow us to be able to sweep up leaves.

We intend to buy a really good shed for the chickens of a similar width as their patio. It must be strong and tongue and groove so that it’s waterproof. We will have to give it some ventilation. It will have a full size door for me to enter from outside but we will make a pop hole through the side into the chickens patio area. We intend to make a sloped ladder of perches so that the chooks can easily get up and down to perch and won’t poop on the girls below. It will be on the concrete floor and will have a thick layer of pine shavings on the floor and I will poop pick each morning as I do now.

The important thing is that it is predator proof and rat proof as well as being water proof and having some ventilation. Having concrete and another fence behind will stop anything from being able to dig in.

I will entice the girls in with corn and get them used to the perches and once we have removed the perches from the patio area I hope they will then go in at bedtime. We can remove the coop from the patio area and intend to use the automatic door from the current coop on the new shed.

If the girls put themselves to bed at night I would feel happier about having weekends away sometimes during the summer months.

We will then have another bigger shed next to it for the freezers with a separate section for the garden tools. We can then get rid of the garden shed and create a seating area in it’s place. This would give us room for patio furniture and we would benefit from the lovely brick wall which is hidden behind the garden shed. We want to make everything look as attractive as possible.

This is going to be quite a project but we feel it will look better and be more practical. We intend to stay in this house so we want to get this right.

Meanwhile an update on the egg laying. Peaches and Barley laid a total of twenty five eggs in December compared to just eleven in January. I did wonder if it was due to low light levels but lately have been finding some fine, tiny, feathers from them. I think they may be having a mini moult. There are a few in the dust bath and the coop overnight and a few flutter from them when they are preening. This may be why their eggs have slowed down.

Topaz has so far laid three eggs and continues to practise most days.

I am looking forward to spring to getting the mortgage paid and starting our project and maybe even having my little flock put themselves to bed. I can but hope!