Many thanks for your reply Karen. Actually I worked it out and it was at least 6 weeks since the cockerel came to visit so not sure if there are any fertilised eggs under our Dora? If they were definitely fertilised eggs I would wait and let her hatch them as we have plenty of space and have 4 chick...

Dear All I'm hoping you can help me with some advice please. About a month ago my friend brought round a cockerel that her dog had caught and we put it with our 2 chickens. I realised that this was a big mistake straight away as the cockerel would not give the chickens a minute's peace so the next d...

Thanks Mo. She has space to get away and usually sticks to herself in the garden. Its a bit upsetting when you see that one is being bullied but I think you're right - the last thing I want is to cause more problems. I suppose it's just nature at the end of the day. Many thanks.

Hello
I am a bit worried about one of my chickens Hettie as she is being bullied by the top hen. I only have 3 chickens and wondered whether from anybody else's experience, introducing a couple more chickens might stop the top hen picking on Hettie?

I'd be grateful for any advice.

I always go up in the evening, close the coop and say night night to my 3 girls. They all say night night back in chicken speak! I don't get home from work in time to see them go into the coop but at the weekends I have been observing them and noticed that the girls go into the coop in pecking order...

Thanks Lisa, it's a difficult one without the right products available but I'll buy the powder while I am in UK and do my best to zap them with household products in the meantime. The chickens are fine I am more concerned about them getting comfortable in our house!

good morning all, I have just discovered red mite in our chicken coop and I think the little critters have entered our home too! I am very concrened about this and the problem is that I can't buy Diatom or Poultry Shield in Portugal to try to get rid of them. Not only that I don't have the facility ...

Thanks for the replies I discussed it with OH this morning and we just can't get our heads around clipping the chicken's wing. I feel like I would be cutting her freedom and although it annoys me when she gets over the fence and destroys the plants, I would feel awful if something happened while she...

One of our 3 girls Gigi keeps flying over our fence (about 1.5 meters) that divides the chickens area from our patio. We don't want to put a very high fence up because from the patio area it would look like a prison What do you think of clipping a chicken's wings? Is it cruel? It's only Gigi who man...

My husband came home on Saturday with a bucket full of fresh figs that someone had offered to him, so I made some jars of fig jam and some jars of preserved figs in syrup, my daughter's favourite.

My best frugal recipe would be roasted vegetables with pasta. You can use any vegetables in season, a good slosh of olive oil and while the vegetables are roasting, boil the pasta. Mix together and the results are very tasty, especially if you roast whole cloves of garlic in their skins. Being in Po...

Thanks for your replies

This is extremely embarassing and will probably result in me being ridiculed by the laners for the rest of my life but I didnt want to ignore your questions. The lumps on the hens' combs appear to be mud!!

Our 3 chickens are now accustomed to the heat and keep cool by shading themselves under a big pomegranate tree for most of the day. They also dig holes in the soil and lie down in them, they seem to like the cool earth.

Hello, I´m hoping that someone might be able to shed some light on a problem I have discovered with my 3 hens. They have all got 1 or 2 small hard lumps on their combs and when i tried to scratch one off i could tell it was a hard lump rather than a scab. lWould anyone have any idea what these lumps...

Tonight I'm going to make some piri-piri sauce with home grown piris and we will have piri piri grilled chicken on bbq with some very thin home made fries.