peanut butter's what got our rats too! What is it with rats and chickens?? we had the occasional rat before the chickens (very overgrown garden to the rear of us) My ladies are on concrete and I have never actually seen a rat in the run, or any droppings etc and the feed is kept in metal dustbins so...

Ha! bit like my OH who has a personal vendetta against ivy and goes into a frienzed attack the second a single leaf attempt to breech the neighbours fence. I think the new enemy will be bindweed. I have bought him a new long handled fork and a right angled fork . Armed with new weapons of mass distr...

Good advice, I confess that I probably would have gone for the sheet of plastic and a roll of "duck tape"... glass greenhouses scare me too!

Well, having taken note of the comments here and having further explored the net. It would seem that bindweed is an international pain in the butt and will indeed take over ther world. It will be eaten by cows, horses, sheep and goats. Pigs will and chickens MAY eat the roots. Further reading highli...

ok. outside it is.... will net them thou cos we have birds and rodents at the moment

I've only grown garlic twice before. once many years ago when I lived in Oxfordshire. I had a bulb that started to sprout so Ijust stuck it in the ground and it did great! Then about five years ago, we were living in Tenerife, only had a really small garden but thought I'd give it another go..... go...

I guess this is pos' one of those " cross over" postsBut I'll start here. I have finally, after two and half years, got my long awaited Allotment / Jungle On the upside it has a shed( nearly caused alloment wars but that's a different matter) and the water pipe is on the corner of my plot,...

Hmmm, well, what I mean by " well behaved" is ... you hardly ever hear them, you occasionally get the " I'VE LAID AN EGG " squwaking and there is one that has learnt to mimmick a cockerel ( I dont believe that any allotmenteer would flout the rules and keep an ACTUAL cockerel ) n...

UPDATE. The ladies will now lower themselves to eat the mixed corn ONLY after it has been soaked overnight and then boiled until tender, with perhaps a light dressing of ACV! I am in the process of sprouting some to see if that is to their liking ( soaking it and leaving it to sprout uses a lot less...

I have tried soaking it but, NO. They like sweetcorn, they like popcorn ( plain)I will try soaking and then boiling it to see if that works. I have even considered sprouting the barley/ wheat bits but that means picking them out from the rest I have threatned the removal of the mealworm privilage pe...

Having previously discussed what corn actually is and when it should be fed, I dutifully went to my local pet shop and not seeing any in the self serve bins I asked the chap who owns the shop. " oh yes we have one bag left, I'll get it for you". Now I know I should have declined it but whe...

went out to feed the ladies this morning to discover that the OH had left the run door AJAR all night!!!!!!!!!!!!! any half witted fox could have just helped them self Luckily the're all fine. A rubber egg for breakfast will be the least of his worries this morning. Well that's one way of putting a ...

thankyou ladies, ....... rubber egg.......no, paleface wouldn't go for it, mind you I do have some plastic ones left over from Easter these may confuse the OH.... If I cooked him a rubber egg for breakfast he would probably just blame my cooking!! so corn is in fact... corn! I will see if I can trac...

Well, there has been several weeks of calm in the run since Dizzy's ascent to power. The strict regime of " no laying before breakfast" is still in force and Dizzy even started laying again However many of these are softies but they are becoming less frequent and we are probably getting a ...

that is not looking good! I have no idea what could have caused this but is there any way that they could have eaten something that is toxic for them?. I know very little about poultry illnesses but I have seen a similar condition in fish which have been treated with too high a concentration of para...