kitla wrote:That is a good point, you dont want the chicks eating the layers pellets (too much calcium)
That's another reason to seperate them.

The worse thing is the adult hens want to eat all the high protein chick crumb/growers pellets which is about 3x the price!!

I would say the sooner you can move them into separate accommodation, the better. Easy enough to do at night.

Bare in mind once the chicks are born they need their own food - chick crumb, then growers pellets.

Given half a chance, my hybrid hens would go for a mouse! I've been using a "trigger happy" feeder successfully for a good few years now, although a little gets spilt, in general there's nothing left for rodents to eat so no problems on that front.

The bigger the volume, the longer it will take to freeze over. I use a 25l plastic container/drum laying on it's side, with one side cut off. If it's lightly frozen, just kick the side to break the ice. If it's heavily frozen you can just smash the top with a spade or whatevers to hand. Hopefully th...

So far no plans for the boys - or the girls!! If any friends were wanting them they could take all 5. It was good fun raising them and I might do more this year. Found this old video. For future reference, 1" weldmesh is too big for young chicks. I added a couple of boards along the bottom righ...

They're about 5 and a half months old now, and almost as big as their 'mum'

They're still in the same run for now, although we've all moved house since then, and the hybrids have a new run that I've just finished building

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I would say, don't put a compost heap in the run, but make the run a giant compost heap! Add a few planks to the bottom of the wire all the way round to help contain it. then just chuck anything in there, leaves, grass cuttings, sawdust, woodchip, used bedding etc etc The hens will love digging abou...

One of my hens is almost constantly broody, so I decided to put her to good use, and gave her a separate house/run and some Pekin Bantam eggs from a friend.

She hatched 5 earlier this week, and they all seem to be going well so far

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I never shut the coop! The run is secure and the chickens get up and go to bed at whatever time they please, all year round. So in the middle of December they're going to bed at the back of 3pm, and in the summer they'll be getting up at the back of 3am!

Neither buzzards or red kites have shown any interest in taking my chickens (so far!)

Poor things, I think it would've been kinder to put them down than release them into the wild

Have a search for "trigger happy chickens" feeder, I have one fitted to a bucket, and it works well for me

The hens are 2 hybrids (hy-lines) and 3 wyndottes inc the cockerel (think they are classed as bantams?), they're all quite timid.
Wonder if it would help if I could get a couple of large hens to add to the flock (have the space) to ward off the kittens, who are mad and totally fearless!

Hi, just wondering if anyone has any tips for calming down a pair of kittens. We had and older cat previously, but had to put her down last year. She was fine with the hens, and they tended to keep to themselves. We got a pair (brother and sister) of kittens in October. They're now about 5 months ol...

mellya wrote:and have about 36 cubic metres of space with things to perch and play with

One thing to note, 36 cubic metres is very different to 36 square metres!