Project – The Urban Hen Keeper

It’s four days into Project – Urban Hen Keeper and the hens have really settled into their new home. With a little perserveriance and a lot of chatting, the hens are now quite happy to feed from our hands (except Mabel she’s still very cautious) and don’t run a mile when we go into the run. Rhoda will even let you stroke her, albeit for a second. I might even try picking them up at the weekend!

The hen’s seem to love the Eglu, they even head up to bed about an hour before sunset!

The Eglu is amazing! It is so easy to clean out and doesn’t take very long. I’ve lined the bottom ‘poop’ tray with straw to make clearing it out easier. Rubber gloves on, pick out the poop, stick it in an old plastic flower pot, dump it in the composter, done! My success rate creating workable compost is not great, so hopefully the addition of chicken poo might help.

I’m already fairly confident the Eglu’s big clean won’t be too mush hassle or fuss, fantastic!!

The raspy sounds, the wheezing, sneezing and diarrhea. We quickly realized things were not as they should be with Trudy the Sussex Light hen. We phoned Claire at Hobby Hatchers, took her advice and decided to take Trudy the speckled Sussex back to the farm.

Claire was very optimistic that Trudy would make a full recovery, but offered to swap Trudy for another hen. We decided to take her up on the offer as I have zero experience looking after chickens never mind a poorly sick hen!!

After a little deliberation and a delicious piece of cake and a cup of tea, we decided to take home the Rhode Island Red hen. Simon’s sister named her Rhoda, a perfect name!

When all the hens were in situ we were a little concerned about how our cat, Toby, would take to the hens. Turns out he was  more concerned that all the attention wasn’t on him for a change.

What a fantastic day, the one I’d been waiting for … going to get the hens!! To say I was excited was an understatement!

We found a fantastic breeder called Claire her business is called Hobby Hatchers, they are based near Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria. All of the chickens living on the farm were living the life of riley. I felt a little bit guilty taking them away from their beautiful home. Myself, Simon and my cousin Hannah had a look at all the birds and selected 3 hens that would be coming back to live in the luxury pad Simon had built for them.We chose

A Silver Welsummer

A Speckled Sussex

A Light Sussex

Discussions look place in the car as to their names and we came up with Beatrix, Hannah and Trudy

When we got them home, we quickly realised something wasn’t quite right………….

Simon worked like a man possessed to finish the chicken run with very impressive results!

Conception

After years of harassing my husband (and several bottles of wine one evening) I finally convinced him that keeping hens was a great project for us to undertake together. There was one condition to us keeping hens in the garden. The chickens would have to live in an Eglu. His reasoning for this:

1. The Eglu will be much easier to clean

2. He will not need to build a chicken coop, only a chicken run

3. He likes the design of the Eglu (very important if you are a graphic designer!)

Before we commenced Project Urban Hen Keeper, many plans were drawn up as to how the chicken run would look and how it would house the Eglu. There was many a discussion about the quantity of wood required and how we would save the money to buy an Eglu. We took part in many car boot sales, money was very kindly gifted to us in aid of the cause and we did without a few luxuries. Before you know it we had managed to save enough for the hens!!!

The next stage was to order the wood, and all the parafanalia that needs to go with it. It just so happened that the Eglu was due to arrive on the same day so Tuesday was going to be a very exciting day for me!!

The Eglu arrived a little too early in the morning, as we were still in bed, none the less I flew out of bed to answer the door, clothes on back to front, upside down and hair all over the place. With bated breath I opened the gigantic box that revealed a brand new green Eglu, FANTASTIC!

The wood didn’t arrive until the afternoon, we began work on the chicken run immediately.

To put it mildly, the weather was changeable so we decided putting the gazebo up was a shrewd move. Come rain or shine we were going to build the chicken run!

A few hours graft in the afternoon and by the end of day one we had made excellent progress (well Simon made excellent progress, I made excellent cups of tea!).