Readying the eglu for the new girls

Good Friday - the Easter bank holiday weekend. After deciding which chickens I wanted to buy, I sat down to order them from  Meadowview Chickens to find, to my horror, that two of the breeds I fancied were already out of stock. Clearly everyone had the same idea and wanted to buy hens to collect over the Easter weekend.  I quickly made new choices. The buff bantam silkie was still available, I added a cuckoo silkie with black/grey banding which should be lovely. Then I went for a black/gold pencilled wyandotte. I've missed not having wyandottes since Agatha and Buffy passed away. This will be different as the wings are pencilled rather than laced. 

The Walk-in Run

I've arranged to collect them at 3pm tomorrow. This was the only collection slot available - fortunately it was the time I suggested. The roads are going to be full of people collecting chickens.

Today I spent the day in the garden getting one of my spare eglus ready for my new arrivals.  My current girls reside in a nice walk-in run with perches, treat footballs and even an unused chicken swing. I plan to have the new girls (it will be fun choosing names for them) in the green eglu and tunnel run for about 2 weeks as they acclimatise and develop their own group pecking order. Then I shall introduce them to the existing flock. Usually I do this when they are all in bed asleep. I collect the new girls one by one and pop them in with the established flock. They will get bullied, but it should be fine. They will end up getting along well together. The current flock aren't huge bullies, though a fair amount of pecking goes on at treat time.  

The green eglu ready for the new bantams