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

Converting a Rablu to an Eglu

Having moved my hens onto the patio and cleaned their eglus, I decided it was time to clean up the red guinea-pig eglu that a friend gave me. I had used it last winter during the complex process of moving 6 chickens from my old house, 5 miles away, to my current house.

Chicken Moving Process:

1. assemble red guinea-pig eglu & 1m run on patio
2. after dark (when hens asleep) collect 3 wyandotte bantams from green eglu at old house 
3. drive back home and put hens in red eglu
4. next day drive to old house and disassemble green eglu and run and put in car
5. drive back home and assemble green eglu on patio
6. that evening, drive to old house and collect 3 big hens when asleep in eglu
7. drive home and put hens in green eglu
8. next day drive to old house and disassemble pink eglu and run and put in car
9. drive back home and pile eglu to one side and collapse with a glass of wine. 

After this procedure, the bantams spend several weeks in the guinea pig eglu, quite happily. When I finally assembled the pink eglu and moved them into that, I couldn't face cleaning the red guinea-pig eglu so it has languished ever since.

There was a sale at Omlet - and conversion kits had dropped from over £70 to about £50. There was lots of other stuff on sale as well, so I put together a big order. When the conversion kit arrived it had very clear instructions with it….for everything except actually converting one eglu type to another. However it seemed to be simply a matter of unscrewing 4 big screws to detach the base and screwing in 4 new ones to attach the new base form.

The red poop tray slides in the back and the roosting bars slot in neatly on top, with the nest box shown just inside the door.

Having a fully functional chicken eglu as a spare emergency "hospital" eglu if I need to isolate a poorly chicken, I now find that another friend has offered me her green rablu plus run and warm jacket.

With two eglus - I wonder if I could get some more chickens. 

Off to browse the internet to see what breeds of hen are around.

Winter Quarters & Eglu Cleaning

With the rain we have been having recently, I decided it was time to move my 6 chooks onto the patio. That is where they spent last winter, and it was easy enough to clean the patio when they moved to the end of the garden, but meanwhile they were close to the house, had hardstanding with woodship to walk on so didn't end up caked in mud, and were a little sheltered from the elements by the proximity of the house. It was also useful that one fateful morning when a fox decided to attack the two eglus! Fortunately he didn't succeed in getting in, but I was able to run downstairs, turn the lights on and face him down through the french windows. Chickens were unsettled but unharmed.

It was good time to move them. The chicken end of the garden had turned into a dustbath during the summer, and both eglus were covered in black dust. Jet washing them with my new jet-washer made a huge difference, they were like new. So now my hens are happily on the patio.

My pink eglu hasn't looked this pink since it was new!