Preparing for the Snow and pesky mice

For the past two days, the Met office have been forecasting snow. It is shown at its worst over Ireland and the North and West of England, but certainly it was shown as coming as far as the south east.

So I assembled the cube, added a half-meter extension (I have a meter extension, but one of the side panels seems to be missing) and then went into the garage to pull out the quilted cube cover. As I did so what looked like silver tinsel scattered to the floor. It appears that mice have had a go at it and chewed a hole to try to extract the sliver filling to make nests.

I had previously realised I had mice in the ground floor of my garage when I went to top up my bird feeders and noticed that the metal lid was not on. I ALWAYS leave it closed, in case of mice. When I opened it I saw that the peanut bag had been shredded. Some muscular mice must live in my garage.

Hopefully they have good appetites because after the damage to my eglu cover, I've put down the rat poison.

I can repair the cover by sewing on a small patch. However in the short term I've just stuck some sticky plastic over the hole, rather badly. It needs repairing soon, but I wanted to get it all ready for this snow.....this photo was taken this morning in bright sunshine. Snow may well be around the corner, but it doesn't look like it.


Still, it is good to be all prepared so I can get my chooks all snug and safe should we get bad weather. My two bantam silkies, Velvet and Lulu, are not waterproof and my bantam frizzle as well as the silkies all have feathery legs which get very bedraggled in the wet or snow.

Winter plans 2014

I am now down to 7 hens. The two big hens, Maud and Amber, live in the splendid Pink Omlet cube that Fleur gave me when her last hen was eaten by a fox. The remaining 5 bantams, Lulu (white bantam silkie), Velvet (black bantam silkie), Lyra (grey bantam frizzle), Buffy (buff bantam wyandotte) and Vera (gold laced bantam wyandotte) all live in the red eglu attached to the 2m walk-in-run. I plan to move them all out onto the patio for the start of the winter while I level up their large area and put down fresh wood chip for them. Then I may be able to move them back again over winder provided the weather isn't too bad. Nice to have enough eglus to have summer and winter quarters. I currently have a green, pink and red eglu. I have a green rablu that I can convert into an eglu (as I did the red rablu) and a large pink cube together with a 2m WIR and extensions for the cube run up to 2m. It will be garden space that I am missing.