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Looks like I might be getting some girls soon too....

What would seasoned chook owners suggest is a safe area for the chooks to roam around in?

I am planning on making a movable bottomless run (a chook tractor) but I have thought that when I am out and about in the garden I could let the girls out to roam... trouble is, on one side we have 7ft fence and 10 ft hedge (needing pruned) and a Jack Russel. On the other side we have a nice and dense 4ft hedge and a Collie.

Would it be reasonable to expect that the girls wouldn't roam too far from home considering the barriers and dangers (I don't know if hens can smell danger???) or are they stupid animals who will soon be dog food if I let them out of the run.


PS. I wasn't going to do this immediately, I'd wait until the girls knew where home was and that it was safe there.

Oh Annpan, how eggsiting (sorry couldn't resist that one).

In my experience, chickens are perfectly capable of squeezing through the tiniest gap in a hedge or fence and totally INCAPABLE of finding their way back again. After repeatedly having to ask my neighbours if I could have my hen back please? I ended up having to put chicken wire along the bottom 2ft of hedge all around my garden (a huge job).

As for the height of the fence/hedge, that depends on the breed that you have. Some can fly really well (as my neighbour found out when his bantam went flying up on to my roof and then off down the road) and some can barely jump a few inches. My new ex-bats don't seem to have the first idea about flying and huff repeatedly about the 12" jump up into their home but my old ones would jump a 3ft fence if they really wanted to.

A word of caution, once a chicken has tasted freedom, they will stress themselves out trying to escape when they are caged in. I personally think that if you can't let them out all the time then you should simply make a bigger run.

If you do let them out when you are in the garden they will probably stay quite close, especially if you "leak" corn or other treats from your pocket every few minutes. Then you won't be able to get away from them and they will constantly trip you up.

Train them to come to a call. If you call them in a certain way and reward them with corn a few times they will quickly learn and you can make them follow you to the hen house when you want them to go to bed.

Have fun
Zoe

Thomzo wrote:A word of caution, once a chicken has tasted freedom, they will stress themselves out trying to escape when they are caged in.

As another new chicken keeper here are my observations - when I am working in the garden I let the chooks out (they have ruined the grass "inside". They idly wander out, and wander back again in their pleasant scratchy relaxed chickeny looking busy-but-not-really way. If I am digging they stroll across to have a look and they seem to like the smell of freshly-dug earth - must mean worms and bugs (they ignore BIG JUICY worms and go for the little ones ????) They don't look to "escape" and they know where home and food is. All 5 can be "in", all 5 can be "out" and any combination between when the gate is open. When they are locked "in" they don't seem to mind as long as there is food and water there. Maybe I am lucky to have relaxed hens :-)

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the advice. Finally, after much talking about it, I have 4 chickens!! Hurrah! I collected them this afternoon and then did an embarassingly cack-handed attempted at putting them in their new house. I decided in the end to put them in their run for a couple of hours, explaining to my 2 year old that we would have to wait for Daddy to get home from work before putting them in their bedroom What a complete girl I am! Well, they were flapping their wings a lot and it turned into a bit of a kerfuffle!

They are already very entertaining, though, although they seem a bit confused and nervous at the moment, which is fair enough. Hopefully I'll do a bit better at getting them to bed tomorrow night. I don't want to stoop to having to ask my boyfriend to do it for me again

Sleep well my little hens (actually, they are bigger than I thought they would be!)

Emma

Oh Emma what fun! You'll probably find that they put themselves to bed when it starts to get dark. If necessary, throw a handful of corn into the henhouse when you want them in. They'll soon run in after it and you can shut the door. Do try to get used to handling them though as it will make it much easier when you need to move them or inspect them.

Enjoy your new family.

Zoe

Yes I'm looking forward to them mastering the art of putting themselves to bed! I managed to pick up a couple of the calmer ones and they felt all lovely and warm. Ahhhh.

We kept ours inside for their first days... so they knew where "home" and "bed" was. seems to have worked.... they have some form of light-detector, and wander inside just before it starts to go dark.

I think handling hens when you are new to it is a bit like handling a baby when you are new to it.....you think you will break them and you are too tentative
Given a bit of practice you get used to it and you wonder why you ever found it dificult

As far as getting themselves to bed....when i had hens most would go up to their house at the appropriate time but i had one which would happily go to sleep outside in various spots in the run I constantly had to put her to bed.....she was generally a bit of a lazy bugger though lol

Congrats on getting your girls, you will have hours of fun with them. I wish I still had some, I miss my girls

Hi stuffed,

Yes, I think the baby comparison is very accurate. The first time I ever picked up a baby (my own!!) I got caught out by the wriggling and general newborn floppiness. Soon realised you have to grab it with a firm grip! We're going to let the girls into the garden tomorrow while my boyfriend builds them an extension (their run is tiny) so I shall be getting plenty of practise. It's those flappy wings that keep catching me out And just about every under-7 down my road has figured out that we now have chickens, so I'm sure they'll all be coming round wanting to hold them, too. I should start charging. I'll make a fortune.

Emma

PS - They DID put themselves to bed last night, at exactly 8pm! 3 went in, no trouble, although 1 needed a helping hand. It's all so much fun!!

The trick to holding a chicken is to tuck it under your arm so that the wings can't flap. They can hurt themselves, and you, if you allow them to flap while you hold them. Once they are safely tucked up they tend to relax and go quiet and you can carry them around as long as you like. Of course, not all hens are the same so some might be happy to let you hold them and some will complain like mad, and some, like my wimp of a cockerel, just run away when you go near.

Zoe

I've never been able to handle my hens except when they are broody when they go all docile then I can pick them up and walk around with them. They are friendly but move off squirming if I try to stroke them and when I do pick them up, no matter how hard I tuck their wings in they will struggle and try to flap like mad and then scratch me to smithereens. I tried and tried to get them used to being handled but they weren't having it so I gave up.

As for my ducks the closest I've ever got to them is a quick stroke whilst they're busy eating, but often they won't even come near the food if I'm too close. Sad cos I've love to have chooks jumping on my shoulder and friendly ducks, especially as the duck's feathers are soooooo soft and lovely to the touch

We managed to do a bit of chicken cuddling yesterday. My 'blokey' OH grabbed the friendliest one (H&N Brown Nick) and she was quite content when he had the wings under control. Then my 2 year old promptly grabbed her, in quite a kamikaze fashion, but she was very patient. I don't think Scarlett would have got away with that manoeuvre with any of the others! We have a Bovans Nera who wasn't too impressed about being picked up (tried to shred OH to ribbons), and my poor little Maran Cuivre seems to be very shy and just hides in the corner of her house whenever we try to go near her.

I didn't actually cuddle any of them, though, as I have discovered I'm a big wimp But at least now their extension has been built and they are happily pottering around today with over twice as much space in their run as they had yesterday. No eggs yet...

Millymollymandy wrote:As for my ducks the closest I've ever got to them is a quick stroke whilst they're busy eating,

Sounds just like my cockerel. Yet his brother, who lives next door, is as docile as anything and will happily have a cuddle.

Zoe

Hello all,

Just wanted to share the exciting news that we got our first egg today!!! A lovely Easter Monday gift from one of our hens - I think it was the Bovans Nera. Apparently she was sitting in the nest box earlier today and refused to budge, while the others were pottering about the garden. I opened the lid to de-poo later in the day, and there it was!! I was so excited you'd think I laid it myself

Actually I was quite surprised as I thought I read somewhere that their comb gets really big and red before they start laying? All 4 hens still have little combs so I wasn't expecting an egg for a while yet.

Oooh, I quite like this chicken-keeping malarkey

Yippee!! Their combs get bigger as they get older but the red colour, I think, indicates a mature hen i.e laying or post-laying (as my post-laying girls have red combs too). Comb colour can change if they get broody or go off lay in winter though sometimes. I may be talking rubbish but this is just from my observations of my own hens!