WANTED - More Chickens - Lanarkshire, Scotland

[Annpan]

If anyone knows of any going spare... I am in the market for another 3, or 4, or.... well.... I'll see how many are available. :D

We have had our chooks for a good few months and got more than used to the eggs we are provided with daily :D For the past few weeks we have been baby sitting 3 more hens and really they take no more looking after than 2 (and that is with 2 houses, 2 runs, 2 lots of food to measure out)

Also now realised how HUGE our chicken house is in comparison to the interior space of one built for twice that many birds. SO we have room for more. We also have requests for more eggs from several people on our street, and (even with 5 eggs a day) I never got to make quiche or pickled eggs yet... so we need more hens.

Anyone know of any coming available in the area give me a shout please :D

[Ron and Jean]

We are getting some from the battery hen welfare trust on Saturday, but you would need to travel to Callender. I think they still have hens on offer.
Jean

[Annpan]

No, I'm not strong enough for ex batts. I quite simply don't have the time or patience or love they need at the moment.. but it is something we plan for the future, when we can offer more of the above.

Plus they would be coming in with the 2 girls we already have and that is something we would want to get right...

[red]

cant help you ann - but oh its a slipperly slope....

we said we weould only have 4

then we said we would add a new one each year

then we said 12 was a sensible number to have

then we said 12 plus a cockerel was the same thing

then we threw out the sensible figure

we were selling eggs to the next door neighbour.. but they stopped coming. So we suddenly developed an egg mountain. i froze lots , we ate quiches etc galore.. the mountain kept growing. So i made a nice poster with a pretty picture of the eggs and stuck it in the window

it was too successful - we sold them all, and i took the poster down, but people keep coming back and asking if we can spare any....

now im thinking of getting more chickens.

saying that, i vowed not to buy anymore but hatch them - which we have been doing but have a high proportion of boys. not all bad.. they go in the freezer.

[Annpan]

I have arranged to buy more from the place we got the first lot from... I think I'll go for 3 more. After seeing the house that JohnH has for his, our house is plenty big enough for them.. in fact a bit big and drafty for just 2, specially in winter... brrr...

I just need to add another perch for them, to give them plenty of roosting space.

I'd love to hatch some, I'll stick to the easy stuff just now though. When the house is done and E is a bit older we will hatch some I think.... then comes the meat

[red]

getting them from the same place is a good idea - the reason I vowed not to introduce any more birds but hatch more from now on was partly because we have the incubator, broody hens and a cockerel! - but also because last tiem we bought new birds.. I inadvertantly introduced mycoplasma, and had one die and the rest pretty poorly.. medication from vet to do etc.

getting from the same place greatly reduces the chance of introducing something new to your girls

[Ben1971]

Hi. If you are wanting hens for egg production rather than just pets then I would advise against ex battery hens. The poor things are "egged out" by the time they leave the battery.

I hear you can get hatching eggs on Ebay quite cheaply if you have a broody hen or an incubator but some of them may turn out to be roosters, which is ok if your neighbours don't mind the early alarm clock and of course no eggs.

The cheapest I have found are Warrens from a local barn poultry farmer.

Good luck

[Annpan]

Not ready to hatch our own yet either, and not ready to slaughter the cockerals at 12 weeks (or whatever it is) We'll get there maybe, one day.

I think that exbatts can lay prolifically, remember they are counted as a unit of 50 birds or what have you, when they lay less than a set figure a day (maybe 40 or 45), that is when they are got rid of. so the individual that you have may well still be laying every day, or 9 out of 10. They can live a while too but it can happen that they are so confused and stressed by the change of scenery (remember they have never seen sky or stood on grass before) that they don't last a week.

I understand it can be very rewarding, just not for us at the moment.

[red]

you will be looking at killing cockerels for the pot at about 20 weeks. I tried one at 16 weeks as it had been suggested that it was not economical to got the further 4 weeks - they eat more than the weight they put on. well that might be true but taking into account the hassle factor of killing plucking and drawing them, I reckon on waiting a bit longer!
mine were hybrid crosses, so not a good breed for meat, but at 20 weeks they were about 3 lbs in weight.

I understand you dont wantt o get into hatching now - and certainly you have lots on your plate with house renovation etc - so I get that, but if partof your reason for waiting us so your daughter will understand more when she is older.. i wouldn't wait - little kids take it in their stride.

I would avoid introducing battery hens to a present flock.. there is bound to be some bullying/settling down, not the best thing for a chicken already under stress.

[Annpan]

Oh I know she would take it in her stride, but I am quite looking forward to us learning about it together... she is too young just now to appreciate the wonder of it or to really take it all in (in a learning kind of a way) but yeah, also because we have too much on our plate just now.

E is quite the country bumpkin, gladly tells her Grandparents the Cat eats cute little mice, yum, yum, yum and crunches all the bones up.... her grandparent (being city folks) think that cats eat whiskas, and that's it. I don't think they want 2 year olds to be speaking of such horrid things