Please can and help set up our chicken family.

[Roundbales]

We are hoping to buy some chickens in 3-4 weeks time. A large fenced off area is already done, it's one concrete and we were thinking of putting bark down. Would this be ok? The hens would also be able to roam our garden when we are home too.

We need to buy a coop and thinking of this one

We would like three hens, are we able to buy 1 of each breed? Or is it better to stick with 1 breed? At first we wanted 2 hens and a cockerel but after reading online people are saying we would need more hens to keep the cockerel happy. Has anyone had a small number of hens and a happy cockerel?

Last question what breed would you recommend with primary aged children?

It's ok I wasn't taking it personally. I tend to think the same as you as I've had horses for over 30 years so the thought of a rat doesn't necessarily send me into a panic although I really wouldn't want one in the house (and I have to say the one I saw on my lawn recently made me go a bit funny as it was the biggest one I'd ever seen!). My neighbour saw one trying to get on to her bird table and has gone into complete overdrive (can't sleep apparently ). She is absolutely lovely in all other respects and has a lot on her plate at the moment so I will forgive her .

Yes, in the house, not so good.

We had rats a couple of times indoors in our old house.In fact I think the only times we didn't have mice were when we had rats....Oh the joys of country living and old houses!!

I bought ours as pullets (7 weeks old) as I couldn't get point of lay in the breed I wanted and from the breeder I trusted. I have cuckoo maran (bantams) which are autosexed so I knew I was getting girls. If you are buying chicks you could end up with boys depending on breed. Ours hated us when we had them and hadn't been handled but will now mug you for whatever food they think you have and think.its their right to be in our house.

We have an eglu and Im a big fan of plastic coops because they are a dream to keep clean and have less of a problem with red mite.

We've been quite lucky really. We back on to the downs but in the ten years we've been here we've only had one mouse and my stupid cat brought that in. I got quite fond of watching 'Jerry' climb the curtains of an evening and felt quite sad when the cat finally got him about a week later.

Lovely piccie Polka.

Good point too re:mistakes being made with sexing day old chicks.

I sooo want a plastic coop but can't afford one atm. We've only had red mite once but it was a real pain to get rid of them.

There were two reasons we didn't have a cockerel, one being the neighbours (obviously!) and I knew the temptation to hatch chicks would be too great and I didn't want to have to be 'culling' the boys.

Culling is horrible but necessary unless you can find homes (fat chance).I agree -only go down the chick route if you are prepared to do it!

Red mite is a sod.

Ive learned loads about chickens in the last year and am still learning. DH has me creased because he's picked stuff up from me and talks to people like he's an expert! One of ours has started her moult and we are currently talking pin feathers! The Omlet forums are very helpful and Ive learned loads.

We have not seen any evidence of rats around our chickens but I know a house in the next street had a nest of them under their decking. I keep our black bags in plastic dustbins and although I leave the food in overnight I remove any leftover brocolli, corn cobs etc.

polka lovely photo! what breed do you have?

I'm getting very excited, roll on summer holidays I say.

Thank you! I have cuckoo maran bantams. I wanted bantams as I thought they'd be better in a small garden. We have heavy clay soil so I wanted a clean legged breed (no feathered legs to get matted up with mud). I also wanted a reasonable amount of eggs, some breeds don't lay that much and marans lay a lovely dark egg (although our bantam eggs are a little smaller then eggs you buy in tesco).

Lastly, and this is shallow, I wanted a 'pretty' chicken and I love the barred feathers. The only problem with getting 3 of the same breed is that it took me months to be able to tell them apart!

As you can tell I'm chicken obsessed and love talking about them!

That's lovely polka and thought through well.

Just a thought...we have a large (8ftx5ft) concrete block built dog kennel with tiled roof. Could we use this as our chickens house? What adaptions would be needed inside?

Yes you could.
You would need roosts off the ground and nest boxes.
Somewhere to hang a hopper, and voila!

I would have thought so - Im sure Ive seen people who have done that on forums but putting in litter trays etc as nest boxes raised off the floor. Will see what I can find for you.

Ive got wooden broom handles as roosts in the run if that helps.

I've spent 2-3hrs trying to find a coop that suits us (price, size etc) only to forget that we have an empty -bloody- kennel outside! the kennel also has a run, but we will have to adapt and cover the top to make it fox proof.

greengardengirl.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/how-to-convert-an-old-dog-house-into-a-chicken-coop/

That might give you a few ideas.

polka lots of good ideas, thank you.

I'm getting very excited...I'm thinking maybe 1 Sussex Ranger, 1 Speckledy and a Rhode Island Red. Do you think these three will be ok together?

We have a 10,000V electric fence around our coop and run and haven't had a problem with rats getting in and eating the food. We keep the food in small metal dustbins with a locking lid.

We built our main coop and run with patio bricks underneath, then we cemented in brieze blocks all around and put about four inches of soil in, then we layer the compostable stuff on top (first it was dried leaves, now coconut fibre). We cover the top of the run to keep the weather (sun, rain) off.

Our chickens go into their coop during the day, we use stuff in it that apparently they like dust bathing in. Plus a couple have a mid afternoon nap. Right now they are in their travel coop/run but when I let them out they head back to their main coop to dustbath and dig.

Those sound great hens! I really like our buff orpington, she is really cuddly and tame.

Id love a buff orpington!

Im considering electric fencing to keep the little sods in their half of the garden rather than anything out! They always thwart me and 'our' half of the garden is like forbidden fruit to them!

I think you've picked good layers too - the Rhode Island Red in particular.

www.omlet.co.uk/breeds/chickens/

I also have bantam cuckoo marans. I went for these as it's a suburban garden not a small holding iykwim and this way we can have 1/2 dozen or so without causing the neighbours to fret. I also have a primary aged child who'd done a chicken keeping course at our local community farm and wanted to be able to apply his knowledge. Who am I to disagree if he wants to do the mucking out? The course gave us access to observe about 15 different breeds so we were able to make a reasonably informed choice about breed for novices.

The strain we have lays approx 220 eggs per year - not a shabby no for a purebreed. They are autosexing too if that helps. Eggs are roughly those of a supermarket small, so not too shabby even though the hens themselves are much smaller than regular size. I'm impressed by how sweet natured our cockerels are (we hatched 4 chicks at Easter), and how easy all of them are to pick up and handle. I'd deffo recommend them to other parents as a breed given our experience. There's no way I'd risk a normal sized rooster around his toddler cousins but the banties are fine (so long as they don't develop aggressive tendencies as they age!).

Our run is on concrete. I opted for a second hand eglu go, to make it easier for DS to keep clean. New eglus are beyond our budget and I wanted to be able save for a permanent roofed walk in run. We recently moved house to a home formerly owned by non-gardeners so this year the eglu run and free range is fine, long term I'll keep them permanently in a covered run so they can destroy my yet to be created veggie patch.

Inside the house I'm just using newspaper under the perching area for summer. In winter I'll use aubiose or similar as it composts easily. For the concrete run floor I've used a mixture of builders sharp sand, woodchips, pelleted wood cat litter and finally shredded privet that has been sun dried. I'll probably add a bale of straw over winter too at some point.

My goal for the concrete run floor is that what's used eventually goes onto raised beds via the compost bin enroute so I'm deliberately not being too precious about what I use. It gets turned over weekly with the odd dollop of ground sanitiser (nettex of stalosan F will do) to avoid encouraging flies to my chicken run. Every so often the top layer is removed and replaced with a fresh bag of whatever I can lay my hands on at the time. The sharp sand came from a small purchase + a neighbour's donation, the privet is from hacking over 200 foot of the darn stuff around my garden boundary. It can be a very costly exercise to provide a suitable scratch surface in this area on concrete but you can be a little creative. Avoid anything that's prone to mold like some types of bark and you should be fine.

Concrete as a run base is working well as our garden backs onto fields which have rats & foxes in the hedgerows that I'm keen not to encourage onto my property for obvious reasons. I bring the food in at night, and store the feed sack it in one of those old fashioned galvanised dustbins to avoid this.

bochead thank you for all that information.

They run we already have is about 6ft high, do we need to cover this? Worried that foxes might be able to jump/climb over. They will only be in the run during the day while we are out and will have access to the coop (old dog kennel) at all times.

How high should their roost be off the ground? The shed is about 8ft high. Am I right in saying that ones broom handle will be enough for 3 hens?

*one! Typo!!