A man has made me a hen house; now I need the hens

[barnstaple]

It's lovely, a veritable palace! He said it would hold 8 hens and I only want 2, at least to start with. It's got a roost and a nice dark corner for them to lay in.

I need to know can I keep hens in my garden? I mean, dh says they ruin lawns.

I am assuming that they will be too big for the cats to kill - the cats left the guinea pigs alone when they got out.

Do I clip their wings? How high do they fly? We have wall all around the garden, but it's quite low in places and at one low point there are some horrible leylandii (which they could climb?).

They can jump up to 6 or 7 feet, if their wings are clipped - higher if not. If you are in a town, I would recommend confining them in a fox proof run to avoid horrible disasters! In the country, you will need to shut them up at dusk, let them out in the morning. I would personally have them in a run, for peace of mind.

Lawns - they will ruin a lawn if left to their own devices, but they will also fertilise it.

I would get 3, not 2, as they are sociable!

we've had ours a week and the lawn shows it!! we are thinking of keeping them in a run in a corner of the garden.

It was suggested we didn't get their wings clipped and we do have a 6ft wall around the garden, however we've seen them jump already...

I've had apparently 'non-flighty' heavy birds that have easily cleared the 6ft fence round their pen. It's 10ft high now and keeping them in! But if you had a pen with a roof you wouldn't need to have it so high but it's quite nice to have some perches that are 2-3ft off the ground - or an arrangement of branches.

Cats will be fine with full-grown chickens.

They won't climb the leylandii but they may well take to dust bathing/laying eggs underneath it.

Lawn - depends how big it is and how many other areas of interest there are. Before our chickens were in a pen they had access to about 5 acres of lawn, vegetable garden, flower beds, woodland, compost heaps, terraces etc and the lawn was the least used (compost & woodland being the most popular). There was a lot of poo everywhere though!

Our garden is not quite as big as that, TDONB! It's about 40ft x 60ft andwill be mostly lawn but with veg/flower beds round the perimeter andit has a horrible pond in it too. This garden is a long on-going project and it will be months yet before we are ready to get the hens. Meanwhile, I can gloat over the house!

We are going to raise the height of the wall using trellis (honeysuckle) and poss some fencing at the back. I like the idea of them dust bathing under the trees -it's the only thing they'll be good imo, I hate leylandii - and laying eggs beneath them. We could put up a pen of some sort, I suppose,but I don't really want to. I'll see if I can blag it with dh!

No foxes round here, they all went to London for the rich pickings. There might be a few mink. I could us the hens to trap them and then make a coat.