Holidays and chickens

[cupsoftea]

What do you do when you go away for holidays if you have chickens? Do you have someone look after them? It seems a big job to ask someone to do. We'd like to have chickens but don't know what we'd do when on hols.

You wring their necks and pluck them then cook them then stick them in your DCs lunchboxes. So much better for them to have free range home grown chickens ...

that was what dh said!! but really wonder what we'd do & how others manage.

lol.
We went away for 10 days in the summer, I kept mine shut in the run and left the pop hole open and a friend from up the road came round daily to check and replenish food and water and collect the eggs. Only takes 5 minutes and her kids enjoyed collecting the eggs.

Alternatively you could take them on holiday with you ...

Has this always worked out CS? - it's cleaning and dealing with problems aspect.

QC - dh then said this!!

A bit of a final solution!

My bil (in rural France) leaves his chickens all week with a large rat-proof hopper of food and a cunning system of trickling water. May not be practical for you tho.

If you can make sure your enclosure is fox proof you wouldn't need to shut them up at night. I don't think that just asking someone to put in some food once a day and top up the water is alot to ask. They could of course have all the eggs.

What about an ad in the local paper for a reciprocal arrangement?

well, we had only got them a couple of months earlier, so hadn't been away before, and not since.
I have newspaper on the floor of the house and just take out the top 2 sheets and put in the compost daily - friend happily did that, not messy as you just pull the sheets out and straight in the bin.
There weren't any problems with them, I hadn't considered that aspect!

I mea chickens in lunch boxes is a bit final.

I can't see that they have to be cleaned out while you are away, unless you are going for 3 months.

racingsnake - good idea for an ad. We don't have any chickens yet but would like to be more self sufficient.
cs - thanks for explaining

racingsnake - good idea for an ad. We don't have any chickens yet but would like to be more self sufficient.
cs - thanks for explaining

shit would be piled high in our hen house if they weren't cleaned out for a couple of weeks, and we only have 2. But then the people we got them off put straw down and only changed it every week or so, so maybe it just gets disbursed and doesn't matter?

What a home coming job to deal with! Not sure if I could face this!!

Deep straw is a good idea, clean out less often then put it on the garden.

Our kennels/cattery board them !! It is very expensive but may end up doing it when we are away for 2 weeks.

Our neighbour feeds them, fills up water, collects eggs. They're fine.

i just saw this - sorry not to reply sooner.

my neighbour sees to all the animals, but i thought it was a bit much to ask her to come round at dusk and dawn every day to let the chickens in an out, so eventually i fitted an automatic pophole opener. if i remember rightly it was about £80 and i fitted it myself in quarter of an hour or so.

so they get themselves up and put themselves to bed. i leave a feeder and waterer full - they need topping up about every three days for our four chickens, and the neighbour does that and collects (and keeps obviously) the eggs.

they are a lot less bother than the rest of the managerie (except maybe dd2's gecko which takes minimum care, but unfortunately has to go the exh's if i am away for more than a few days because neighbour draws the line at lizards!)