Holiday chicken care...

[bananabrain]

We're going away for a week quite soon and not sure what we should do. A neighbour has offered to look after them, but is it a bit much to expect them to call morning and night to open/shut the house door AND do the food/water/check for eggs at some point each day? They don't go in their house till after 10 at the moment. We could leave the door to the house open as they're in a bolted run - then the neighbour would only have to call round once a day - but I worry about foxes digging in.
Also (see my other message!) at the moment they keep spilling their water so I would need to make sure they had a better container so they don't end up without any for the whole day.
What do other people do with their chickens when they go away???

BTW the neighbour is actually a couple of roads away, not next door!

a neighbour pops round and does food/waters/eggs once a day. I leave them open anyway so that's not an issue.

Thanks, maybe I should just leave their door open then....

Try putting the water drinker inside a tyre. It sort of stops them tipping the drinker over and keeps the water cool.

If your neighbour is happy to look after them and go twice a day, especially to shut them in safely, then I would be delighted.
It is only for a week and neighbour will be able to collect the eggs. They may be interested in keeping chickens for themselves and seeing how they get on.

Have a lovely holiday and don't worry.

Mine are in a secure run so I leave their house open, but I do that all summer anyway, there don't seem to be too many foxes around here though. My neighbours, who are next door and crazy about animals, pop by 2 or 3 times a day to water, food, eggs and let them out to free range for an hour or so as we do. We let them have the eggs of course and give them a bottle of wine too.