♀♂ Ah! They came out rather small! It depends on what you are typing in and the font preferences for that application. i.e. I'm typing in Firefox to write this and the default font is DejaVu Serif which contains the symbols (they are also the planet symbols for Venus and Mars.) I copied and pasted t...

Gliding too! When the CLBs were young I was lucky to just catch, out of the corner of my eye, one streak over the fence and over the gardens (spooked by the washing.) Excuse me, can we have our chicken back?

... I don't mean to be argumentative at all Chickenfan. Quite a few have never had red mite and so have never had the dubious pleasure of knowing their ways or getting all to familiar with what they look like. I know I imported our red mite dynasty in a bag of damp wood bark mulch about 3 years ago....

Dont worry about the compost heap Chickenfan. Red mite are so common in the wider nvioronment that you cant change the effect on wild birds even if you had buckets full. Wild birds can choose where they roost and that naturally controls the wild mite population. Can you post a picture of the mites i...

A coop has to be empty for 9 months before all the red mite have died Rick. Presumably it takes that long because they eat each other. Based on my experiments they quickly die above 55C. An early indicator of their presence is ants as they eat red mite amongst other little bugs. Yeah! I thought I h...

I tried torching today and set my jacket alight without even noticing. OMG! Be careful Chickenfan! Though, I must admit, Ive used a small gas torch to waft over localised red mite in the run Ive had plenty of practice charring timber and, still, it not really that sensible or safe! An electric hot ...

Your absolutely right Chickenfan. It's too small for 2 hens already. I'm not sure if any reduction in relitive space can be made for bantams rather than large foul but I think probably not as it is mostly about their visual perception of space to help avoid bullying rather than just relitive sizes. ...

Maybe they do the thing of having holes in their pockets and distributing it evenly round the garden :) It is officially now known as the sh#t shaker - and here it is IMG_20181101_225122.jpg Just tall mesh basket. I thought the drill (with an allen key as an eccentric weight) would speed it up but t...

I must admit I'm impressed by mouse tunnel making. The only way in through the floor was a missing half brick where I didn't have enough to go around the dust bath hole and finish the paving square. The start of the tunnel is at least 2 metres away. They couldn't have planned the route from A to B (...