Egg laying on the floor

[Tweetypie]

Hi Margaid and Rick

I re-posted that I should have put straw, not hay, but the post did not save. I must have been thinking about horses (I used to give them hay) when I wrote that.

Their coop has deep dust extracted sawdust. When this has run out, I am going to try the hemp bedding, although they seem happy as it is.

Cindy lays the bigger egg. She is the one who goes back into the coop around 9am and sits there until she has laid it, whilst Barbie constantly chatters away, as if she is announcing the news to the whole village. It's quite funny.

I was concerned at the start about redmite, so invested in the powder before I got the hens and ensured it went in the nooks and crannies of the coop and pen. I was also thinking of getting a smoke bomb red mite killer. Prevention is better than cure. Have you ever used them?

[Marigold]

I've never needed to, as I have a plastic coop in a roofed run with no access to wild birds, and so far I've avoided red mite altogether. Many people recommend Red Stop, which is a liquid that you put in very small quantities into their drinking water, and it makes the hens blood taste nasty to the redmite so they can't drink the blood and eventually starve rather than breed. Probably a good thing to use whilst you don't have any redmite, so if a few did arrive, there wouldn't be a massive outbreak to deal with. Just keep checking the places where there are joins between parts of the coop, especially where the perches slot in to the sides, and concentrate on treating these with diatom. No need to put it anywhere except in the coop, (i.e, not in the run) as the mites emerge at night and feed on the hens when they're roosting. If you mix the powder up into a slurry you can paint it on, no dust and it sticks better. The dust is very harmful to human lungs as well as to the hens' breathing apparatus, being silica dust which is carcinogenic, so best used in as small quantities as possible, (if at all - I don't bother - if I did find I had a few, with a plastic coop I could take everything apart and sort it out.)