Dithering...good or bad sign?

Sounds like your two remaining hens will be happier without madam bossy boots around! Thing with chickens and run sizes is that they will use as much space as you can give them! I've got five brown hybrids. So, smallish birds. My secure run is around 11ft x 14ft, and around 7ft at the roof apex, and their outside pen is 44ft x about 70ft. And although at the moment, they can't keep up with the grass, in Winter when the ground is wet, the five hens can reduce that whole pen to bare mud in a matter of weeks! When I started keeping chickens years ago, I used to let them free range in the garden during the day. I have nearly an acre of garden. It's full of trees, hedges, shrubs, all a hen could wish for, in fact! Were they content with it? Were they heck as like! That's why I fenced off a pen for them. They were forever going off adventuring! Into next door (three nasty dogs!), over the hedge on the other side into a field to which I don't have access, and not coming back until next morning! And I was forever having to reclaim them from up and down the road, as they sauntered along!! :roll: So, now they are fenced in to a large enough area, with trees and a few bushes for shade, and grass to nibble. And yet, if they can, they have their necks stuck through the chainlink fence, to have a nibble on the grass on the other side (which is, of course, greener!) :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
 
Ferling a little guilty too - I seem to remember that somewhere back in the various threads BB, we determined that your run was big and strong - definitely strong but we forgot to ask how big.
Good solution in the end.
Can you upload a photo or two so we can get our new pullet pictures fix?
 
rick said:
Ferling a little guilty too - I seem to remember that somewhere back in the various threads BB, we determined that your run was big and strong - definitely strong but we forgot to ask how big.
Good solution in the end.
Can you upload a photo or two so we can get our new pullet pictures fix?
Click to expand...

I'm really struggling to! I am on my phone and can't work out how to upload a picture... Any ideas??
 
We ran through the various platforms and the way posting pictures is done here in Jaffa Cake's thread

http://poultrykeeperforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=125&t=10669&start=10#p65865

Android (on a phone) seems to work very similar to a browser on the desktop.
 
The easiest way to post pics from a phone is to instal the Tapatalk app. for forums and opt for Poultrykeeper forum. You choose the photo and just click on the link. This gives a link back to your file rather than a visible picture, but does save on server space and is very easy.
 
LadyA it sounds like your hens have a fabulous lifestyle. Those pens are huge. Made me smile thinking of them escaping and coming back the next morning, like teenage drunks. ?
 
Tweetypie said:
LadyA it sounds like your hens have a fabulous lifestyle. Those pens are huge. Made me smile thinking of them escaping and coming back the next morning, like teenage drunks. ?
Click to expand...

Well, yes. But as there are foxes living down at the back of my place, I certainly couldn't risk letting them continue to stay out loose all night! Fingers crossed, in all the years, I've never yet lost a chicken to a fox, although neighbours have been cleaned out several times! My fencing isn't electrified, just heavy chainlink, but only about 5 feet high. A fox could easily get over it. It's having the hens shut into the run by teatime I think that's kept them safe. Seems the neighbours' hens are easier pickings! In Winter, the local hunt hounds get very frustrated, and keep running in a circle through the fields surrounding me, and up the road past my gate, and back around the fields again! They know the fox is in there, but they can't come in after it! Although last year, early one Sunday morning, I vaguely registered the baying hounds, and suddenly realised that the sound was way closer than it should have been! Leapt out of bed to find that the entire pack had been so intent on chasing a fox that they had just smashed the wire fence down from the field next door, the fox was gone, but the hounds now couldn't find their way out! I let them out the gate, gave the young lad with them an earful, then had to go running down the road after him, because he'd left one behind. And later, I rang the kennel master and explained about the fence, and they were very apologetic and grateful that I wasn't being nasty about the actual hunt, and came straight over with new fenceposts and wire and repaired the fence.
 
Phew,that was close, then. Good job they repaired the fence, I don't think I would have been best pleased. I've asked around here if anyone has lost anything to foxes, but nobody has. There's a rescue place at the top of my hill, just 150 metres away, they have hens, goats, sheep, pigs...all rescues. For a place surrounded by fields, I think we must be lucky, but need to remember that there is always a first time. My husband has a powerful rifle, so Mr Fox had better beware if he shows his face around here.
 
There was a fox dead on the road a few yards from my house this morning. Ten years ago I'd have been really sorry. These days I'm grateful that it's one less to try to get at my girls...
 
rick said:
We ran through the various platforms and the way posting pictures is done here in Jaffa Cake's thread

http://poultrykeeperforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=125&t=10669&start=10#p65865

Android (on a phone) seems to work very similar to a browser on the desktop.
Click to expand...

Keeps saying my file is too large. I hate computers.
 
The new image handler on this forum is better than we had before. It can now be bigger than 800 x 600 and it gets resized automatically but most cameras (even on phones) tend to take very large images. Software that will crop or resize images is fairly easy to come by. Off the top of my head:
The standard issue Paint application in Windows (desktop) will resize and crop
I had a free app called 'Image Re-sizer' on my Andriod phone a while back (comes with ads but OK)
Pix on Linux desktop (Mint) or Gimp (Windows or Linux) is a full blown image editor.

If you have any image viewer on your phone it probably will also crop and resize if you have a look in the menus etc.

Apple/iPad/iPhone is bound to have an editor built into the viewer.

or, you could PM one of us for an email address to resize it for you.

While I'm here - this is the first proper 'wind egg' we've had. Bet it was Mo!
P6260178.JPG
 
I posted this link recently but can't remember where. All you want to know about egg abnormalities (and a lot you don't.) BTW, 'Wind egg' is the polite euphemism for fart egg, which I think is more evocative.
http://www.aviculture-europe.nl/nummers/07E03A06.pdf

And yes, JaffaCake, you would expect egg numbers to go down in very hot weather. Good deep shade is essential for the chickens, and plenty of water of course.
 
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