Keeping Hens in the Garden

beer enigma

I'm looking to keep a couple of hens in the back garden for egg laying & wondered if anyone here has experience, tips etc.

I have a sizeable town garden, its 200ft x 50ft & the last 60ft is converted into a kitchen garden....thats where I want to keep the hens.

My plans is to use an Eglu

http://www.omlet.co.uk/products_services/products_services.php?view=Chickens

looks fairly straight forward, but as I say, if any of you have any helpful hints, I'd be grateful.

thanks

Gordon Gekko

While I don't have any personal experience of keeping hens in a suburban garden, gardening books I've read have discussed it i.e. Monty Don. He says that hens and veggies ie cabbages etc. do not mix without close supervision in that the hens eat all the young plants, and scratch up your seedlings.

Overall though he is v. positive about them both as egg producers, bug eaters, and all round entertaining pets. He uses them to clear newly dug ground of slugs etc., and also cleans out his greenhouse of overwintering pets by letting his hens in for a couple of hours. I suppose you'd need to make sure they were safe at night to protect them from urban foxes or cats. I'd love to keep some myself but my garden's just too small!

luckat

Perhaps this isn't the right time to start, with all the paranoia about avian flu?

When you do get round to it, an Eglu isn't enough for them. They need a run, where they can be safe from the fox and hawks (yes, they're around in suburbs), and have shelter, nice places to perch and places to hang up a cabbage for them to jump at, and plenty of room so there's no bullying.

This not only protects your hens from predators, it protects your garden from the hens!

It probably means a wired-in run running the width of your garden at the end, in a nice sunny spot.

Hens like to take dust-baths, and they need to graze and forage every now and then. A happy, crooning flock of hens is a lovely thing; unhappy hens are the saddest thing on earth.

You'll also need to know what to feed them (organic mash from the garage at The Scalp on the Dublin-Enniskerry road, plus some wheat, corn, barley or oats, and lots of treats - hens love sunflower seeds, bacon rinds and other goodies, but don't give them chocolate or anything mouldy, ever). They need regular greens, every day.

You also have to work out your stance on hens as pets. What about when they're old ladies and no longer lay - will you still love them? How many are you going to have? Do you know how to integrate a new hen into a flock? (Take out one of the others * late at night* and put them to roost together separately; they'll wake up together and settle; after a few days put them back into the flock together.) Do you know about scaly leg and other ailments? Do you know what breed you want, and where to get it?

How are your neighbours going to feel? Are you going to have a cock (loud!) and really win their hearts as they're woken at 5am? Think carefully before you do anything!

Good site: http://www.feathersite.com/

Sigma Force

Eglus are aparenlty fox proof and suit a town garden well aparently the only problem with them is they are expensive and the run they come with is small so you could really only house about 2 hens comfortably in it but 2 hens might be enough. The eglu would need to be moved around the garden to prevent the grass being over worked, if you measure the size of the hen house and run and then see how many times you could move it around the garden you will get a better idea of how many hens you can keep and the size of the run.
It might be worth while waiting until the whole avian flu thing blows over, it hasn't reached here yet but I guess it's better to be safe than sorry.
Other than that a few hens in the garden is great, make sure you have a large..very large compost heap at the back after a couple of months it will fill up fairly quickly even with just a couple of birds.

beer enigma

The Eglu comes very highly praised by the UK animal health bodies, which is a big bonus...two hens would be plenty for me, I just want a supply of fresh eggs from hens that I know have been fed on a good diet.

Surely with avaian flu..its an ideal time to get hens ?, at least you know that your birds are well looked after and not exposed to a whole flock of potentially sick birds ?

My kitchen garden area is well protected on the boundaries by chicken wire, as we tend to get a lot of hungry bunnies round here...albeit quite central Cork !, so I figure on letting the hens have the run of the whole 60ft x 50ft area when Im working there...I'll soon shoo them off if they take an eye to the veg

luckat

The reason for not getting them while there's anxiety about avian flu is the neighbours.

They'll be watching lots of TV programmes telling them that the reason bird flu spreads in Asia is that people live closely with their animals, "with backyard fowl", and the time will come when they demand that your chickens become dinner.

You could give the hens the run of the garden, but there are two reasons not to:

1) What garden was that? Hens love to root and tear, and if they're given free run they'll tear up your favourite plants.

2) Ms Fox sits on the wall. "Mmmm," says Ms Fox. "Chookie dinner, my little cubs' favourite. Heeeere, chookie, chookie, chookie...."

Web pictures of the run with the Eglu look *way* too small for even two hens to be happy in it.

Are you in Dublin, Andip?

Sigma Force

That's what put me off the eglu it is a good concept but for two hens it would work out cheaper to buy a moveable hen ark or get someone to build one for you.
I love this site for gazing at all the different housing. I think there is someone in Blessington that builds them. There's info on this site too about avian flu.

http://www.forshamcottagearks.com/MainSite/erol.html#1x0

luckat

Yeah, the Forsham arks are lovely. They have a particularly nice duck one.

By the way, if you're interested in hens, there'a an English gardening magazine, called The Kitchen Garden, which has a hen column. Easons in Dublin do it, so they'd probably order a copy for you. Excellent mag.

beer enigma

luckat wrote:

The reason for not getting them while there's anxiety about avian flu is the neighbours.

Are you in Dublin, Andip?

Neighbours will be no problem with the hens, one keeps pigeons anyway, but I've ok'd it with them.

As I mentioned above, the hens will have free run of the kitchen garden whilst I'm working in there, which is quite often, so they'll have plenty of room to stretch. The whole area is rabbit proofed with good chicken wire running from 1ft under the soil level to 5ft above it, so there's no way the hens will stray.

I have looked at some of the Arks, but the eglu just looks very well contaibed and extremely easy to clean. Wooden arks tend to get a bit destroyed after a while from the chicken poo !, the eglu can be washed out...thats one of the reasons it got such high praise from the UK animal health authorities.

I'm in Cork btw..

old boy

anti fox fencing is a must, it comes in 50 metre lengths inc supports costs roughly 100 yo yos, it is movable so you can change it around, also you need an electric fencer to connect to it, nothing gets in or out, compleat safety, even 2 legged foxes gives it a miss, get the best fencer you can afford you only buy it once

beer enigma

old boy wrote:

anti fox fencing is a must, it comes in 50 metre lengths inc supports costs roughly 100 yo yos, it is movable so you can change it around, also you need an electric fencer to connect to it, nothing gets in or out, compleat safety, even 2 legged foxes gives it a miss, get the best fencer you can afford you only buy it once

Yeah I did wonder about foxes......I've never seen one in the garden, but I presume they do roam suburban Cork ??