ok me and the wife have seen an Eglu these are sturdy plastic coop's and runs (but cost £360) we have been looking for a chicken run for a while and are seriouly looking to get this soon

has anyone got one?
does anyone know where i can get good quality cheap hens around retford / lincoln?

any tips, ideas

let me know

Hi, my friend re-homes ex battery hens for British Hen Walfare Trust in this area. Are you after re-homed hens? I can pass you her details?

Dan

hi mate yes please, id be very interested, i keep looking at the net but cant find anything local

I'll PM you.

Dan

thanks

Try some of these - need a big garden though. Too big for foxes to take on.

what a big cock you have, do you show it!

piece of cake to look after. Daft as very daft things though.

here for all the advice you ever needed.

watch out for the fox and rats, a big gun should take care of both

thanks gary

If you have no luck mate the farm next to me has a few i can have a word if you want and see where he gets them he wont pay much hes a right tight arse ...lol

Russ

thanks russ im going to go for the contact that dan gave me, ive done a bit of research and its a nation wide rescue compay that jamie oliver is the patron and its only 10mils away

Cool you could walk them home

that takes the nugget!

Mark

Have you looked on this site.
chooks

Remember if you have more than 50 you are supposed to register with DEFRA,

cheers mate, thats a differnt part of the site that GCN gave me but thanks

more chooks the better

Good luck with the hens mark, I lost about 20 of them last year to foxes ..grrrrr! I havent forgotten about the alien dropship either, Ive jsut cleared a path to it today Ill send some pics next week

cheers mate

Go for it!!

We have an aviary, and we have Bengal finches, Zebras, budgies and Quail. We love keeping birds, plus the Quail lay eggs for us, though tiny ones

well ive just ordered my Eglu! from www.omlet.co.uk cracking name!!!

it will be here tuesday now i await some Hens hopfully from the ex battery hen trust

its eggciting

Well, pluck me.

How many hens?

eggzactly 3 hens for me

No yolk?

Well me old cock, u eggspecting breakfast from them?

Eggselent! That means that it will take only 20 weeks to pay for itself (plus a while longer for the feed to pay for itself).

Eggciting stuff hope it all goes well for you mate you wouldnt want egg on your face now would you.

Plus at Easter you can paint hawk schemes on the eggs cracking! ...lol

Russ

ok ok i give in enough cracking egg jokes!!!!!

20 weeks? well the eglu cost £375!! yess i know thats alot but no redmites, or rotting wood and its easy to clean

but we worked it out as a bit longer

30p and egg x3 so £0.90 a day (without food) so say 80p a day so that 469 days if they lay one egg a day each!!

so we are looking at 18months to break even

Sorry, there's a typo in my post; I don't have any eggstenuating circumstances. My sums:

15 eggs a week from 3 hens (you'll not get one per hen per day);
£1.20 for half a dozen eggs from Sainsbury's;
this makes a saving of £3 a week;
Divided into £360 purchase price makes 120 (not 20!) weeks, or 125 weeks if you paid £375.

eggzatly the eggstra £15 was for delivery, and your right i wont get one every day, so 24months - 30months is about right, but these hutches will last for years, so may even eggspand in a couple of years and get another one

for those that dont know this is an eglu

Eggzasperating, isn't it?

my brains gone from boiled to fried!! im poached!

When the chickens come home to roost, don't forget to celebrate. Any excuse for a hen party, after all.

im hen pecked as it is

just been sorting the garden out, and looking at the veg, (i may have planted too much) we should be self surficant for carrots parsnips, cabbage, sprouts, beans, tomatoes, radish, beetroot curguetts onions and potatoes for the next 6 months!! im attually preparing to freeze some veg, as we speak so with the eggs, all i will have to buy is meat and pasta, rice (we make are own bread)

You better get used to it, if it doesn't pay off the missus will have you living in it............ BTW I take it you never saw the series where that bod did the rare pork breeding, was it jamies farm or something along the lines...... they got a bunch of battery hens in and they didn't lay a thing......

I would just like to say that I am ethically opposed to parsnips.

Parsnips are young carrots that have their throats cut and are held upside down so all the orange leaks out. That's just cruel!

As for sprouts... they are just Satan's bogies.

well the hens are about £3 each so if they dont lay, after a couple of weeks, there sunday lunch!

probably Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, because you will still be chewing it LOL ......

well ive had confirmation of the hens 24th july is collection day!!!

Mark are you preparing for 2012 ( the end of the world) or is this just to fund your hawk addiction build .... lol

Keep in mind women and children become attached to animals having one for sunday dinner after its been named clucky might just cause you a bit of earache mate the ones in the supermarket just magically appear and never walked round and stuff dont ya know.

Russ

What does every chicken do after it scratches the ground?

Good luck,I've kept poultry and it's well worth the effort.They won't eat spud peelings unless you boil them.They will eat everything else,though.

well it arrived the other day and is now pride of place in the garden, neighbour from hell doesnt seem impressed, (so it was worht the money after all!!) now we just have to wait for the Hens!!

SWMBO is happy to eat them she's not hung up on names or cutie things, infact i recon she would happily kill them herself, infact a £3 a pop its cheaper than buying them from Tesco's

They're not suppose to be eaters i heard, they are supposed to be very tought come stringy as they were not bred for food, so do not have nice plump fleshy bits on them..

http://www.selfsufficientish.com/forum/vie...=14&t=18390

http://www.jamieoliver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=34291

will they still provide them if they hear you are eating them??

Unknown, but it's got to be one hell of an incentive!

Graham

Forgot to mention mate working with chickens is bad for your mental health and you will end up joining the people you look after

watch this if you dont believe me



Russ

You say that now, but wait til you need to pluck them and clean them. Even if you're not emotionally attached to your hens, it's not a pleasant job. However, on the good side, while you'll never get a decent Sunday roast off them, a hen cooked long and slow makes a decent stew with plenty of useful stock.

shes a ex raf copper with a evil streak!! she has no problem with violence ans death!!

So she's a nasty plucker

If you're going to eat them then skin and joint them and make a casserole out of the resulting bits.Time saved plucking and making the best of the meat.
Might be a good idea to see a few eggs first though.