Their new house!

So, Nick very carefully struggled into the run with each box and opened them up, and they fluttered out VERY quickly!! Think they must have been in a bit of shock as they had been sitting by the side of the run while we put in fresh water, food and stuff.

Initially they all huddled under the cube, and we just stood there like lemons thinking 'What do you do with a chicken?' But we had stocked up on grapes and poked one through the bars and they were more than happy to scoff them up! The brown one Hazel is the most friendly/nosey and was following us about.. We dutifully spent the next hour or so just watching to see what they do.... Soooo we have discovered that they are going to be mamoth time wasters!! Shame....................

The big day!!

So we were up at the crack of dawn, packed and ready to leave at 9am - talk about eager beavers!!! We found it very easily a normal semi detached house with a note on the door saying 'very busy today so come down the garden'. so off we went down the garden, and down, and down and down.... massive man, Ben says he's not sure how big but 7 or 800 feet long!!! Man it was amazing, dotted all the way along were various chickens in wooden houses all looking very happy...

Ours were in a big pen with many others who all looked the same, Ben though knew exactly who was who thankfully..... We put our boxes together and some shredded paper in the bottom and we were ready!!!

So how do you catch a chicken???? Well the brave Ben goes in with a HUGE fishing/butterfly net and charges about trying to net them!! funny thing was we had joked about how they would do it, and never thought it would be true!!! So out he came with either one or 2 chickens and straight into the boxes, he did tell us who was what though which was very helpful, then the lids were on and straight into the car! Aircon on and away we go..... only to realise 200m down the road we had forgotten to get him to clip their wings!!!!!! No returning for that though, we will have to cross that bridge when we come to it, hopefully the man round the corner will help us out with that one.......

The journey went very well, about 90minutes with no clucking in the background, then we unloaded them straight away!

The Great Dilemma

Soooooooooooo, there we were, tucked up in the Whitehouse B&B in Highcliff on sea.... glorious place everyone should spend some time there, good old fashioned seaside. You park on a cliff top and walk down a very steep wiggly path to the beach! Grrrrrrrreat. We spent 2 hours there scoffing a sarnie and managed to burn to a crisp even with cream on! Nick has a very desirable 'man tan', you know the sort, brown from the mid bicep down - nice!!!

Anyway. I'd had a 'feeling' in my water and wanted to call Ben the hen man! 'Have you got my email' he says? We've had no mobile signal all week, let alone internet access, so the answer was no! 'Well' he says, 'there was a mix up, and i've sold all your hens!!!!!!' Well after i'd picked myself up from the floor, and he'd apologised 50 million times, he said he has a lady in the same business who may be able to help us out, and to call back in next evening...

Talk about frantic, we'd arranged our entire holiday around this, so nanny and donna were on case texting me info on other breeders we'd researched - yay a life line.....

But relax.......... the lovely Ben had managed to 'source' all of the hens we wanted, they were from the same 'batch' as his and all would be well..... just turn up at lunchtime the next day, and the family would be complete!

It's complete!!!

The big build is complete!!!! Yay for us.... we are feeling very proud of ourselves... its looks great. We began after i'd come home from work... poor Nick had been digging up a stump in the front garden ALL morning.. I got home and he was up to his chest in a massive hole with an even more massive stump in front of him... it appears that the bugger will not be moved.. so we literally are stumped! Might have to ask the paving man if he can do something with his digger, so the hole is here to stay for a while...

After lunch we tottered off to the back garden and reinstated the big build...Once we got going it didn't take too long, it appeared that we'd done the worst of it yesterday with the leveling of the ground, so we literally had to snap it all together... there was no swearing, stamping or huffing as it was all very smooth.

We've made as much room around it as we can so that we can get to the nesting box for egg collection, and do that without wading through masses of mud. We had to chop a couple of mini trees down to make way for it, but that means we can see it a bit from the house which I quite like!

Nick made use of his new chain saw and lopped a massive branch off of our unwanted elder tree and fashioned it into a perch for them, they can also go over or under it!!!!

Just need to get a bit of trellis for a small piece of fence in case they want to try for the great escape over it!!!

1st Attempt!

Well, we decided to have a go and get some of the cube constructed today as the forcast for the weekend is poo, much like the monsoons we've had this week!

So out there we went tools in hand, got the wheels together, the under side grills on, and the downfall came...... in we ran to check on how the omletteres were getting on who had theirs delivered today - sad ha???

Out we went again, turned it up the right way, got the front on and the ladder, had to move it into place with much tooing and frowing, only to discover our flat patch, was not flat!!! There was an episode of frantic raking and a side panel went on...

THEN THE HEAVENS OPENED!!!

Tarpauling everywhere.... a very wet boyfriend, rain had stopped play in true british fashion......
better luck tomorrow.....

They are ordered!

So again after much trawling of the web, we have decided to get our hens from Hen House Poultry in Teston near Maidstone. That means they will have a much shorter journey home... we have put in a order for 6-7 chooks so that we can decide on the day which ones will be best for us!!!!

But there will definately be a ranger an amber, a black, a blue, we are torn on the speckledy so will have to wait and see....

All very exciting........

It's Here! It's Here

Well it arrived!!! A whole 24hrs early......... I'd been glued to the forum as when I called to check the order they said it could be a day either side! Not good as I'd arranged it for when I was a day off...... Was feeling a bit gloomy about it as we've all had monsoon for the last few days..... So was on the phone to Donna who was explaining that her plants were drowning and she was going to put a brolley over them and a naffing great big lorry appeared outside!!!

Think I took the man by surprise as I was SOOOOOOOOO excited!!! We were both out there getting drenched! There were 5 huge boxes... and they had to come inside as getting up the side of the house in lashing rain is just toooo tricky.... poor coops was a bit put out I can tell you.....

When nick got it we took it all out of the wet boxes and it's now safely stacked in the living room until the big build on the weekend!!