Susan Hogarth wrote:
> Please forgive the hideous pun.
>
> We have five hens and one rooster. We have a decent-sized enclosed
> yard (16x24, if I recall rightly) attached to a largish drafty old
> henhouse. We used to let them out at lunch for the afternoon but
> they've become too familiar with the environs (we only have an acre)
> and were wandering into the street (small court, but still...) and,
> worse, into the neighbor's yard where they provided her much
> entertainment BUT also the unwelcome 'digging' of her carefully
> mulched ornamental beds. *sigh*. One or two routinely get out each day
> but stick close, and wait politely for my husband to let them back in
> at lunchtime.
>
> So now we try to let them out for 20-30 mins right before roosting
> time (in fact we often get them off the roost as they will go to bed
> early from boredom), but only IF one of us gets home before they are
> well roosted. Otherwise they can go all week without getting an outing
> (they almost always get some time outside on the weekends, if only
> that brief half-hour of glory).
>
> So they are not technically abused birds, I think. But I do worry that
> they don't have much to occupy them. Their pen is dirt, with two small
> hollies for shade. I probably feed them way too much scratch grains,
> and (at this season - winter) not enough greens.
>
> My question is this: what can we do to provide them with
> entertainment? I wanted to add some three-dimensionality to the pen -
> what is the best way for that? Branches? Platforms? And are there
> 'toys' I can provide them, or giant foodballs that they can 'worry
> over' to keep them occupied? When I kept hens before I used to throw
> them a flake of alfalfa hay in the winter for the green leaves and
> entertainment value when they were snowbound in their house; I guess I
> should try that with these guys.
>
> Thoughts? Suggestions?
>
> - Susan
>
That's a nice big area for 6 birds. But of course they'll tramp the yard solid
eh? Different levels are fun. One thing I had for a while was a car tyre -
would have been better with a truck or tractor tyre - which I placed on the
straw-etc litter and threw the cafe scraps into or, when they'd demolished them,
some of the wheat so they could do scavenging in a "special place" or stand on
the edge and peer at what was on offer.... Can you get untreated sawdust or
wood shavings which is better? That's lovely and light to scratch around in and
dust-bath in and find wheat in!
I like the platforms. At one stage they had a wooden dining-room-type chair
while it was en route from active service to firewood. It was fun: either right
way up or lying on its side, and sometimes with a plank from it to somewhere
else e.g. the tyre, or a 2"x2" horizontal support nailed to the wall. I've got
a real mezzanine platform in the making, i.e. some of it has been cut to
size..... O for more time and energy!
It's fun rearranging the "furniture" and the chooks find it amusing too.
For greens a kind of string bag, either made of strong fishing net if you can
scavenge some, or of wire netting bigger than chicken netting, is good. It
keeps the food off the ground and they can reach it from all sides. If you
haven't got much in the way of greens maybe the neighbours and local
shop/supermarket will pass on their cabbage and cauliflower and lettuce outer
leaves.
I've got a fully roofed home for the chooks - much smaller than yours by the way
- with deep litter in the night perching house and the netting-walled run.
Because it doesn't get damp the uneaten weeds get scratched over and turn into
litter along with the original straw and shavings. But if a yard is unroofed
and on the ground it will get trodden terribly hard by those little feet.
Occasionally driving a digging fork into the ground, jumping on it till it goes
right in, then levering up the soil to make it scratchible again is a Good Thing.
On the occasions when I cook chops there is HUGE excitement. The cats are too
lazy to bother with the bones so the chooks get them and although I'm a pretty
good chop eater there's enough left on the bones to provide them with more
exercise than the Grand National, chasing the one with the bone till she fumbles
it then off after the next lucky if temporary holder of the trophy.
From what Jill has said you can't feed scraps to chooks in the UK - that'd be
if you're commercial I suppose - which seems a shame since scraps, even if they
don't provide a whole lot of balanced nutrition, add excitement and the joy of
investigating new stuff.
A L P
