Its time I introduced the chickens.
yoko, coco, shelley, milly
In spring I decided to dig over part of my garden to plant vegetables. When I found that the soil was only two inches deep and there was bitmac underneath that would be really hard to break up and dig out, I decided that I would get some chickens instead. They have provided endless amusement and plenty of delicious eggs. In fact they are so amusing that even if they never laid another egg, I would still enjoy having them. They each have their own personality. I have four chickens. Yoko, Coco (she is of French extraction), Milly and Shelley. I did have two hens (Lucie and Josephine) who turned out to be roosters, but that is another story.
They have just been introduced to snow, and they are not too keen on it. For several mornings I have had to defrost their water container so that it cn be refilled with fresh water. It is bitterly cold at night and I feel sorry for them, although I am told that they are very hardy.
They live in this ark, which we move around the garden as they dig it up…. the grass is no longer recovering from this treatment.
They sleep upstairs in the loft of the ark.
When I am at home, they get out into the back yard to forage and wander around, so they are part time free range chickens. Not long after they arrived, I decided that the run was too small to keep them in all day, so we built an extension.
It is so cold at night now, that I decided what the hen ark needed was a bit of roof insulation. So I bought a hot water cylinder jacket and secured it with bungee cords. I wonder if this is going a bit far.
🙂
Short Cranks 
The roof insulation has been quite necessary after all, we have had weeks of sub zero temperatures, -11 celsius recently, and now the promised thaw means the temperature rose to -8 celsius last night. Which makes no difference at all to the frozen ground, frozen hen house, and frozen cabbage that I put out for the chickens. Their water freezes every day too. Thankfully we have not had as much snow as in the central belt of Scotland, where motorways have been blocked and people have had to spend the night in their cars in severe sub zero temperatures.
No cycling for me until it warms up to about zero! It feels like everything is in suspended animation, just waiting and waiting for a thaw.
By: Gillian on December 9, 2010
at 9:27 am