Firstly hello to everyone

Being my first blog (hopefully first of many) I would like to say that before I joined P&T I was not the most experienced of people at all when it came to chicken keeping!  I recall many a day in my childhood on my grandparents farm, collecting eggs in the morning, knowing that I would enjoy them for breakfast that day, but that was probably as far as my knowledge went.

Since joining I have learnt so much and I hope that as this knowledge will expand and I will be able to pass it on and assist others with little “tricks of the trade” so to speak.

As Trevor mentioned we have lots and lots of little chicks who have been successfully hatched from one of our new incubators, and reared in the last few weeks.   I have been eagerly watching them and can say, without doubt that they have blossomed under the brooder hen, and enjoyed every mouthful of the chick crumb!  I never knew they could eat so much.

The next stage has started and we have erected a Seabright chicken house and run today, which looks really good.  There is plenty of space in the run (something I would imagine people would worry about) and as the house is raised the chicks will even have more room to run around in.

As new products, special offers and helpful tips come to my attention, I will be the first to pass this information on, however please feel free to email any questions, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll just ask Trevor!!!!!

We have today finalised our new design and alterations to our super popular Dorking chicken house, we have changed the door opening system and ventilation as well as improving the wood quality and increasing the thickness from 10mm to 12mm. We have also added a small chicken run for those days you can not free range your birds. Can be seen at http://www.pandtpoultry.co.uk/index.php/fuseaction/shop.category/categoryid/10

In my silent no posts period I have been working on many new chicken house designs to which the new Cochin is now in production for 12-15 birds, I hope to launch this early April. At this stage I will also be launching a weather panel run for the Brahma, Seabright and of course the Cochin. After this I plan to be launching the new Aylesbury Duck Houses for upto 6 ducks and the Ebden Goose house / duck house for upto 10 ducks or 6 geese. I have based these on the Brahma and Cochin size houses so we can offer a one fits all run. I am hoping for these to be available from the end of April 2009.

We will be ensuring high quality so 12mm for the chicken houses and 15mm for the duck house and goose house. All will also have our easy cleaning design. Prices will be very competative.

We are very excited as we have confirmation our new design Brahma chicken coops will be shipped out to us on the 1st November 2008. Hopefully with delivery between the 4-5th. We are very excited as these are our new economy design but with very good features including our easy clean trademark following through on the design.

I was also amazed to see other chicken houses with similar dimensions on another site being advertised for upto 20 chickens!!! Wow some people selling these houses really need a talking to. In fact ours has a larger internal area and we will advertise only for 8 large fowl or 10 silkie size live birds. Maybe their 20 birds are frozen and stacked in their house. Please keep to our bird number recommendations and you will have healthy happy birds.

This will be our only new launch in November as this is our holiday time as well.

Yes we all have seen a huge surge in all forms of mite this year, it is not our fault but that of amazing weather conditions but treatment is costly so accurate treatment is vital.

We have had so many orders for red mite powder this year which is great for me but overall not good news for you, but correct usage will help you and your birds and save you a few £ and lose me a bit of revenue. Our aim though is also to sell you a product that works.

If you have a chicken house that has thousands of mites or even 100’s then red mite powder will NOT work, this is classified as an infestation. At this stage you must let the birds out do NOT clean the house and use our mite kill spray very liberally then close the house for 60 minutes and let it do its job. The mites are dead. Now clean the house (if you cleaned the house before you were rescuing them by removing them outside before spraying them. Repeat this spraying in 5 days no later than 7 days as all the eggs will hatch and you will be infested again, kill them in 5 days and you have d=broken their cycle, do not spray in 5 days and the first spraying becomes a costly respite only as they are back.

Now you have sprayed the second time the red mite powder comes into effect as a PREVENTION rather than cure, sprinkle small ammounts of red mite powder where the perches meet the walls of the houses and in the knooks and crannies of the house. I work on the principle of mites come down to feed and back up to hide and rest so think like a hungry mite and you will know where to sprinkle and kill them.

Large ammounts of red mite powder are usless, think light dusting on a regular basis and it will work, a large clump makes it ineffective.

Hopefully this will save you a few £, keep mites away and make keeping chickens more enjoyable for them and you.

(Sorry if you have a felt roof on your house the above does not really work as the mite will breed under the felt and you can not treat them, please remove the felt and worse case replace with corragated roofing so mites will not live there then use the method above)

You may have spotted we are listing new chicken house designs with different launch dates.

Our Dorking Chicken House and Maran Chicken Houses are launched now and we ship within 24 hours for the fastest chicken house delivery in the UK.

Within weeks we will add the Barnvelder Chicken Houses which are raised on legs, ideal for wet areas or areas with rodent problems.

The above chicken houses are what we will aim as our economy chicken houses but then we are also offering 3 more options over the next 3 months of a very pretty chciken housing we will be offering the Brahma Chicken houses then Leghorn Chicken House and the the larger Cochin Chicken house. These will be based on our easy clean design.

We are aiming to bring high quality chicken houses to you with super fast delivery and at a much better price. We understand it is a big financial commitment and long deliveries are frustrating so we aim to bring down our already super fast 5-7 day delivery period to an amazing next day delivery service at better prices for you.

What is the best material for chicken house bedding? A very common question.

We recommend a product called easibed for chicken house bedding as it is super asorbant, smells nice and chickens love to turn it over. It is clean and free from dust and light making house cleaning so easy.

I will add a link as requested Chicken Bedding but before you fly to my shop, please think do you have a local horse or farm feed supplier, see if they sell it first, it will save post - only this item, buy everything else from us please :), if you do use this link however it will tell you more about the product you may find useful.

Straw really is horrid to use, it can be infested with lice and mites, it is not asorbant and it is a real ‘bugger’ to clean plus it stinks fast.

Of course we make money selling red mite sprays and powders but we prefer healthy chickens for our customers. Red Mite will live and breed under felt and you will never be able to kill them off, you will spend £10’s to £100’s on treatments that will never kill the safe eggs under the felt on the roof. Please save yourself money and hassle and stay away from chicken houses with felt roofs. It really is not worth it.

If you have a chicken house with felt on the roof and are struggling with red mite, please please get rid of the felt, mite will live under there and you can not get to them. If you have felt roofing strip it off and try a product called onduline similar to corragated sheeting. Now assuming you dont have a felt roof, we recommend using a red mite powder in the nooks and cracks and around the perches each time you clean the poultry house. This is normally a natural product, ours is diatom earth, which cuts the cuticle of the mite as it walks over it and then it dies of dehydration. If you have a big outbreak it is too far gone for this product and you will need to spray the chicken coop with mite kill spray (Not with chickens in it) this will kill all mite there at the time, you must do again in 3-5 days to kill all the young that have hatched since the first spray. After this please revert to using the powder.  

Hi, we offer 2 poultry houses I would advise. We offer the silkie chicken house or the sussex poultry house these are also our most popular chicken houses. Although there is little price differnce the sussex chicken house is the newer design and with the wider poultry house we find that chicken health and egg numbers are up in the bigger of the two poultry houses. Please remember if your chicken numbers are low that in all poultry housing ensure the bedding is kept to an inch or inch and a half in very cold weather to avoid birds dying. So to answer the question I would suggest the Sussex chicken house as the bird benifits are much better.