Friday morning it was so clear and sunny but cold by 2pm only very specialised 4×4’s could get here!

Got old betsy our old Mazda pickuk out of storage and went out for a drive to collect our chicken feed delivery from 4 miles away where they got stuck

As the weather is going to be cold for upto 2 weeks we have changed their feed to 4 parts mixed corn to 1 part Layers pellets with liquid tonic in the water.

The reason for this is the corn will fill the crop overnight and they can keep warm and use the energy slowly ensuring they keep in best health over the cold snap.

We have also increased the depth of the bedding from 1/2″ to 1″ to increase insulation and also if your house is of good quality and well built ideally do not remove the snow from the roof as it is also a good insulator.

So now we have fed and watered the birds, geese and sheep we are now going to have a nice relaxing day off infront of the fire so enjoy the weather if you can the birds will

Just check they have acess to water during the day check it is not an ice block.

You might have seen this week we have stock of a new, updated Seabright house. 

They are flying off the shelves (well maybe not the shelves as they would have to be pretty strong to hold these ).  Don’t get me wrong, the original Seabright houses were and still are (due to their fantastic clearance price) amazingly popular, however we have sat back and thought about how we can make the house and run even better.

The new Seabright Chicken House and Run comes with new 10mm squared mesh, instead of the original 25mm, and we have upgraded the tongue and grove timber.  We have also ensured that you can construct the house and run as easily as possible and added pre-drilled holes and dowels to make the task less daunting.

We are so pleased here with the upgrade, and I’m sure that when you look at its current price, you’ll be pleased also.

As I was scraping the ice off my car the other morning it dawned on me that I could no longer pretend that I didn’t need the heating on in the morning!

Upon getting to work I was greeted (as I am every morning) by what I now call “the chicken rapids” - a fast flowing stream of chickens hurtling towards the car looking for the little treats I feed them before coming into the office

I then realised how much of a god-send the automatic door openers are.  Without these little devices one of us would be out every morning and night, opening and closing the chicken coops. 

It appears that as soon as the sun disappears, so does any warmth in the air and I know that the last thing I would want once home from work is to get the open fire going, get all snug and warm, only to go outside to make sure all the little ladies are safe and warm also.  (Luckily I’m like and aunty to our pullets here - I get all the good bits then leave them to Trevor as I go home to my own small petting zoo!)

If you are reading this then an automatic door opener is well worth considering.  Once you have one, you will find yourself thinking “how did I live without it?”.

The great thing is that on our automatic door openers you can alter the sensitivity, so you can set it to the correct levels for getting the best out of them; and you can also add a timer making them so versatile.

There are so many joys to keeping chickens, and we are all about making the experience as joyful as possible, so with one if these beauties, you no longer have to go out in the rain/cold (dare I say snow?) and you still know that if you ladies (and of course gents) are being let out and being tucked up at night.

Now if only I could find such a device that walked my dogs….

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.