Wow, for a Limited time in October we are giving you a brilliant special offer. From the 4th October until the 18th October we are giving a free outdoor 6kg Green/White feeder worth £19.99 with every house purchase. A brilliant way to get your new chicken keeping hobby started.

The free feeder is made from robust plastic and featuers a rain hat to cover the food, which allows you to have the feeder outside and the food will not get wet in the rain.

We have a variety of other offers available also so check out our Special Offers page, with feather pecking spray, poultry wormer, Nutri-Drops, just to name a few items on offer.

If you place an order on-line or on the telephone then the feeder will automatically be added to your order, our way of thanking our loyal customers and also saying a big welcome to new customers (the free drinker offer excludes houses sold to Rep. Ireland, N. Ireland and Europe)

I was discussing with Glyn today how to eradicate red mite on the chicken housing and he showed me a house with red mite and said he can not get rid of it. I looked at the house and it was obvious to me the problem but not to him because I personally have not shown him how to kill red mite in our housing.

Glyn has done every thing but 1 thing to kill the mite, when you have an infestion in our houses they are easy to kill but you must remember to UNSCREW the top cap, remove it, treat it and replace this. Do this 2-3 times and you will kill the mites. If you imagine the top cap is like felt and mites will breed like crazy there, so remove this and treat (at least twice in your treatment cycle) you will find your treatment works, without treating under the top cap you may find and issue with mites always comming back.

The top cap is needed to stop leaking but a wooden one is easily removed for treating where as felt is not.

In the next month or two I will start to do more videos for you and I can guarantee I will do a red mite treatment one for you.

For October we have a brilliant price on the RCOM Suro Manual turn Incubator. This incubator is like the RCOM Suro however does not have the turning cradle or the egg dividers, so you can easily lay out the eggs and turn them manually.
It still has the vital temperature and humidity control built in, however if you are looking to get a brilliant little incubator, but want to save as much money as possible then this could be the option for you.

As there are no dividers you can fit in a variety of eggs and with most eggs they only need turning a couple of times a day minimum. Most incubators turn hourly or once every two hours, but if turning the eggs yourself it does not need to be as labour intensive.

With the price being only £129.99 then you can see that it is a brilliant idea and fills that gap when it comes to getting an incubator within a certain budget.

We have been advised of the competiton winners for the Your Chickens Magazine and also for the Country Smallholding Magazine, so would like to offer our congratulations to both winners. Details will be publised in the Magazines and the winners will be advised of their good fortune by the magazines shortly (it not already done so).

Thank you again for entering the competition and we will hopefully speak with the winners soon, who I’m sure will be more than happy to spend their £150

I don’t want to believe that summer is over but I think it is inevitable
I hope you all had a good summer break and if you went away with your family, had a good time and were able to recharge your batteries.

I was lucky and caught a Last Minute holiday in Devon, which had such highlights as Sheep Racing and holding/flying a Harris Hawk. I was rather proud as some places we visited had chickens and I was able to name quite a lot of the breeds. Now I know this isn’t much to be proud of, however a year or so ago I knew very little about chickens. In the grand sceme of things, I probably still know very little, but I still sounded very knowlegable to my better half

When I did my food shopping on the way home from my holiday I saw that the Supermarkets were not slow to get their Christmas chocolates etc on display! I think this is the earliest I have seem them surface in a few years (Maybe it’s just a sign of me getting older, lol).
If your are as keen as the Supermarkets then just browse the site and I’m sure you will find something to get for the keen Chicken Keeper in your family.

I completely forgot to say at the beginning of the week that we have a few RCOM Bird Pavillion Brooders which have been used here for the Rheas and Peacocks and Turkeys. As the birds are very much older now (you try and sqeeze one of the Rheas in to a brooder now, lol) then the machines are for sale under the Used Incubators, Ex-Display Equipment section of the website.

If you are looking for a brooder (remember they are the same as the RCOM Pet Pavilions also) then check out the special prices available.

Well the weathr over the past couple of days has changed, very much for the worse. Upon hearing the news and traffic reports as I drive home, I can tell that it has not only affected us here is the middle of Wales, it is nationwide
The birds don’t seem to mind too much though, the ones in the fields seem to locate a little sheltered spot and sit there quite happily, waiting for one of us to go to the feeders and top them up.

The one thing worthy of investment (especially in this weather) is the automatic door opener - trust me right now I would not want to be walking through the field to the large chicken house we have to shut the birds away at night, or have to do this again in the morning. The door opener is one of lifes little luxuries which, once you have, you will not know what you did without it! We have some new timers in stock now also. They are similar to the older design however are now digital so the time is displayed on the screen as well as the on-off interval.

When it gets windy and rainy then cleaning is a little more laborious also, so chicken houses which are easy to clean are always a brill idea. I suppose we are lucky here as we have a some breeding stock which are in Jersey Giants, Brahmas, Cochins and also a few Seabrights and the houses do not take too long to clean. But if you are looking at your house thinking about cleaning it in the poor weather which is bound to happen in the next few months (I know I sound depressing, and I secretly hope for an Indian Summer ) then take a look at the houses on offer and see if they could be your next chicken house.

All the Chicken Houses are now in stock. We received the Jersey Giants yesterday and the Brahmas also came in this week so they are both back available on 24hr delivery, which is brilliant news. I know that there are quite a few of our customers who were waiting for the stock to come in before placing your order, so thought that this is the best place to let you know, so you can get your new chicken house on its way.

The not-so-little Rheas are doing well . They are growing at an amazing rate and can single handidly eat a whole lettuce in about 1 minute. I give them some food and go and fetch the water and by the time I am back with them all the best bits have already been scoffed! Their wing feathers are coming on a treat and they fluff them out to try and be all big and brave - but they still come running cheaping mind, so they just look the part, lol.
If you recall a few months ago I incubated quite a bit. Well the first of the eggs from my little hens has been laid. Trevor found the egg and it was quite a distance from the chicken coop, actually near the new chicken houses which had just been delivered, so she was a little away from home! I’m sure she will get used to it all soon though, and it will become second nature to her

I know I have seemed to talk a lot (all the time some would say, lol) about these awful creatures, but this year seems as bad as last year, and the mites just seem to be thriving.

Many, many orders are coming in for Red Mite killer and although we are a business and orders are good news, we would much prefer that the mites are killed and controlled the first time around so you do not need to come back for more product.

If you have noticed mites in the chicken house then the Red Mite powder is not the option for you, you will need a chemical treatment to kill off the infestation. Remove the bedding and spray/fumigate the house and leave the chemicals to work in the house for a couple of hours, then air the house and you can put fresh bedding in. If you can burn the old bedding do so as you are definately ridding of any mites in this also.

The vital part (and it is vital) is the second treatment. It sounds like a clever marketing ploy, but honestly, without this you will go back to your house and within a week it will look like you haven’t touched it - the mites will be back. This is because nothing kills the eggs, so you will have killed off the adult mites and the egg will then hatch and thrive.

The second treatment ideally needs to be done between 3-5 days after the first one. This will make sure that the eggs have hatched and the immature Red Mites will have not reproduced. After this second treatment you will hopefully have got them all and you can go back to using the powder again.

If you have a felt roof on your Chicken House then you may need to rip the felt off to conduct a proper treatment as the felt will harbour the Mites and they will nest there so you will never be able to break the cycle and you will be forking out on product week after week, which can be really demorolising.

If you do not know how much product to use or have found Red Mites and are in a bit of a panic then please just give us a call. They are daunting but they can be beaten