Eglu care - much nicer on sunny days :)

An atrocious rainy and cold Saturday meant that all Eglu cleaning duties were put off, replaced with snuggling on the sofa and playing the Wii. But today is a gorgeous sunny day, ripe for gardening and chicken-care.

Cleaning the Eglu can be a bit long-winded when you first start but once you get into the swing of things it can take no time at all. Generally I empty the poop tray every 3 days - simply a case of quickly brushing the roosting bars then taking the tray out, emptying into the compost bin, lining with old newspaper and popping it back it. Once a week I move the Eglu to a fresh patch of grass, replace nesting box straw and dust the roosting bars with a mite powder.

Every 3 or 4 weeks I give the Eglu itself a good clean - take apart, hose it down, spray with pet-friendly disinfectant spray and give it a wipe down. Roosting bars are scrubbed in warm soapy water (Ecover is great for this) and left to dry. When clean and reassembled, I powder the bars and pop some bokashi bran on the poop tray (absorbs odour, makes poo more compost-friendly). Then rub some citronella oil over the Eglu to deter insects and sprinkle some in the poop tray.

And that's it! Sounds a lot of effort but no more than other pets would require, rabbits or guinea pigs for example. Plus the chickens give back with yummy scrummy eggs as a thank you for taking such good care of them :)

Egg production at its peak

Zelly is proving to be an incredible layer - we've had 1 egg a day since the first one (Saturday 10th May), and they are steadily increasing in size. Today's egg was a whopping 60grams - you go girl!!!

Our first egg!

Clever clever Zelda laid her first egg today. Her comb had been reddening for the past couple of days and I had seen some crouching, but I didn't want to get my hopes up!

I was up at 6.30 to let them out to free-range, checking them every 15 minutes or so . Around 8am she was in the house for a while which is most unlike her but no egg as yet. At 9am she was back in the house but still no egg! A 10am I popped into town, butno egg on my return...

So I decided to leave them alone and got on with the housework. 3pm and all was sunny so I thought I would make the most of the good weather, do some gardening and clean the Eglu ....Lo and behold there it was, waiting for me in the nesting box!

I shouted and screamed and generally made a fool of myself in front of the neighbours....then had a thought "what if the boyf had placed it there to trick me?" But no, it was definitely from my girl as it was smaller than shop-bought eggs - only 40grams (it's the egg on the left in the piccie). But perfectly formed and I am happy to say, very tasty :)