i somehow acquired 2 runaways and i have questions. please help

[pollipazzi]

That’s a very good price for 80 x 150 cm maze 5 cm panels. But they wont keep any mice out .


I have never seen my Dutch go after or kill a mouse. I suppose the neighbours cats do kill them and eat them straight away or take them home as a present for the owner.

Whats the size of the maze?


The biggest creature my Dutch have hunted, caught and eaten was a salamander as far as I have seen.

Chickens do not hunt at night for sure.

During winter the easiest thing to do is probably to take away the food after sunset including any spilled food. I don’t know if treadle feeders can be adjusted/work for bantams.

the maze is 13mm, but it's doubled up going up a metre, so the maze isn't lined up and makes it even smaller spaces. AND i had extra corrugated roofing that i covered it with for the winter so the wind and rain doesn't blow in. that goes from touching the bottom all the way up to about 20cm before it gets to the roof for ventilation. he squeezed through the hwcx2 AND through the corrugated roofing dip.

i'm taking the food and water in at night and cleaning up. it looks like he's trying to get INSIDE the coop. there's no food or water in the coop at all. only little chickens.

i ordered this automatic feeder for cats. i'll see if it helps. i can set them to open when the door does and close it at night. i got the double one because they're eating both pellets and crumble. it's like a free buffet!

there's a review saying the lady's jack russell keeps trying to get into hers with his teeth but hasn't yet.
hopefully that little mouse can't either. i will still go out and chase him away.

 

[pollipazzi]

oh! and i don't think the panels i saw were as rigid as yours @BDutch. they were pretty easy to bend. yours must be thicker if they lasted so long. i didn't check the size, but i would guess about 40cm x 100cm

 

[BDutch]

i ordered this automatic feeder for cats. i'll see if it helps. i can set them to open when the door does and close it at night. i got the double one because they're eating both pellets and crumble. it's like a free buffet!

Please tell us how good it is. It might be a great solution for my chickens too if I see a mouse in the henhouse one day.

I suspected that there might be a mouse in my henhouse too recently.

The chickens ate very little layer pellets since autumn and moult started, and since a few weeks a lot of the layer pellets vanish. Maybe they just eat a lot more recently. Bc one of my biggest eaters (big bantam Amrock) started to lay again after her first adult moult. Maybe its just proof she prefers the layer now (calcium in the layer). The other Amrock is probably starting up to lay too.

I was very surprised to get eggs again after a moult stop of approximately 6 weeks. This is the first time I have chickens that actually start to lay in December with a day length of only 8 hours.

My henhouse (coop and run and coop):

 

[pollipazzi]

Please tell us how good it is. It might be a great solution for my chickens too if I see a mouse in the henhouse one day.

I suspected that there might be a mouse in my henhouse too recently.

The chickens ate very little layer pellets since autumn and moult started, and since a few weeks a lot of the layer pellets vanish. Maybe they just eat a lot more recently. Bc one of my biggest eaters (big bantam Amrock) started to lay again after her first adult moult. Maybe its just proof she prefers the layer now (calcium in the layer). The other Amrock is probably starting up to lay too.

I was very surprised to get eggs again after a moult stop of approximately 6 weeks. This is the first time I have chickens that actually start to lay in December with a day length of only 8 hours.

My henhouse (coop and run and coop):
View attachment 4262951

i will let you know! it's supposed to be here on wednesday. i hope it will still fit under the coop when the lids are open.

you should get a camera too! lol! not only can i see what's going on out there, but i look back SO many times to see what time i did something or did i remember to do something. it's like a little brain helper

louise stopped laying in september and was really moulting. she hasn't layed since. thelma layed eggs up through the first week of november when she started moulting.
they weren't eating much while moulting. but they are back at it now. they are eating a lot of both feeds. louise eats more of the pellets than thelma does. nobody is laying eggs. it has been miserable and dark and windy and rainy most days.

thank you for sharing that pic of your setup! i never saw the whole thing and was trying to piece it together in my head. i get it now!
do you have timber reinforcing the big run? i might keep the flu fort after the lockdown, but i need to change the wire to hwc and put something on the roof besides the plastic bird netting. i put two of the panels from the old little run to cover the space between the two roofs, but it makes it really difficult to open the run door. i have to push the panels up to open the door enough to get in. it's not my favourite.