Catch the little buggers!

A great article by Clare Beebe in this months Home Farmer.

“As a poultry keeper you have a duty to keep rodents under control, both for the environment and your own well-being.  By doing this it not only helps to save you money by keeping down the cost of repairing the damage done by these animals, but also presents a huge saving on the food that is potentially going to be ruined by these animals.”

We have a bit of a mouse problem at the moment – we found mouse droppings in our shed – the little buggers were living in an old chair cover!  

Mouse droppings out of our shed.

 

We have started to use a product called Eradibait www.eradibait.com – the great thing about this is;

• no risk to children or pets
• no risk to livestock or birds
• no risk of either primary or secondary poisoning - bird of prey friendly
• no known resistance
• no special requirement for transport, handling, storage or disposal
• no risk of contamination to crops or food
• no environmental pollution - fully biodegradable

Brilliant because we have chickens in the garden, we’ll update you on results as and when they are available!

We have also caught a few in our house – as detailed below we have used a traditional snap trap in the house and baited it with Coconut Macaroon – works a treat!

Here is a summary of several ways you can get rid of a rodent problem

Humane Traps

Humane mouse traps are designed to capture mice without harming them or causing them undue distress and allow you to catch a mouse in order to release it far away from home - hopefully so far that it does not return. Because they do not kill the mouse, humane traps are also safer around babies, young children and pets.

Traditional wire and wood block snap traps

These traps are effective and inexpensive. The ideal bait is something like peanut butter rather than cheese.  Although we have found coconut macaroons are a winner for a bait choice. These traps kill the mouse almost instantly.  The only negative being once the trap has caught a mouse until it is emptied and re-set it cant catch anymore.

Poison containers

With poison it keeps the mouse in one piece.  Mice can't resist the bait so there’s less preparation and it makes less mess than traps.  As long as you’re willing to handle the time it takes for the poison to take effect, then poison is an ideal way to kill a mouse.  Aside from checking to see if the poisoned bait has been nibbled at it is very hard to tell whether you have actually poisoned any mice. This is until you discover weeks later smells emanating from around your house!

Buy a cat!

Cats are expert mice killing machines which is the very reason cats became domesticated in the first place.  Of course not all cats are going to be great mouse stalkers so I would try and get some kind of farm cat, something like a Maine Coon.

Call in the professionals

The other option is to call in the experts – just have a look in yellow pages for a local pest controller.  This is usually the most expensive option but should give you and your family peace of mind, and they will be able to give you thorough advice on how to stop future mouse problems.

Hopefully this has helped some of you out with controlling the little buggers!

All the best

Claire

xxx

Twitter:
@CropredyChicken
@Honestlyitseasy
@steelsyrockitup

Eden Project, Free Range Pigs, Seed Sowing & Giant Bees!

Blimey - it's been such a busy week!

Where do I start? Me and the boyfriend went down to Cornwall for a couple of days for my Birthday - glorious weather! Down there the daffodils are already out was lovely to see!

Managed to go to the Eden Project to have a look around which was awesome, if your down that way it's well worth a visit - although I would recommend you go down a little later in the year - spring is obviously when things start shooting through - it would be great to see everything in full bloom.

They had a huge bee sculpture there which I wanted to bring home but spen pointed out that it wouldn't fit on top of the van let alone in it!













 
The camp site was brilliant, they had pigs free ranging and they were so friendly - although they did want to eat spen's shoes - think it must have been the smell of chickens on them! lol!

I've got so much more to blog about so keep your eyes peeled over the next couple of days, I'll be covering Part 2 of chicken keeping, an update on the state of our garden, also I put some of our Lavender Pekin eggs in the incubator just over a week ago so soon we'll be able to see if anything is going on and our recent addition to the flock Keith is doing his job!

I've also been sowing some seeds today - and looking into greenhouses! Always wanted one - had one of those plastic walk in ones last year but the zip broke on the case etc and I've decided to bite the bullet and buy a proper green house!

Planning on spending a bit of time in the garden this weekend, marking out where the raised beds are going, such an exciting time of year! Let the hard work commence!

Hope you all are well!

Best Love

Claire

Twitter:
@CropredyChicken
@Honestlyitseasy
@steelsyrockitup

Left holding the babies...

The big 30 has arrived for Claire (well on Weds actually) and as one of her previous blog has said she's off galivanting with her partner in the camper - Lucky girl!!

Before she goes, she delivered 16 rather tiny, fluffy, feathered balls to my door, we have 12 table birds, 2 tiny little black chicks and 2 tiny little multicoloured birds, don't ask me what breed they are, I have no idea, well not until they have grown a bit more anyway!

Unfortunately I have to give them back at the end of the week and it's not as though they'll stay tiny forever, I have to man up and admit that they ain't all mine, and the six that are, will be on my dinner table in about 18 weeks!

Yep that's right, like I said 12 of them are table birds, which means we feed them as much as possible, get them nice and fat ready to make a dish out of them!

Now I know some people would be dead against this, but why buy a water injected chicken, thats probably lived in a tiny enclosure from tesco when you can raise your own, knowing exactly what kind of life they have led?
I tried it for the first time last year with two table birds, (conveniently called Sage and Onion), and OMG, amazing!
The meat tasted so different, more ....chickeny! Its hard to describe, just far yummier than any chicken I have bought from a shop!

Now just to name them......I'm thinking........Jalfrezi, kiev, balti...something along those lines!

Mel

Twitter:
@Tikobear
@Honestlyitseasy

Time to start recycling........

My mum calls me her "little Eco Warrior",now I'm not sure I'd call myself that but I do try and do my bit.

Take growing your own veg, there are sooo many things you can recycle and reuse, take this for example:
http://www.makeitandmendit.com/2010/02/18/plant-pots-from-toilet-rolls/

I'm all for being frugal (though not quite the supermarket bin raider)
so, for the next few weeks, if loo rolls start going missing............
It wasn't me!

Mel

Twitter: @Tikobear

Part 1 Chicken Keeping - Beginners!

Which Hen’s are right for you?

Firstly you need to work out how much space you are going to need or want to give to your new little friends. Under the 2006 animal welfare act the minimum space is a square meter of run space for every chicken that you own, but of course the more space you give them the happier they are in my experience.

Secondly, how many eggs would you like. If the answer is just enough for your household then 3-4 chickens should be a sensible number, but if your planning on supplying friends and neighbours etc with eggs then obviously you’ll need more egg layers!

Nearly every breed of large poultry has been created in a smaller version, known as bantams. Bantams will eat less but will also lay smaller eggs. But they are a great option if you are just starting out or have a limited amount of space. That’s how we started out, a trio of Lavender pekins.

If your main priority is to get eggs every day, then I would suggest you go for a hybrid;

Black Star will lay approx 300+ per year
Bluebelle will lay approx 250+ per year
Speckled Star will lay approx 270+ per year
Sussex Star will lay approx 260+ per year

We’ve got 2 Black Stars, 1 Bluebelle and 1 Speckled Star amongst our flock. The Bluebelle appears to lay fantastic double yolkers!!

In our next Chicken instalment we’ll cover housing, but the above information will give you something to get started on thinking about!

All the best – thanks for reading!

Claire
xx
www.cropredychickencompany.com

This is our dearly departed Buju - He was a lavendar peking bantam cockerel, he is very missed! Although he has been replaced by our rather stunning Dark lavender Peking Cockerel called Keith! Pictures will be up soon!

Cornwall, Chicks, Sowing and Bottling!

Ok so this time next week I’ll be 30!

Blimey! Where has the time gone! Anyhow as a special birthday treat Spen is taking me down to Cornwall. Can’t wait!

We are going to have a wander around Bodmin Moor before going onto our campsite www.campsitesincornwall.co.uk called Mena. Spen found this campsite (I had been searching but nothing I could find was open at this time of year). It mentioned that there were chickens and pigs on the campsite and he knew that was the one for us! How well he knows me!

On the big day itself we are going to the Eden Project www.edenproject.com which I’m very excited about! Never been before – I’m sure I’ll be blogging about it on our return!

And we are going for dinner at Rick Stein's Café, the sample menu looks fab www.rickstein.com/modules/documents/documents/CAFE_menu.pdf and I’m sure we will be very hungry after walking around the Eden Project all day!

But before all of that happens we have 8 eggs which should be hatching in the next few days in the incubator, Some Gold and Silver Sebrights and some silver Appenzeller’s. They look a bit like punk rockers – they will fit in perfectly with the rest of our mismatched backyard chooks! www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appenzeller_%28chicken%29

A trio of Appenzeller chickens of the Spitzhauben type. The pair on the left are males, and a hen is on the right. Owned by Alice Wilkman of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.


And we have some seed sowing to do and bottling of wine! Best get to it!

All the best!

Claire

PS that’s after we got to the Chipping Norton Social Media Club #5 (Blog Night) tonight., busy busy busy! That’s the way we like it!

Facebook and Jamie Oliver!

After a little bit of thought we have joined facebook! It’s such a great resource for information we just couldn’t resist!

Please come and add us up as a friend!

http://en-gb.facebook.com/people/Honestly-ItsEasy/100002085921583

We are already chatting to people in various different groups on line and some of the blogs we’ve stumbled across are just fantastic! We’ll be posting a bit more about them soon and telling you which ones we think are the best to follow (as well as us of course!)

There’s also an interesting article in the Telegraph today;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/8338880/Jamie-Oliver-goes-to-ground.html

Jamie Oliver is joining forces with Homebase to launch a range of grow-your-own seed, plants and outdoor cooking equipment. Who knows maybe a tv series is in the pipeline as well, this would open gardening and growing your own up to a massive audience who wouldn’t normally think about it. Fair play to the man – anything that brings more attention to growing your own at home is a good thing!

Anyway – enough from me – I’ve just finished my lunch break so best get on with some work!

All the best!

Claire
x

This is a picture of our frizzle cockerel called 'Herbert' I love him but Spen thinks he's a bit of a freak chicken!