The 'cheap' Chicken or Duck house costs about £25 to build, yet they are the most sturdy, well insulated houses I have! Normally my advice to people looking to buy a chicken house is not to buy too cheap since they will end up either having the fox get in to it, or after a few years will be buying again but building this chicken or duck house, if you pardon the pun, goes against the grain. You must be thinking by now that this all seems too good to be true, but there is one key ingredient to this house that keeps the cost down, and that is, the frame underneath it which is a surplus wooden packing crate.

Most poultry keepers use Flubenvet for worming chickens since this is the only licensed wormer that can be mixed with feed and is effective against all common worms found in poultry, however changes in legislation have been introduced under the Veterinary Medicines Act which means the Flubenvet 2.5% 240g pack most of us like to keep in stock can no longer be sold by vets or merchants unless they have registered as category 8 distributors. These registered distributors can sell to domestic poultry keepers (that have no commercial benefit) but they cannot sell to commercial keepers unless they are also registered with the VMD.

Self Sufficiency Keeping Hens (Softback)

by Mike Hatcher

Publisher:.New Holland Publishers Ltd Edition Published: 25 April 2009 Softback: 128 pages ISBN-10: 1847734200 ISBN-13: 978-1847734204 Available from: Amazon

Self Sufficiency Hen Keeping by Mike Hatcher is one of a number of new books I have seen appear on the shelves recently and I decided it was time to read it and let you know what I thought. More and more people are starting to keep chickens and if that's you, as a beginner, you will find this book contains everything you need to know to get started.

Chick Box is a new plastic nesting box that looks promising in the fight against Red Mite. BEC, the makers of Chick Box have sent us this information about it:

A new all plastic poultry nesting box called the Chick Box is set to dramatically improve the way thousands of keepers can care for their birds. The Chick Box, from BEC, takes just seconds to clean, ending hours of work for poultry keepers struggling to keep boxes free from harmful red mite and other pests and bacteria.

Those last few days were so exciting: would we get goslings? I was driving my Belgian friend mad with my phone calls and questions, he said "You're in joyful anticipation" and he was right.

It was so wonderful to see how our Carmen took care of her eggs, how she covered them with straw and down when she went off for ten minutes to eat, drink or to take a bath. It seemed like Carmen had a clock inside of her body because she knew exactly how long she could stay off her nest for. After those ten minutes she walked in a special way back to her nest and I could tell if she was going back to her nest or not.