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Chickens on the Fritz!

I don't know if I have mentioned it but my chickens are on the fritz! They are not laying AT ALL! They seem fine in themselves, they are running around, scratching up the ground, eating and drinking well, they have bright eyes and their combs are a good colour and not at all droopy. I have checked their house for mites and other beasties that might be causing a problem but try as I might, I couldn't find anything to explain why my chickens are defective. And this is not a recent thing, they haven't laid an egg for about 5 months now. I have a slight suspicion that it might initially have been because over the winter we had a bit of a rat problem. I'm not the only person where we live that has chickens and I know that my neighbour had a rat problem too but his chickens were obviously ninja chickens and clearly made of sterner stuff than my two wimps because their chickens are laying like mad. Fortunately, as the weather has warmed up the rats seem to have stopped bugging the chickens and I haven't spotted a rat in my garden for about 2 months. I know they're probably still around, despite the traps, but I'm guessing their usual food source is once again plentiful so they now have no need to come onto the lawn any more and steal the chickens food. But still no eggs! Anyway, the lovely Sue from Our New Life In The Country gave me some advice and recommended a seaweed based chicken tonic and also some garlic granules and very helpfully supplied a link so off I went and ordered some. It arrived this morning so, today the chickens have had a dose of the tonic in their water, some garlic granules mixed in with their food and I also read on-line that a little bit of probiotic yoghurt can be beneficial as well so they have had that too!

Frankly ..... they are better fed than I am at the moment!

Here is a spectacularly grubby Pepper Potts covered in yoghurt :-) Posted by Kay at Wednesday, May 13, 2015 Labels: chickens, Country Living, Frugal, Thrifty