Re: Newbie questions.


While birds kept on the same bit of ground will work over it in short
order
and raise it to mud

It would have to be a very small area for that to happen, it's never
happened in our garden.

Yes - some folks believe that they can house birds in a fixed house and
run of 6ft bvy 3 ft and leave teh house in place instead of move it
frequently
Its one of the common misapprehensions I have to work around a lot.

I got the impression that Morgan wanted the birds to range in the garden.

It does happen though :-( We were once given a feather footed Pekin bantam
who had huge 'concrete boots' because of that.

When we washed the solid, heavy mud off she found she could walk and run and
there was no catching her!

It was so sad, it took us ages to wash off all the very huge build-up of mud
which had set very hard and must have happened over weeks, if not months.

Sadly, she was later foxed.

That experience is the main reason Spouse doesn't like feather footed birds
but our present Croad Langshan chicks have kept clean feet even in their
very early days when they were confined in the Eglu run and it rained
solidly for weeks. It was on concrete but I put in compost for them to
scratch in and scraped it out every few days. They had to be confined
because it was the time when magpies were predating small birds to feed
their chicks.

We gradually let them out for a short time under supervision until
conditions were right, then all day. Their foster mother didn't let them out
of her sight at that time. Now she doesn't want them anywhere near, nasty,
stroppy teenagers!

Eglu provides a shelter which attaches to the run in several positions,
leaving an area open to the sky and sun or shading the worst. It's a superb
system.

A favourite place for them to dig to Australia is the dry Earth under a
large tree. That very rarely gets wet because of the shade but the other day
when I realised we were going to have a storm I stacked up some old bricks
and put a *** of metal across it. They found that shelter immediately and
used it - they've also used it for hiding from the sun although the biggies
prefer the shade of the raspberry rows.

The Eglu run isn't attached to the Eglu itself at the moment because we're
using that area for other activities and the chicks are big enough to have
the free run of the garden (except where my vulnerable vegetables are
penned). In fact they're almost as big as the smaller of our full grown
banties. We weigh them every few days, it's been fascinating to watch them
changing. They roost in the Eglu at night which is a blessing because they
fly and I don't want them to roost in trees.

Interestingly they prefer to fly over the narrow pond rather than walk round
it. The adults have never done that :-)

Sorry, rambling again ...

Mary


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