Hello and welcome to The Compost Bin. I'm Compostwoman and I live with my family in rural Herefordshire. We have nearly four acres of garden and woodland, all managed organically and to Permaculture principles, which we share with Chickens, Cats and assorted wildlife. We also grow a lot of our own food, run courses in all sorts of things and make a lot of compost!

I am a Master Composter and have spent more than a decade as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council.
I'm a self employed Environmental Educator so I run workshops and events where I talk about compost, veg growing, chicken keeping, cooking, preserving and sustainable living. I also run crafts workshops and Forest School/outdoor play sessions in our wood.

We try to live a more self sufficient lifestyle here, as best we can, while still having a comfortable life and lots of fun.


To learn more about us click on the About Compostwoman tab and remember to click on the photos to make them full size!


Wednesday 24 December 2008

Chickenailia!

I have a very moulting hen, her name is Ginger....poor thing! She is VERY grumpy and VERY bad tempered with all the others.


I also have some chicks who are growing out of the "teenage" plumage and getting grown up feathers...this is the droppings tray from the Eglu, can you see all the feathers?






The Sweetie Six all have names, now!

I put in a mail order of various chicken related stuff and so I finally have some different coloured leg rings - our local store only had packs of single colours and I didn't want 20 red or 20 yellow rings! but Flytes of Fancy stock a multi pack of different colours!

So..the Dorking girls are now Ruby (red leg ring), Violet (purple leg ring) Buffy(yellow leg ring) and Willow formerly-known-as-The-Smallest-Chick (pink leg ring) and yes Compostman and I DO like BtVS.... ;-))

( whispers *I* don't actually need the coloured leg rings to tell them apart, but Compostman and Compostgirl do, so .....)

The Cockerels are now Long John Silver Dorking and Rocky who has a green leg ring. I want Rocky to be called Captain Flint, but am being outvoted I fear... Here is Capt'n Flint....




I caught them being jungle fowl in a conifer today!









We are still in the process of sorting out and tidying up all the stuff in the Lean To. I have been sorting and tidying the chicken related stuff and using an old shelf unit we threw out of the house (many years ago) as a store for wild bird food and chicken related stuff. The chicken feed lives in a separate storage box from the wild bird feed btw! I am slightly worried at how much chicken related "stuff" I have accumulated, but I *DO* use it all, honest!

Let's face it, I am mad about my chickens! Besotted, utterly besotted....

4 comments:

  1. Ah-ha! another moulty hen, you would think they would want to hang onto their clothes for winter hee hee!

    PS Your not the only one who is potty about chickens ;)

    Have a lovely Christmas x

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  2. Same to you tgs, have a lovely festive season and give your hens a cuddle from me!

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  3. You can never have too much chicken-related stuff in my opinion! Ah, one of the sweetie six is called Willow !!!!

    Have a lovely peaceful Christmas with your family,
    Willow x

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  4. Thank you Willow! and the same to you and yours...and your henny namesake says "cluck" to you!

    Chickens now live in a 20 m by 20m netted run which is double the size they had before but not the whole garden any more as they were destroying it....14 chickens have done a HUGE amount of damage to 3/4 of an acre...it is quite scary...
    They DO now have much more stuff to play with though....and my xmas present from Compostman is a new chicken enclosure so if we can't let them out for some reason they can be safe in a bigger run...

    He DOES have to build it first, of course......

    Have a great holiday...

    Cw xx

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Hello! Thank you for reading my blog and for commenting. I try to reply as quickly as I can and I really appreciate your interest in my life and doings here in The Compost Bin.

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