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The Joys and Realities of Keeping Chickens · Paws Between Us - Pet Stories, Welfare and Building A Bond

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Pause Between Us podcast, co-hosted by best friends Natalie and Sasha.
• 0:05
  We're lifelong animal lovers and proud pet parents and between us we share our lives with
• 0:10
  cats Murray and Weaver and Betty the pug. In each of our episodes we dive into the joys
• 0:14
  and challenges of living with our furry companions, sharing honest stories, laughter and sometimes
• 0:19
  maybe a few tears. We'll also bring in special guests to offer expert back tips and proven
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  practices for keeping your pets happy, healthy and loved. Thank you for joining us. Please note
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  some episodes may touch on sensitive topics or contain strong language. Listener discretion is
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  advised. Hi Nat. Hi Sasha. You all right? Yes I'm good thank you. How are you? Yeah not bad
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  thank you. I'm all right. I had a lovely relaxing weekend which has been lovely. Nice. I bet that
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  was needed. It was lovely. You had one as well though didn't you? I did. Yeah I went to the
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  Cotswolds to catch up with some family and took Betty with me so it was really lovely, really
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  sunny and we were in the southern tip of the Cotswolds which was a little less touristy than
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  say the north. So yeah I had a nice hotel, did some nice walks, went to a brilliant pet shop
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  in a place called Tetbury so that was really cool or I should have said a dog shop because it was
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  focused on all products for dogs. Betty got a free puppuccino and yeah I bought her some treats
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  and a few other bits so that was lovely. It's just a shame it's come to an end.
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  I'm kind of could have done a whole week in the Cotswolds but it was still nice.
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  Oh that's lovely. We had to take Murray to the vets on Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Thursday last
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  week because he's been hobbling a little bit, limping but been able to jump and been playing
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  and been scratching, using his scratch post. I don't know what was going on but we thought we'd
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  take him just to get him checked out. Though long story short is that they think he's probably just
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  done a little bit of like soft tissue damage. I don't know why though because he's only six. I
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  don't understand quite how he's managed to injure himself so much but he's on some painkillers which
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  luckily he loves so he's been licking that up without any problem. Sort of noticed a little
• 2:03
  bit of improvement today but I'm going to check him over the next couple of days and if there's
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  nothing majorly improved I'm going to maybe take him back but hopefully he'll be fine. But it's
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  kind of that thing of like oh it just makes me so worried and anxious. I'm constantly watching him
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  and making sure there's nothing more serious going on. I get so paranoid about bigger problems
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  but hopefully it's just a small thing. Like I twisted my ankle. I told people about this. I
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  twisted my ankle. Maybe he's doing it in sympathy. Maybe, yeah, perhaps. Perhaps he's seen you and
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  thinks oh maybe I should try this. Hobble, yeah. Hobble along. I hope he feels better soon. Yeah,
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  just keep an eye on it I guess. That's all you can do. But I always think it's a good sign if
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  they're still moving about and they're still eating and drinking. They're hopefully not in
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  too much pain. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't look like it. Have you been able to take a closer look because
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  he let you touch him? Yeah, we've tried and the vet like did a little bit of like range of movement
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  and he didn't flinch and it was fine. So I don't know what it is but then I start to, my mind was
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  and I get really distracted and worried. So I'm sure he's fine. I'm just, you know, it's just me.
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  Yeah, you can turn to Dr Google, can't you, and read all kinds of things and fill your head with
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  all these worries and then it's actually not that bad. No, no. Yeah, well sending well. Thank you,
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  thank you, thank you. So what have you been up to? Yeah, I mean, I've been good. Betty's doing
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  all right. She's still having the physio. She's still hobbling and wobbling herself. Touch wood
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  her mobility hasn't got worse. I think the key thing is that we're just managing it and
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  maintaining it. So yeah, we took the stroller away with us at the weekend because she was only
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  able to do short walks and she was quite happy to be in that. So that's a good thing. Yeah,
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  just giving her lots of love and attention at the moment. But I was reading something that was quite
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  troubling online earlier that I'm just keeping a watch out for because, as you know, I'm living
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  here in London and the Met Police have offered some warnings after toxic chicken was found in
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  two West London parks. Chicken was believed to be deliberately placed to harm dogs or foxes.
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  One dog became really ill and two foxes were found dead. So yeah, I'm just keeping an eye on that. I
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  mean, Betty's not been one for scavenging when we've been on walks, which is good. Yeah, I mean,
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  if she sniffs something nice, she probably would go up to it and try and eat it. But she's not like
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  some dogs where they're kind of really kind of like they're looking out or they're sniffing out
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  food intentionally, like they're going around wanting to scavenge. But yeah, I think that was
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  just, you know, it was a bit worrying. And then I remembered that I had picked up some leaflets
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  recently at an event that I was at from a charity called Animal Poison Line that offers support and
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  advice if you think your pet has been poisoned. So really great info on there about what to do.
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  And they have a helpline so you can call them up and they've also got a website. But I just
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  thought I might touch on some of the things that they say if you think your pet has been poisoned.
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  So you can give them a call to confirm if any action is needed. If your pet has vomited,
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  clean it up promptly to prevent your pets or a child from eating it. So I don't know if a child
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  would eat pet vomit, but maybe it's a thing. I don't know. And then if your pet has skin or fur
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  contamination, wipe off the excess material. So yeah, if there's something that's kind of
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  they've rolled in or they've got, yeah, it's got on them somehow. But don't try to make your pet
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  vomit. Never give salt water. So if you think they have ingested something that's poisonous, yeah,
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  it says that you shouldn't make your pet vomit. And obviously you're advised to take your pet to
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  the practice and take a sample of the poison with you. I guess that's okay if there's some left,
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  but I know some dogs will kind of, you know, if they find something on the street, they try and
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  eat it as quickly as they can. So it can't be taken off them. But if there's something in the
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  house that they've eaten, make sure you take some with you. Maybe that's the packaging,
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  the container or a sample of plant material. And then I guess that's the same for dogs and cats
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  really. And then, you know, there's sort of general advice that they share, I guess, for
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  when you're in the home. And there's like lists of things that are toxic to dogs and cats and
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  different pets. So some things that I've sort of seen that aren't good for dogs, which I hadn't
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  realised, that hasn't been on the list before, because I think the stuff that I found has always
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  been about like food products, but apparently ibuprofen. Dogs are very sensitive to ibuprofen
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  and it can cause gastrointestinal irritation and ulceration and affect the kidneys. So be careful
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  if you leave ibuprofen lying around. Psoriasis creams. Not that I have psoriasis or have any
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  cream, but psoriasis creams, if you have those in the home, they can cause severe and delayed
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  poisoning in dogs because they've got vitamin D compounds in them. So yeah, it can lead to
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  also gastrointestinal upset, thirst, increased urine output and in severe cases, kidney failure,
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  convulsions and heart problems. I would definitely recommend just checking out the animal poison line
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  website, which has got really, really good info. So yeah, just thought I would share that.
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  That's really helpful. And yeah, if people check it out, have a little look at some of the
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  common things. I think I'd always say like, I mean, you never know what your animal is going to grab
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  and cats particularly can like wander on top of surfaces and get in cupboards and stuff.
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  True.
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  Keep anything like that away. I mean, I knew friends who, their cat used to eat their hair
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  bubbles and would go in her bag and pick them out. And then they had to have the stomach pumped
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  or had surgery to go and get these hair bubbles out. My sister's cat ate lots of pistachio nut
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  shells. So you never know what they're going to go after. You just have to be so careful.
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  Yeah. Things that you wouldn't expect, but yeah.
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  Well, I learned that garlic's really poisonous to cats this week and we chop a lot of garlic and
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  maybe bits end up on the floor, but our cats don't tend to. I mean, the thing with cats is they're
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  quite fussy, so they don't tend to eat a lot of things like dogs would gobble up, but still be
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  really careful. You never know, do you?
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  No, no, you don't. But yeah, what's news with you?
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  So yeah, this week, so I'm a volunteer. I may have mentioned this before for Hume Animal Trust. I'm
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  on their public guardian involvement and engagement group, bringing my lived experience as an animal
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  guardian. But this week they had a parliamentary reception to bring together decision makers and
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  experts to talk about moving medicines forward for both humans and animals at the same time. So
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  they were doing a lot of promotion around this, trying to get a lot of movement behind it. It's
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  called One Medicine Approach and it's treating animal and human health as connected. So
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  leading to more efficient ways of developing and improving treatments for both.
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  So it's a new way of thinking about medicines. And I never knew this before, really, because
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  I've been through my own journeys, as I've said, with previous cats and now Murray and Weaver,
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  where you just think like, well, where, where are these treatments? We can treat cancer. We can,
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  or most cancers, we can, we've got medicines for this, that and the other. We've got like
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  mobility and prosthetics for humans. So where's the animals? Well, how come they're missing out
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  on all of this? So the way, the things that get in the way at the moment are there's different
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  rules and regulators. So human medicines and animal medicines are assessed by separate bodies
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  with separate processes. So a treatment that can often help both has to go through different
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  approval paths and takes time. It takes effort. It takes money. It takes assessment. So it doesn't
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  always work very well. There's lots of paperwork and duplication. So even when the science is,
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  you know, when the science is similar, companies may need to repeat studies, submit data twice,
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  just to satisfy these two different sets of requirements. There's not enough joined up
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  working. So doctors, vets and researchers and regulators obviously work in silos. So
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  information isn't passed between them very well. And Hume Animal Trust are trying to improve those
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  connections and that joint working and sharing of knowledge. And approving medicines is always slow
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  and the animal market just is a lot smaller. And obviously people struggle to pay for these
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  expensive drugs. So the companies may not always see it as financially viable. So they're reluctant
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  to do as much for animals. And there's lots of other things. But if we can kind of learn and
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  speed up the development of safe and effective treatments, it's going to reduce duplication of
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  testing and improve a little cut down on animal testing where it's not necessary. And they want
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  to work to encourage regulators and science, doctors and vets to share evidence when medicines
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  could work for both humans and animals. So they're going to come in and talk to us a bit more about
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  this sometime in the coming weeks. So we'll get their direct insight into this. But I think it's
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  a great, it's a great principle just to try and like just share learning so that animals can
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  benefit as much as humans will benefit and vice versa. So hopefully things will get easier and
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  it'll speed up this regulation process where things can get approved a lot quicker so that
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  animals can benefit too. So let's see how that goes. Yeah. No, I mean, I think it's really, really
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  fascinating what they're doing and what they're trying to achieve. And it'd be great to have them
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  on and to learn a bit more and hear their insights, like you say. And yeah, I just think, I think we
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  might have spoken about this before, but I sometimes feel that animals get left behind when
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  it comes to innovation for medicine, like you say. And there's a lot that we're doing for patients
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  that actually what could we learn from that and transfer it into to helping our pets. So I bet
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  it's something that kind of lots of vets as well would really, really welcome because I'm sure they
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  must get frustrated with maybe the lack of treatment. So great work that you're doing there, Nat.
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  Yeah, I'm learning a lot. I'm learning a lot myself still about it all. I don't know the
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  science behind it. I'm just trying to give my experience as a guardian for my furry little
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  babies. So yeah, we've done our news, but we've got a special guest coming in to speak to us,
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  our friend Liz. Liz has a little gaggle of chickens. I don't know if that's the right word
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  for a group of chickens. Maybe she can tell us. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm really excited to speak to Liz
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  today because I've never really met anyone with chickens as pets until Liz. Yeah, it's not, I don't
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  anything about keeping chickens as pets. I mean, you and I are both vegetarians, so we
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  don't eat chickens, do we? No. Yeah. It's quite nice to hear that they are being loved and looked
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  after by our friend Liz. So yeah, really, really excited to hear a bit more about her chickens and
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  how you can take care of chickens as a pet and all the joy that they can bring.
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  Yeah, because she speaks quite fondly of them. So it'd be lovely to hear from her about their
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  personalities and stuff. So yeah. Yeah. Bring on Liz. Yeah.
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  Hello, everybody. We're here with another pause between this episode with our bestie Liz. Hey,
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  Liz. Hello. Hiya, Sasha. Hiya, Nat. Hello, Liz. Hello. How are you doing? How's today gone? Oh,
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  it's been nice. Yeah. Out in the sunshine all day today. Got home, had some little cuddles
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  with the chickens. Yeah. Cool. And that's exactly why Liz is here to tell us about the chicken
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  family or another extension of a companion animal. Doesn't have to be just a furry dog.
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  We also have chickens in the wider family nowadays. And we learned last week, Liz,
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  that chickens apparently are the third pet group, most popular pet. Really? Wow. Well,
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  didn't you know there's more chickens in the world than there are human beings?
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  So I suppose people don't just have one chicken, do they? They have a whole flock of them.
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  So there's probably people with many chickens out there. Outnumbered by chickens, which
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  aren't they like related to dinosaurs? Yeah, they're the closest like, well, ostriches,
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  they reckon. But you know, like that kind of big birds and biggish birds like chickens
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  are like the closest living relations to T-Rex. They're way closer than like lizards and
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  crocodiles, things like that. So Liz is already firing out facts.
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  Well, thanks for coming Liz. We can't wait to share a little bit of news because I know a
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  little bit about chickens. I was a bit scared of chickens until I held one last year and it was
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  quite cuddly and a lot less like scary than I thought. What scared you about it? There were,
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  I don't know, the flappiness. Yeah. And I thought they would be a bit more bony and delicate than
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  they were. Yeah. But I'm really looking forward to finding out. Some people say they don't like
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  the wobbly bits. Like my friend Di, the wobbly bits on the chicken's face scared her. Yeah,
• 15:26
  the skin's a bit creepy, I suppose. I would be more like that with turkeys for sure. Yeah,
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  now they do have proper wobbly bits, don't they? You should get a turkey person on next,
• 15:36
  someone who loves turkeys and has turkey companions. We could, we could, why not?
• 15:41
  So Liz, tell us about your chickens. Like how many do you have? Who are they? Where do they
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  live? How do you keep them? Well, I've got four chickens and they're quite fancy chickens. They're
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  not kind of run-of-the-mill chickens. I've got a Polish chicken, Złota, and she's got a massive
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  grey crest. She's like a bird of paradise in chicken form. She's got these black feathers
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  that are like edged with gold and that's why she's called Złota. It's Polish for golden. And then I've
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  got January, who's got like a fluffy wig and she lays blue eggs. She's like a wise, wily old hen.
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  And then I've got Noddy, who's named after Noddy Holder out of Slade because she's got great big
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  sideburns. And she's a really hungry chicken. She's hungry all the time and just wants food.
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  And she's massive. She's about the size of a goose. And she's like as soft as like a big fluffy
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  marshmallow. She's so soft. And then I've got a little silky chicken, which are the ones that
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  they don't have kind of like hard feathers. In kind of the 15th century, they used to call them
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  the woolly hen and their feathers look like kind of more like fur. So she's really funny and she's
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  like a proper angry little creature. She's like screams at everybody. It's really indignant.
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  What's her name? So she's like, she looks the cutest, but she's the angriest of all the chickens.
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  And what's her name? Did you say? Oh, her name is Jaquavius
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  Barb Blanche Morley. And that's what happens when you let your 12 year old son name your chickens.
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  And the reason I've got fancy chickens is because I went to get some sensible like utility hens
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  that just lay lots of eggs. And then my boy came with me to the chicken shop, teenage boy.
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  And he was just like, we have to get the luxury chickens, mom. And he persuaded me to get kind
• 17:25
  of fancy chickens. But they are lovely. I'm glad. Do these fancy chickens also give you eggs? I know
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  you said January does, but do they all? Yeah, yeah, they all do. My Polish chicken,
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  who looks the fanciest of all, she lays an egg a day. The only one who doesn't lay that much
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  is my little silky Jaquavius. And that's because silkies, they're a breed that just really want to
• 17:46
  hatch eggs and have baby chicks. So she does something called going broody, where she goes
• 17:51
  and sits in the nest box. And she doesn't lay any eggs for weeks. And she's just desperate to become
• 17:56
  a mom, which is quite sad, really, that it's like she should really be allowed to hatch some little
• 18:02
  chicks. But they're brilliant, mummy hens. So if you want like to hatch lots of little chicks,
• 18:07
  then you can get a silky. The only problem then is if you're hatching loads of little chicks,
• 18:11
  you end up with loads of cockerels and the cockerels will fight when they grow up.
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  So it makes a little bit of an issue. Yeah.
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  So when you said chicken shop, Liz, what's the chicken shop like?
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  I mean, I know the high street chicken shops where you go and eat the chicken.
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  I suppose it's like, you don't really get it for that many other pets, do you? I suppose you get
• 18:31
  it for tropical fish where you go to the fish shop and buy some tropical fish. But for chickens,
• 18:36
  there's like poultry breeders and they'll have kind of like different breeds of poultry in stock
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  pretty much all the time. And you can go and kind of meet the chickens and pick the ones that you
• 18:46
  want. So yeah, I suppose because you can keep them in massive great flocks. And so the poultry
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  breeders will just have a great big flock of chickens and you can go in and kind of pick a few
• 18:56
  to take home with you. How much do they cost to buy a chicken?
• 19:01
  About £30 for a chicken. Yeah. And you do want to go to like a decent poultry breeder,
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  someone that really looks after the welfare of the chickens. And you need to like look out for
• 19:12
  certain kind of diseases that they get like scaly leg, things like that. And if you go to like a
• 19:17
  poultry place and they've got chickens that are kind of living in filth and it's not all kind of
• 19:22
  clean and lovely and the chickens look stressed and maybe they've got kind of bald patches or
• 19:26
  they're losing feathers or they're picking on each other, pecking at each other. You know that it's
• 19:32
  no good. You need to go somewhere where they really value the welfare of the hens. They get
• 19:36
  to go outside. The chickens look clean and well cared for. Yeah. That's some good tips, Liz.
• 19:42
  Thank you. So did you have quails before? Yeah. I love quail. So for anyone that doesn't know what
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  a quail is, they're like a little mini chicken. They look like a chicken if it had had a baby
• 19:54
  with a baked potato. They're like virtually round with just a little head that sticks out.
• 20:00
  And then they're really beautiful. They're very small and they lay little speckled eggs and
• 20:07
  they've got funny little personalities as well. So they're a little bit different from
• 20:11
  keeping chickens. They tend to be kind of a bit more nervous and flighty than chickens. They can
• 20:15
  be. And I think it's harder to train them to kind of free range in the garden like chickens are real
• 20:22
  homebods. You can let them have a run. They just stay in your garden and then they just come home
• 20:26
  at night and go into their run at night. Whereas quail, if you open the door and let them out,
• 20:31
  quite often they just fly off over the fence and you wouldn't see them again. I did have a couple
• 20:36
  that had escaped and they came back. But I think you risk kind of losing your quail.
• 20:42
  And because they're little, there's a lot of things that want to eat them as well, like
• 20:46
  foxes and sparrowhawks and things like that. So they're a bit more vulnerable. Even a rat would
• 20:53
  kind of get a quail. But they are the sweetest little birds. I absolutely love them. So what got
• 20:59
  you into getting chickens? Why did you initially want to get a load? We used to have chickens and
• 21:03
  ducks when I was a kid and I just loved them. They've got funny personality. They make your
• 21:08
  breakfast for you. So there's not many other animals that will lay you an egg a day. And so
• 21:13
  I grow my own veggies. And then I thought having kind of a little flock of chickens, I could have
• 21:20
  my vegetables that I've grown myself. I could have my eggs that the chickies had laid.
• 21:23
  And then you know you're not getting eggs from kind of disgusting great factory farms. You know
• 21:27
  that you can really look after the animals. And yeah, they're just really nice companions. It's
• 21:32
  good to be out in the garden and have them all kind of pecking around your feet and coming to
• 21:36
  see you. So that's really nice. Oh, what are their personalities like then? You did touch on that a
• 21:41
  little bit at the start. But yeah, what makes them unique personalities? Yeah, they are all really
• 21:46
  different. It's really surprising. You'd think a chicken would just be a chicken. But it's like
• 21:50
  every chicken has got a slightly different character. Like Zwota, my Polish chicken,
• 21:54
  is like a little cat. She comes around your feet all the time. And she's always like rubbing up
• 21:59
  against your leg almost. And she always wants to be involved in what you're doing. You know,
• 22:03
  like cats will jump on your computer keyboard. Or she's like straight in the house as soon as
• 22:08
  you open the door and just ever so friendly. And she's the chicken who kind of likes having little
• 22:13
  cuddles and snuggles the most. She doesn't mind picking her up and giving her some fuss.
• 22:17
  And some of the others are a bit more wary of that. Like January, if you pick her up,
• 22:21
  you can tell that she's kind of like a bit reluctant to be fussed. She's like,
• 22:26
  it makes her feel a bit awkward. She'd rather have her own personal space. And then yeah,
• 22:31
  there's like Noddy's just the kind of great big hungry chicken who just loves food and
• 22:37
  little Jaquavius. She's really funny. She just like, she gets separated from the rest of the
• 22:42
  chickens. And all of a sudden, she's like, like calling to them to see where they've gone. And
• 22:47
  then she runs across the garden. And her big like woolly legs look like she's wearing like
• 22:53
  old fashioned bloomers or something. She's just a funny little chicken.
• 22:56
  That's so sweet.
• 22:58
  The little bloomers things remind me of my cats because Murray's got like,
• 23:01
  what we call little pantaloons.
• 23:03
  Pantaloons.
• 23:04
  I love looking at the back of him, he's like little fluffy pantaloons.
• 23:08
  So like, where do you keep them? Because obviously that you said about free range,
• 23:11
  and they're obviously outdoors. Like what kind of thing have you built for them? Because I know
• 23:14
  you were building something.
• 23:15
  So you need to have a chicken room, which has got an indoor sheltered bit with a perch so that in
• 23:22
  at the night time, they can go in there and sleep on the perch somewhere secure. So because foxes
• 23:26
  are like a chicken's arch enemy. And you need to make sure that there's somewhere where you can
• 23:33
  shut the door. They're like safe and sound and there's no like cold drafts blowing through.
• 23:37
  And they've got nest boxes in there as well. Because when they want to lay an egg,
• 23:40
  they'll always go into the nest box. Somehow they just know like what it's for. And they just go
• 23:46
  there and lay an egg in like the box that's attached to the run. And then I know it's like,
• 23:51
  there's a lot of kind of people that sell chicken runs. And I suppose it's a bit like keeping rabbits
• 23:55
  or something like that, where there's a lot of inappropriate ones where the outside space that
• 24:00
  they've got is way too small. And so I've built them like a great big aviary, which is probably
• 24:07
  kind of like 15 foot by eight foot. And they only really like stay in there if we're away on holiday
• 24:14
  or you know, we haven't got anyone, we're away and there's no one there to kind of let them out
• 24:18
  and put them back away at night. Most of these days they're like out free ranging around the
• 24:24
  garden. And I do like there to be someone in the house who can kind of keep an eye when they're
• 24:30
  free ranging because we did have a fox take one a few years ago, which is really sad. In the day
• 24:37
  when somebody was in, they went out in the garden. But Noddy, she's a breed called salmon
• 24:42
  favarole and they were bred, they're a Swiss breed and they're really big. She's pretty like feisty
• 24:50
  and they were bred to free range in like the Swiss mountains and fight off foxes. So if you've
• 24:56
  got a flock of salmon favarole, they could like stand up to a fox attack and apparently like fight
• 25:02
  one off. I guess is it like Romanian shepherd dogs that are bred to like fight off bears and wolves?
• 25:09
  Yeah, she's the chicken equivalent of a Romanian shepherd dog.
• 25:13
  She's a feisty chick. That's what we like to hear.
• 25:16
  Yeah. So are they like quite easy to take care of? What kind of like, do you need a lot of feed?
• 25:21
  What kind of like stuff do you have to think of like most days to sort of keep them happy?
• 25:25
  You can, so you can get kind of special chicken food and I think a lot of it's kind of made out
• 25:32
  of soya. Some people feed their chickens just on kind of like wheat and split peas and maize,
• 25:37
  stuff like that. I tend to give them like a mix. So I give them some of the chicken pellets,
• 25:41
  chicken food and then I give them like treats as well. So scattering of corn every day and some
• 25:46
  maize and occasionally like some sunflower seeds, some fresh veggies as well. They love kind of
• 25:53
  eating any like green vegetables and blueberries. They absolutely adore,
• 25:58
  they go bonkers for blueberries. I've got a blueberry bush in my garden just outside my
• 26:02
  kitchen window and when all the blueberries on it are ripe, I'll stand at the kitchen,
• 26:07
  kitchen sink, looking out the window, doing my washing up and suddenly I see like a little
• 26:11
  chicken's head popping up where the kitchen window is and it will be one of them doing
• 26:17
  high jumps to eat the blueberries off the bush. So yeah, they really like kind of fruit.
• 26:23
  We've got an apple tree and when the apples fall off in the autumn, they'll like go and
• 26:26
  have a little peck around. But they've all kind of got different favourite foods. Like January,
• 26:30
  our grey chicken, her favourite food is blueberries and then Noddy is the only chicken
• 26:35
  that will go around and eat slugs. I thought when I got them, they'd be really good for kind of
• 26:39
  slug and snail patrol in the garden and then none of the chickens wanted to touch a slug apart from
• 26:44
  Noddy. It's kind of disgusting but it's also like one of the benefits of having chickens in the
• 26:50
  garden. They keep some of the little pests down that will be eating your plants otherwise. The
• 26:55
  chickens become the little pests. They're the ones that are scratching up your plants and eating
• 26:59
  your plants. Yeah, because you're big into your plants and growing and horticultural stuff,
• 27:05
  aren't you Liz? So you were hoping to like help with that kind of ecosystem. Yeah, but actually
• 27:11
  they've ruined my garden. They've got their little feet. They're just like little digging machines
• 27:16
  and they just like absolutely turn all the soil over. They trash a lot of the plants and then
• 27:21
  they eat kind of other ones. Oh dear. So if you want a beautiful garden, maybe like keep your
• 27:28
  chickens in their chicken run a bit more. I mean people do build like an outdoor fenced off
• 27:34
  area just for their chickens but then they tend to kind of like tear the grass up pretty quick
• 27:38
  and turn it into just kind of like bare earth if they have like a smaller chicken run because
• 27:43
  they've got the whole run of our garden which is, I mean you've seen my garden, it's quite big.
• 27:48
  It's probably about like 30 metres by 20 metres and for chickens they won't like totally turn
• 27:53
  that into mud. It still looks like a garden when you go around. It's just I suppose because
• 27:58
  I'm into my gardening I've noticed the problems they cause with the plants. And how are cats
• 28:03
  around chickens? Because you talked about foxes and things like other predators but do cats pay
• 28:08
  much attention to chickens? Have you got any cats living locally? We haven't. Strangely enough we
• 28:13
  haven't got any local cats but we used to have a cat and chickens and the cat never bothered the
• 28:19
  chickens at all. So when I was a kid our cats and chickens kind of got on fine. I think a chicken
• 28:25
  would probably like deliver a cat swift peck and then it would realise that it wasn't to be
• 28:29
  messed with. You do get some little teeny tiny chickens called ceramas that are like
• 28:34
  they're the size of a pigeon and I'm sure some cats would have a cerama but
• 28:40
  yeah I've just got big chickens. Yeah I can imagine my cats maybe being a bit nervous because chickens
• 28:45
  can be quite big and obviously like yeah flap and make quite a bit of fuss. I mean ours run away
• 28:50
  from the pigeon so they're not but then they are indoor and not used to being that close to other
• 28:56
  species. I worry a little bit sometimes the chickens stay in the back garden but sometimes
• 29:03
  I'll have like the garden gate open and they'll wander out to the front. Loads of our neighbours
• 29:07
  have got dogs and it worries me a bit if like one of the dogs hadn't been trained to be around.
• 29:12
  Obviously they haven't been trained to be around chickens if their owners don't have chickens so
• 29:16
  it'd worry me kind of maybe a dog might think it was like a nice snack or something. Yeah that's
• 29:24
  not happened so far so that's good. Good and is there a term for like a group of chickens together
• 29:30
  so you know like with dogs you have like the pack and I know with pugs because I have Bessie the
• 29:35
  pug if you have more than I think three pugs it becomes a grumble that's what they call it.
• 29:40
  A grumble. Do you have like a term for chickens and do they all stick up for each other if one was in
• 29:47
  danger? It's a flock of chickens but I think I need to think of a better word for like a bunch
• 29:53
  of fancy chickens. Yes we need to find out. Maybe like a parade of chickens or something. That sounds better
• 30:01
  I like that because they're a bit fancier. Yeah luxury chickens. And is there anything else
• 30:07
  people don't know about chickens? Have you got like because you're full of facts is there something
• 30:12
  that you could share with us? Yeah I think chickens are really good at recognizing faces and they've
• 30:17
  done research on them and found they can like recognize kind of a hundred different individual
• 30:22
  people. Wow. So it's like you know they know us and they'll recognize their owner and I always
• 30:29
  think that's quite nice where they like you're not just like the hand that feeds them they know who
• 30:33
  you are. Good. They take an interest in you. Yeah see that's way more than I would have known because
• 30:42
  I don't know a lot about birds but I mean I've seen some like you know parrots can do a lot
• 30:46
  of things and are very highly intelligent and some other smaller birds are very clever.
• 30:51
  Like I mean like gosh you even talk about like crows how you know they can do puzzles and all
• 30:55
  sorts. Remember faces. I think I remember something about remembering faces for years and it passes
• 31:00
  down through generations with crows. Wow that's amazing. Yeah they can pass on the same face to
• 31:06
  their offspring and then it goes on and on apparently but I didn't. So it's interesting
• 31:11
  to hear that chickens because then I suppose it supports those other stories. Yeah was that
• 31:16
  like a thing they did with a guy wearing a mask or something? I think so. At a university
• 31:22
  somewhere the crows like recognized him even after like kind of three generations of crows.
• 31:27
  Yeah I think I read the same thing. We underestimate. We do underestimate birds.
• 31:34
  Yeah they've got quite a different intelligence to us but they are still very intelligent I think
• 31:39
  just in their own way. Yeah chickens definitely aren't stupid. No good well we're here to break
• 31:45
  that myth. Yeah and tell people how lovely and like knowing more about that they've got
• 31:51
  personalities and how much joy they bring is just what we're here to do. So yeah. Yeah and if
• 31:58
  someone was listening today and thought wow I'm really inspired about getting a chicken or
• 32:04
  actually what I've heard is brilliant. I really want a chicken in my life with my garden. What
• 32:08
  would be the next step? Like what should they do? So I'd have a look at your outside space and I'd
• 32:15
  say if you've got a garden smaller than perhaps 10 meters square chickens probably aren't for you
• 32:20
  and I'd also make sure that you get more than one so you need that they're friendly you know
• 32:25
  they need like other chickens around them to keep them company so you need to have a minimum of
• 32:30
  three chickens. Right that's good. I'd say you can think hard about whether you'd want to get a
• 32:36
  cockerel or not because cockerels are quite loud quite noisy and yeah you'd have to be prepared to
• 32:46
  every single day you have to go in there run you have to like I do a kind of it sounds a bit gross
• 32:51
  but I go in there and just make sure their bedding's clean do a poo pick and just get all the
• 32:55
  chicken poo off their bedding put down a bit of fresh bedding and then give them a proper clean
• 32:59
  out perhaps kind of once every few weeks something like that and then every day you have to make sure
• 33:04
  they've got plenty of fresh water you've got to make sure they've got enough food and the more
• 33:09
  time you spend with these chickens then the more you'll get out of having chickens the more they'll
• 33:13
  get to know you the more kind of friendly they'll become and yeah the more you kind of start to see
• 33:18
  their personalities come out stuff like that. So you've got to have time for them basically time
• 33:23
  to farm and time to build that relationship. Yeah the other thing you can do as well is
• 33:28
  you know because battery farms keep the hens for maybe like two years and a hen can live
• 33:37
  they reckon like the average lifespan six years and some of them can live up to kind of 16
• 33:41
  20 years even and so after two years the battery farms they send all the chickens to the pocket
• 33:47
  pie factory to get made into chicken pies unless the British Hen Welfare Trust organise like hen
• 33:53
  battery hen rescues because they know that those chickens will live kind of a lot longer if they
• 33:58
  get rescued and you can adopt kind of chickens and it's kind of much cheaper than going to the
• 34:03
  chicken shop and buying luxury chickens probably much much kinder as well so you can get like
• 34:09
  re-home ex-battery chickens and that's a really kind of lovely worthwhile thing to do. I think
• 34:14
  kind of in the future I'd like to do that. Yeah sort of thing to say Liz you are also vegetarian
• 34:20
  aren't you and have been for decades so you're I am yeah yeah anything else you want to tell us
• 34:27
  Liz before we wrap this up today about your life with chickens recommending them to others little
• 34:34
  Keeping chickens makes you realise how kind of unkind we often are to chickens and how we do
• 34:40
  often treat them just like a product and when you have a pet chicken you realise that they're
• 34:45
  actually brilliant little personalities and they can bring you kind of a lot of light and joy and
• 34:50
  happiness into your life it's lovely I couldn't imagine now going out into the garden and not
• 34:54
  having my little chucks kind of coming around my feet and like looking up to you asking for a
• 35:01
  little snack yeah well it's like it's that kind of like thing where they just bring you a little
• 35:06
  bit of love and a little bit of joy and that's what yeah it's all about really isn't it that's
• 35:10
  right so yeah I'd say you know if you're thinking of getting chickens and you've got enough space
• 35:16
  and you're going to have time to look after them definitely do your research and kind of you know
• 35:22
  find out how to look after them properly and then go for it get some and you'll really enjoy being
• 35:29
  a chicken mum or dad well said I want a chicken now I don't have a garden unfortunately but one
• 35:34
  day when I get there fortunately they're not not easy to house train what kind of chicken something
• 35:42
  to do with the sun as well isn't don't they lay more there's more when there's more light
• 35:46
  that's right so in the winter then they stop laying so you don't get eggs all year round
• 35:51
  so yeah there are some breeds that are supposed to lay through the winter
• 35:55
  okay but our little broody one actually little jacquavius who's kind of spends this summer
• 36:02
  wanting to have babies in the winter time she lays and the other chickens stop laying
• 36:06
  so we've got like an egg a day through the winter so yeah little silky might lay through the winter
• 36:11
  and I bet they taste way better than the shop bought eggs yeah they really do yeah there's no
• 36:16
  contest I can't go back to shop bought eggs it's like a really sad day when you haven't got an egg
• 36:21
  that your chickens have laid in the house and you're like oh shall I buy some smelly supermarket
• 36:26
  eggs they just don't have that like sultry smell the ones that are fresh really yeah I can't believe
• 36:33
  some of the shops still sell barn eggs I just don't even know why we're even they're even there
• 36:37
  I know people have limited funds but that every single egg should be free range at the very least
• 36:43
  yeah definitely yeah big thing of mine but anyway but thank you Liz I think that's really helpful
• 36:48
  or really insightful like I say I would love to get some chickens but it's not to be right now
• 36:54
  yeah thank you Liz no thank you for having me on yeah it's a pleasure all right take care
• 37:01
  I will catch up with you again soon yeah I'll see you soon okay thank you
• 37:09
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• 37:13
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