OH bless his heart has know for a long time of my desire to have chooks, and through the pain of an arthritic knee has worked hard whilst i am at work and built me a chook house. A couple of nights ago i got home to find that he had dug post holes and concreted them in ready for the run. Tonight i got home to find half the wire up and tomorrow we are going to finish this and get the gates on. OH has promised me I can go get chooks next week. So lots of questions.....firstly food ...what do i feed them, and do i need to add supplements etc???Secondly bedding..what is best for the nest boxes?? thirdly... someone told me to lay lino on the floor of the house to aid cleaning..has anyone heard of this??and finally these chooks are for eggs and the pot so whats the best breed to get?? Any thing else you think i should know please let me know as this is all new to me..thanks

Food: Ask the suppier what he feeds and get a sack at the time of purchase - you need to take it slow to change food, it can upset them!

Suppliments: Bit of personal choice here, I don't generally. Others will give advice on this!

Bedding: I use dust extracted wood chip, straw is often used in nestboxes, I don't anymore as it can harbour redmite.

Lino: YES! I use lino on the floor of the coop - it is amazingly easy to clean and you can lift it out and scrub it if you have to. It also adds a layer of insulation come winter.

Breeds: If you want eggs followed by boiler fowl afer the first year then you need what is known as a dual purpose or utility breed - examples of this would be Marans or Sussex in pure breed. You could also look to get comercial hybrid table fowl and hybrid layers - but I understand that they need slightly different feed/treatment in that the table fowl need growers pellet rther than layers pellet - so that might not work.

If you are planing on getting a few point-of-lay (POL) enjoying the first flush of eggs and then culling for the table as required I would go for a heavy hybrid such as Maran cross or Sussex cross as they still display the utility conformation of heavy breast development combined with reasonably good egg laying.

You are a lucky lady - I would love chickens, but alas I am not allowed to keep them due to restrictions on the deeds

Hope you have many happy chickie years and lots of scrummy eggs to nosh on.

Thanks for the info and if i may one more question, we have yet to put in the perches on the coop, at what distance from the floor should these be??

Depends on the type of house!

At least 1 1/2 - 2ft down from the ceiling to give enough head room and higher than the nest boxes.

Hens can jump a foot or two easily so somewhere in that you should be able to plan a height.

Remember they have fairly large feet and like a widish flat bar with rounded corners - I use a piece of 2x2 which seems ok.

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