Garden house picture thread - Show us your garden house pictures

Chickens are great. I have bantam silkies and bantam padovan chickens.

What kind of chicken is the gray scruff, the very first photo? How many fellow chickens should the gray scruffs live with to feel comfortable? I'm just starting to get interested in chickens too, but I think they prefer being in a larger group, right?

From experience, be careful when entering chicken coops: there are often plenty of mites that humans do not like. So it's better to wear appropriate clothing.

The chickens usually lay enough eggs for 2-3 families :p and my father, at 83, still collects them every morning.

So if there are plenty of mites in the chicken coop, something is going wrong. There probably aren't any completely without them, but if you already have to wear protective clothing in the chicken coop, something definitely needs to be done. The red poultry mite, for example, is deadly to chickens beyond a certain number. The critters come out of their hiding places at night and suck the chickens dry; young and old animals don’t survive that. Once the critters are in the coop, the only help is to burn everything out with a gas burner and then limewash it, in the worst case even completely burn it down. This is not something to be taken lightly. As a preventive measure, I add diatomaceous earth to the dust bath and the laying nests; they really don't like that because they scrape off their armor on it. The perches are regularly brushed with oil, and additionally, caraway and finely grated garlic are added to the feed. So far, this has worked perfectly.

What kind of chicken is the grey scruff, the very first photo? How many fellow chickens should the grey scruffs live with to feel comfortable? I am just starting to get interested in chickens too, but I think they prefer to be in a large group, right?

The grey scruff is brown. It might be that it had just bathed in the mentioned diatomaceous earth and therefore looked like that. It is a mix of bantam silkie and frizzled bantam Padovana. I have many chickens and (unfortunately) many roosters as well. I would consider 6 as a minimum.

I myself am sometimes one and fully agree, chickens are great!

Hello Gabriele, don’t be surprised: I am actually Hausbau2019. But since yesterday I have been blocked, for whatever reason. Apparently, it has also affected others from my posts. Best regards, Ute

Are chickens actually self-sufficient?
No, seriously: do you have to take care of them a lot?
It's not for me, my greenhouse is already getting on my nerves.

They do require work. Of course, it depends on the number. If they have a large free-range area, you have less work than if you keep them in an enclosure or aviary. They make quite a mess and it smells as well. So cleaning at least every 2 days. If they have free-range, they are almost self-sufficient, as they eat everything that comes in front of their beak. When kept in an aviary, they need corresponding greens. They definitely need grain feed and water. I’m always surprised how much they drink. I have an in-house mealworm breeding for the chicks. But that is a time-consuming thing.