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davshaz
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PostSubject: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeThu Jan 28, 2010 6:10 pm

First topic message reminder :

We don't live in Bulgaria yet but once we get there we was thinking of keeping Chickens its not something either of us have done before so we know absolutely nothing about it so I would like to ask those of you that do keep Chickens or know about these things for any advice and how we would go about buying the chicks to start us off and what sort of home would they need and food etc, thank you in advance
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Chris
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeMon Apr 26, 2010 9:58 am

Sarah wrote:
1 more question does what Chickens eat make any differance to the way they taste ?

I suppose they must which is why Sainsbury's can charge a few quid more for 'corn fed' [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeMon Apr 26, 2010 4:28 pm

Sarah wrote:
1 more question does what Chickens eat make any differance to the way they taste ?

sarah


Certainly does, our home reared animals taste far better than shop bought and friends have told us the same.
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeFri Jun 11, 2010 10:39 am

Some good information here but does anyone know how to rear them from Chicks???
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeWed Aug 18, 2010 3:00 pm

Depends on how old the chicks are. We've successfully hatched and reared chicks and also had good results after buying day old chicks at the local market.

They need to be kept in a warm, draft free place until fully feathered and fed chick crumbs. The temperature should be kept around 90 to 100 deg. for the first week, decrease 5 deg. per week. A 100 watt bulb pointing in one corner (not the whole brooder) works well. Or you can infrared heat lamps here in BG, but make sure the chicks have a place where they can get away from the heat if they get too warm. They need a supply of fresh, clean water at all times and usually shavings as bedding.

They're relatively easy to raise but can be messy.
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Gregory Robbins
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeThu Jan 06, 2011 12:27 am

I am new and haven't yet arrived but I do keep chickens. I don't rear them for meat but I do feed them on meat cut small as and when it is in the table scraps (but NEVER chicken) as they eat worms, insects or carrion anyway. Kippers, garlic and other strong tasting foods do flavour the eggs.

I wonder if anyone can advise -
Are there rules about bringing live birds from the UK to Bulgaria?
What are Bulgarian attitudes to the noise of cocks crowing?
Are any diseases eg fowl pest endemic in bg and are people imunising against these?
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeThu Jan 06, 2011 10:34 am

Hi Gregory.

I can't answer your question re bringing live birds into Bulgaria but there mat be some information on the defra website [url:2c6wdvmv]http:
//ww2.
defra.
gov.
uk/[/url:2c6wdvmv]

But cocks crowing is pretty normal and everyday here - most people in the villages keep a few chickens and I've never known anyone complain (yet).

We've not heard or experienced any problems with fowl epidemics and vaccinations are available, although I'd suspect that most of the village birds are not immunised. The only problem we've had was foxes and pine martens, although now that we have a totally secure hen house there's been no reccurrence (we converted our old outside loo).

Strangely though our hens went off the lay in autumn when they moulted and didn't start laying again until the snow arrived.....and are happily back to producing those lovely eggs that we enjoy - so much better and tastier than the shop bought ones.
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeSun Dec 18, 2011 2:29 pm

Hi
Seems like a bit of an old thread, but I thought I'd tag on the end for anyone who might be interested.
We've been in Bulgaria about a year and have had chickens from day one. We had never kept chickens before. It has been a learning curve for sure.
We are in the Yambol area and we have people come round every so often selling chicks or chickens, you can also buy them at the local market. You can also sometimes buy them from your neighbours.
Last year we bought 12 young chickens at about 16 weeks old, and 5 that were older and in a mess, they looked like exbattery hens. We found over the year that most of the younger ones died. After lots of research and a few amature autopsies, it was quite clear that with some it was a problem with being egg bound (a hereditory thing).
The older birds have cleaned up nicely, are trouble free and produce plenty of eggs, so many that at times we can't keep up s. So we have decided to stick with the exbattery hens for our eggs, I am assuming that if they are exbattery, they would have been given their injections etc at the correct time. And that this is why they have had no problems.
I don't think the locally reared chickens would have had any vaccinations and that this is why they have gone down with various ailments. We will be getting the yound birds again, but this time we will be raising them purely for meat.
You can buy chicken mash and corn etc in most of the towns I hear. We buy ours (along with the locals), both the mash and corn, from the plant that takes in all the grains from the farms and produces flours etc.
Chickens do also need some protein. Ours are free to roam so they find their own, by way of bugs and insects. But in the winter they do tend to steal some of the food from our dogs s
As far as disease goes, you tend to have pretty much the same here as everywhere. There are vets who do do vaccinations etc but in my experience, they look at you rather strangly if you talk about spending your money on vaccinating a chicken that only cost you the equivelent of £2. It seems to be, if its sick get it away from the others quickly, kill it and go get another. Also some of the vaccines only work if they are given during the chicks first day of life.
Our chickens live in a house made of corrogated cement board They put themselves to bed at night. We lock the door, and let the dog loose. We have lost none to predators. We feed them Mash in the morning and call them for corn about an hour before they go to bed at night, mainly as a way to get them to come back, so we can visually check them over. And thats about it. Hope this helps anyone who is looking Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 3386807041
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davshaz
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeSun Dec 18, 2011 4:04 pm

Old thread or not its always good to hear about other peoples experiences and its all very helpful to us . Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 2581928987
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeTue Dec 20, 2011 12:17 pm

:Good post:We have had chickens in Greece and here in Bulgaria and have had no problems at all even though they have had no special treatment other than a good mix of food both grains and our leftovers and a secure house at night. We have reared from baby chicks but it is about 6 months before they start laying. When we bought some when we had older laying hens we kept the babies separate for a while so they all got used to each other and also kept the chicks warm.
The chicken houses have been made by him indoors from bits of wood always available in old houses and adding a lock. Chickens soon get used to where they are fed and will arrive home to roost at dusk when its easy to shut them in. We have always put hay in their shed and somewhere to perch. They usually huddle together on the perches which keeps them warm in winter. Obviously they have to have water available at all times and dark, safe places to lay eggs. We had a beautiful proud cockerel for years until he got left out one night and got killed by a predator. Cockerels are not necessary for eggs though only if you want to breed.
Other than this, they have a lovely free-ranging life and love to follow my chap when he is rotovating to scrabble around for the worms he digs up. They provide beautiful brown eggs year round with only an occasional hiccup when moulting. The locals prefer our eggs to the shop bought ones probably because of their good diet. We have also made friends with our last lot of chickens who would let me pick them up and stroke them. Fantastic animals but we have to watch the dog if they run because she wants to chase them!
At the moment we are chickenless due to our very speedy move with no time to build a new house for them. We gave them to our neighbour who was surprised we wanted no money for them.
We will soon be having some more as their house is in the process of completion.
Finally, we have lost a few to unknown causes - just found them dead in their coop. Might have been due to being egg bound or bullying by the others. One which went lame I isolated and was really chuffed that I got it up and mobile to live out a long life.
So there you are folks. Get some chickens - I still get a thrill from collecting their eggs and always thank them.
I have read the books and gone online and by rights mine should never have survived let alone live for many years!
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeTue Dec 20, 2011 4:46 pm

Chichen's are like machines. You feed in one end and they feed you out of the other end :Very funny 2:but true
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeWed Dec 21, 2011 10:52 pm

willowsend wrote:
Chichen's are like machines. You feed in one end and they feed you out of the other end :Very funny 2:but true

g Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 2381841692 Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 1865348797 Very true Willow. g
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeWed Dec 28, 2011 1:01 pm

I’ve kept chickens for years in the UK and found this site very good for information: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] ... 8510b318f1
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeSat Dec 31, 2011 11:00 am

Thanks Silky T
Looks like a really interesting site. I'm sure I'll be making use of it no end.
The gardening bit looks really interesting too. s
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeFri Feb 10, 2012 3:33 pm

[size=55:285x3skf]novinite

Bulgaria Vows to Comply with EC Hens Directive by April

Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naydenov has vowed that Bulgaria will comply with EU hen welfare standards by April 2012.

In end-January, the European Commission launched infringement procedures against 13 EU member states, including Bulgaria, over their failure to implement EU legislation concerning the welfare of laying hens.

In Friday statement in Parliament, the Agriculture Minister pledged that Bulgaria would manage to implement the ban on the so-called "
nu-enriched"
cages for laying hens before the end-May 2012 deadline.

Responding to a question of an MP from the left-wing Coalition for Bulgaria, he said that out of a total of 3 million hens, 500 000 were living in substandard conditions.

"
A total of BGN 50 M has been allocated to ensure compliance with EU animal welfare legislation. I defended the interests of Bulgarian business,"
Naydenov declared.

He further argued that an easier way to go about this would have been to kill the hens living in poor conditions, thereby ensuring compliance with the EU law but also bringing the business sector to its knees.

Penko Angelov, who brought up the issue, warned that Bulgaria would face a serious penalty if it failed to abide by EU animal welfare standards.

He vowed to demand Naydenov's resignation if Bulgaria got fined over the mater and expressed doubts that the BGN 50 M in question would suffice to implement the standards.

"
You call for my resignation on a daily basis, and if you do this on the grounds of the hens' issue, I will not be surprised"
, Naydenov responded.

Starting January 1, 2012, an EC Directive requires that all laying hens must be kept in "
enriched cages"
with extra space to nest, scratch and roost, or in alternative systems.
According to the Directive, cages can be used only if they provide each hen with at least 750 cm² of cage area, a nest-box, litter, perches and claw shortening devices, allowing the hens to satisfy their biological and behavioural needs.
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PostSubject: Re: Advice on keeping Chickens   Advice on keeping Chickens - Page 2 Icon_minitimeThu Jun 21, 2012 6:49 pm

We have hens in the UK, they are charming but messy in our little garden, and charge into the kitchen when the door is opened. I wouldn't be without some now, and look forward to having a bit more (of their own) space to keep them in.....and out of the kitchen!
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