Back Lane HensSix hens, nine metres of Sheffield back garden, written up on the shed door

Years on the board5

SheffieldSouth YorkshireFlock of six since 2021

The whole board, top to bottom

Run notes

Everything that has gone up on the shed door, newest first. The earliest one still worth reading is from14 May 2023. The first eighteen months are in a notebook that got left out in the rain and is now mostly a blue smear.

  • Coop
  • Health
  • Laying
  • Flock
  1. FlockNote 4 of 4

    Four in the morning, and the two hens that came after

    A fox got into the run in October 2025. What it found, what I changed in the fortnight after, and how badly the two replacement birds were received.

    5 parts · about 8 minutes · last corrected 15 Feb 2026

  2. LayingNote 3 of 4

    Short days, the tally sheet, and what the feed really cost

    Winter laying in a north-facing Sheffield garden, three years of egg counts on the shed door, and the feed ledger set against what actually came in.

    5 parts · about 9 minutes · last corrected 11 Jan 2026

  3. HealthNote 2 of 4

    Red mite, the third summer, and what I had been missing

    Birds refusing to go in at dusk, grey dust in the perch sockets, and six weeks of treating the woodwork rather than the hens.

    5 parts · about 7 minutes · last corrected 21 Jun 2025

  4. CoopNote 1 of 4

    The coop I built wrong, and the shed that replaced it

    Two weekends of plywood in March 2021, eighteen months of cleaning it on my knees, and the second-hand shed that fixed most of it.

    5 parts · about 8 minutes · last corrected 2 Mar 2024

Old notes get corrected rather than taken down. Where a later year contradicts an earlier one, both stay on the board and the newer note says which it argues with. The reasoning behind that is on thepage about how the notes get written.