Better than being cooped up
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Roast 
tomorrow for lunch I’ll raise a glass of 
to you & La Duchesse du Goble. x
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Keep us abreast of things 
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bravo, a true luxury chicken hotel. Mine Tin (9), Elodie(5), Julie(6) and Juliette (5) are more rustic.
Sorry I do not Know how to Insert pics…
Be nice to see the ‘guests’. If you use ‘reply’ then use the upload and choose where the images are stored on your device you can show us.
The upload symbol is this one.
Is it possible to keep chickens without predators decimating them on a regular basis. Is electrification the way forward?
That’s a big question, Paddy.
I’ve raised chickens in a lot of different circumstances, since the 1990’s. The flocks I’ve raised ranged from maximum of 15 hens and a rooster, to my current four hens and no rooster.
I don’t think electricity keeps out predators; it is generally something that will help keep your animals in the pen, rather. Then again, I’ve never tried electric fencing with chickens.
The design of your chicken coop and chicken run, and proximity to your house are big factors with regard to predation. Predators that attack the hens and rooster(s), generally attack at night. If you have only hens and no rooster, then your hens are more vulnerable. But that said, I’ve not had nocturnal predator problems as yet, here in France. My problems in the past were with possums (Texas, USA), foxes, osprey (birds of prey in Maine, USA), eagles (Maine, USA), and weasels (Maine, USA).
Here’s what I’d recommend: a coop with a flap or door that closes securely with a latch, after all of the chickens have gone up and in, after sundown. Make sure any holes into the coop are closed off for the night.
Magpies and other birds can get into an open coop with open nestboxes and steal eggs, but birds and other varmints aren’t after the chickens themselves. I’ve not had a rat problem, but they too would be after eggs, I’d guess?
In an open chicken pen, during the day, birds of prey will swoop down on chicks and pullets if they’re not protected. Ants will swarm chicks sometimes.
So the basic thing I’d say is to look at your set up and watch how things go. Have some extra chicken wire handy, and some wood, in case you need to reinforce things. I wouldn’t go in for an electric fence, but that’s just me.
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Looks very cosy.
We’ve kept hens for over 15 years and predators have never decimated them - we’ve only lost the odd one from time to time.
One was definitely to a weasel (back in the UK), and another to a bird of prey (in France). We’ve had problems with neighbours’ dogs, but again only resulting in the actual loss of a couple of hens over the years.
Many, many times we’ve found the signs of fox activity round the coops - but never lost a hen to a fox.
We have a secure coop - including wire mesh under the ground around it, so burrowing in is not possible - and lock the hens in every night; during the day they range free all over the garden. This generally works - they are safe at night, and during the day seem to be able to escape most predators themselves.
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We had a buzzard actually take the live hen away. Fortunately it was a bit heavy and dropped it in the river, and in the summer so not too much flow and I could rescue it.
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At least they’re not saying that they have to be shut indoors again, like a few years ago. Still, “preventing exchange with other (wild) birds” means having them fully enclosed in at least chicken wire sized netting, and not letting them roam free.
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it’s a bit like covid… as things get worse… so the rules get tighter… 
Although not far from the house the hens seem to wander far and wide during the day.
Lost two went when the fox managed to slide open the coop door and the latest one went in morning daylight.
I keep reading the title of this thread and twitching, and scrolling on by as I have no poultry.
But my inner pedant is fighting to escape.
I consider you have hens (and maybe a cock), not chickens. Although this is hotly debated amongst pedants to me chicken is the meat.
Same way you don’t keep porks, you keep pigs. Or no beefs in your field, but cows.
In mediaeval England the peasants were Anglo-Saxon but the aristocracy was Norman-French. The aristocracy compelled the peasants to look after the animals but rarely allowed them eat any meat.
The peasants called the animals by the Anglo-Saxon names – pig, calf, sheep, etc., but the aristocracy, who ate the meat, called it by the French names for the same animals – porc, veau, boeuf, mouton. This got Anglicised slightly over the centuries but this distinction between these animals and the meat has remained in every English-speaking country around the world.
Turkeys and rabbits escaped being eaten by the Normans so only have a single name. Chicken and hen are still debatable.
but which came first? chicken or egg 
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You beat me to it
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Poultry and pullet come from poule. Cock from low Latin coco via coq, it is onomatopoeic and replaced gallus. Capon is straight from Latin.
Chicken and chick are Germanic (cf Küken) Hen is too (Huhn) in German a cock is a Hahn.
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Whilst we do not have any hens, we do keep a couple of dozen or so Guinea Fowl and Quail, at the last count, well at least until Sunday dinner time. We live in the centre of town but our immediate neighbour is a former convent, now a home for the under privileged and migrants/refugees that is also run as a small farm. They keep poultry, a consequence of this is they also keep rats. Our cats, who freely mix with the birds, usually deal with any rats that invade our space, but at times a spurt in the rat population can overwhelm the cats and I have been known to sit in the garden and shoot the blighters (I have a licence). Pine Martens have been a problem in the past, but now seldom visit, we presume because of the cat’s scent and C-Pour, the bruiser cat, has dispatched a couple before.