Update on Mrs Boss and the ducklings: Moving on
It’s been over a month since the last update on the Indian Runner ducklings. They are now 9 weeks old and seem almost as big as The Chicken Lady’s grown up flock. We have discovered that Eric is a female duck and Tipex and Freddie are drakes. Eric clearly hasn’t burnt her bra as she’s extremely deferential to her male companions. Waiting to drink and eat after them. She is dark brown and the black Wellington feet that she was born with are now an elegant shade of tan. Freddie and Tipex are beautiful too. Similarly...
read moreStrange eggs
Sometimes I find an egg with a small deformity on the shell but last month I found these two weirdly shaped eggs. What was going on? The larger one is Carol’s (aged three) and the one with the twist was laid by Barbie (aged four). I rushed back to the cottage and fired up the computer. DEFRA has a good, informative article relating to eggs here. Irregularities in egg shells can indicate a host of horrifying diseases. However as Carol and Barbie look well and healthy the cause is clearly age. If you don’t replace your hens every two...
read moreCooking for your chickens: supplementing your layers pellets
Why not supplement your chicken feed with homemade mash? The cost of chicken feed is rocketing. It has already gone up 30% on last year’s feed prices. With a small flock of just five hens and the guinea fowl couple, the impact isn’t huge but any saving could be put towards maintenance and equipment costs. These can be big for people who have just started with chickens. And if you find a market for your eggs and want to expand, the investment in extra chicken housing and runs can be large. Unlike the UK human housing market, chicken...
read moreWatching chickens
“If I have to return I’d like to come back as one of Fiona’s chickens.” I overheard this at a summer party when I was topping up people’s wine. I was delighted. The chickens were relatively new back then. The run was filled with a good two inches of gravel, the immaculate accommodation comprised of a pretty hen house and the Ken Doherty day centre. Our flock of seven live an enclosure (30 x 6 feet). A gated community. Until we stop keeping Min Pins, this is the status quo chicken wise. If I came back as a chicken...
read moreHow to tell if your eggs are fresh
When I cracked the eggs into the frying pan this morning, one egg was clearly much fresher than the other. The first had a yolk standing just right above the white like a small hillock. The next had a much flatter yolk. It smelt fine but the flatter yolk indicates that the egg is not so fresh. Even if I put the ‘flat’ egg on my plate Danny always notices and offers to swap. “There must be some way of knowing which eggs are the freshest.” We have a superb wooden egg stand that I inherited from my Aunt Pickles. This holds...
read moreHow many eggs does a chicken lay an hour, a day, a year?
If only there was a standard answer. We often are asked this question. Danny reckons that it’s school children researching a project. I suspect that it’s grown up chicken owners that are gradually being driven crazy by the fact that their point of lay chickens, bought six months ago, have never ever laid an egg. I’ve been there. We bought six hens, expected six eggs a day, promised eggs to our nieghburs. Five months later we collected our first egg. Apart from our nifty little plastic hen that sits on the table at Easter and...
read moreCottage Smallholder & Farming friends Interblog Guinea Fowl breeding event update, nearly six months of fun
I am growing fonder of my 19 week old Guinea Fowl by the day. They are the progeny from the Farming Friends & Cottage Smallholder Interblog Guinea Fowl Breeding Event. This event was started six months ago when Sara, from Farming Friends, sent us an egg box of six guinea fowl eggs in the post (next day delivery) to put under a unhappy and bullied broody hen. This hen has now become an international superstar and even though she is unaware of her fame, Mrs Boss is finally a happy and contented bantam. Nurtured by Mrs Boss, five out of the...
read moreHow do I keep my chickens clean?
Chickens are not naturally clean creatures, unlike the story book ones. Do you remember them? Clean living hens, wearing spotted scarves and venturing out to the market with a basket hooked over a wing and a clutch of chicks close by. Real life chickens will foul their chicken house and quite often foul the nesting box. The only chicken that I have known to actively ‘clean’ her house was Mrs Boss. When the guinea fowl keets hatched she pulled all the hay from her nest out of their house in the ark. The more clean hay and woodchips...
read more
FD