New girls (30th September)

Hoorah, the blog is nearly up to date. 

 I'm sure there are things that in my excitement, I have forgotten to add; perhaps I will go back and fill in at some point.  Having had almost two months worth of woodland related information to document has meant that I have pedantically made a diary record of work so far.  This also means I have not had to search hard for a topic and I do wonder how long it will remain up to date, or even what I will write about now?  Perhaps this is the point where I find out that it isn't actually to my liking after all and my blogging days end as quickly as they started. Or perhaps now is when it begins to get interesting or completely diverses? into something else.  Who knows? but at the moment it's still all exciting stuff.

On the subject of exciting stuff, this weekend we have acquired some new hens.  Our one remaining hen (we should rename her Lucky) has fortunately made a full recovery and is back to laying her, almost daily, white eggs.  At first we considered rescuing ex-battery hens.  Or more precisely, I considered rescuing ex-battery hens.  The children (and hubs) were not, for varying reasons, as keen on the idea.  The last hens we bought from Happy Chicks in Poulton www.happychicks.co.uk/ ; run by a lovely and knowledgeable lady, Sarah.  It was a lovely experience for the children to go along and choose their own hen from her large flock.  This time we had been given the name of a place closer to home. 

On arriving to the farm we realised that this would be slightly different.  We were faced by a large shed in which the birds were kept and on closer looking saw that, probably due to the amount of birds and them living in close proximity, they had all had their beaks clipped.  Our 12 year old daughter was most upset by the experience and within a few minutes had gone to wait in the car, leaving us to awkwardly purchase 3 girls.  Personally, I'm sure the farmer was not mistreating his chickens.  He was simply making a living; raising and selling birds.  Granted, the sheds in which they were kept had an overpowering smell of ammonia; perhaps because they contained a lot of birds, but they were far big enough.  I do admit that watching him gently kick them out of the way and roughly handle them wasn't a particularly nice example of chicken keeping for the kids.  Also, whilst beak clipping is a common practice to prevent the birds causing serious harm to each other when kept in confined spaces, I do not foresee ever wishing to clip our birds beaks. I do agree that the whole experience was not as pleasant as we expected but it allowed us to consider the differences between keeping animals for pets and raising them for a larger scale business purpose.

Thus far, we have kept chickens solely for eggs, though with the acquisition of the land, we are now thinking of keeping table birds.  After this weekends events, I wonder if this idea, whilst great in theory, will be a different story when it comes to the practicals.  The closest we have come to this 'frugal living' is to prepare braces of pheasant and, obviously, enjoying the fruits of many fishing trips. In previous discussions with the children about keeping table birds, everyone is in agreement that making the distinction at the point of buying the bird would clarify the animals purpose and prevent too close attachments being formed.  Methinks this may be the subject of another post in the future!

Anyhow, back to the girls.

We left the aforementioned farm with three point of lay pullets.

A Warren; these are the ginger ones, the image of which, I think, pops into your head when thinking chickens. Basically, they are a hybrid of other breeds bred together for specific purposes, such as maximum egg production 330+ per year, and their friendly nature. We have had warrens before and they are very social birds, interacting well with the flock and us.

A Sussex; these are mainly white, with black feathers around the neck and a black tail. These are a dual purpose bird, they will lay good amounts of eggs but also mature quickly and make good table birds.

A Speckledy; this is a Rhode Island crossed with a Maran. It resembles a pure Maran in its feathering, but is a more prolific layer, producing dark brown eggs. It is a very docile bird and is easy to manage.

 

As we wanted more than three birds, we called in at a small place, closer to home, that we'd noticed before but never been.  This was definitely more to our liking.  They lived on a smallholding type set up, with sheds to house various breeds of birds, though most of them were roaming freely around the field.   After a long natter with the owner we decided to get two more point of lay Warrens and two Japanese Quail.

 

Here is one of the Quail.  They really are tiny; probably similar to a blackbird.  We were assured that they lead a similar lifestyle to chickens and would be fine running together.  Again we will keep these for eggs; apparently Quail mature quicker than chickens, start laying at approximately 7 weeks old, and can lay around 200 eggs in their first year. 

 

There is a noticeable difference between the two sets of birds; besides the obvious clipped beaks the girls from the 'free range' farm look healthier and have fuller feathers. This is one of the 'free range' Warrens. Hopefully our chicken keeping will have expanded to the land by next spring and I can take another visit to the 'nice' farm and purchase more girls.