Birthday weekend has just gone by, and I was tickled pink to wake up and find I’m still only 21!!
The weather has really sorted itself out recently and my birthday heralded the first daffodil in bloom, and the first yellow haze on the forsythia. There’s a definite hint of spring in the air, and although Saturday was a little grey Sunday was hot and we were all outside the entire day.
One of my birthday presents was a trip to the chicken seller. As you know, one of my new year’s resolutions was to breed our chickens for the table. Last year our chickens resisted all their natural urges and despite a lot of ‘attention’ from the cockerel they never went broody.
So this time I’ve gone for a different breed – we got five of these lovely dusky gold hens and a new cockerel, which makes a flock of ten, which I’ll add to every time I can scrape a few coins together.
The new girls are very friendly, and the kids spent at least and hour sitting in the sun stroking them. B also had the unusual honour of having an egg laid on him!!
My other present was a lemon tree. This one has quite a few blossom buds on it and at least four tiny lemons. I’ve never grown one before but we’re hoping to be able to drink a gin and tonic with a slice of our own lemon in it this summer!
To top off a lovely weekend I spent some time turning over some of the new beds I need to make before planting-time; and then I finished off the afternoon by spending two hours scooping out a decade of stinking sludge and congealed fat from the septic tank filter which had ceased to pass water through and meant that none of the drains in the house functioned… I would have taken a photo of that too but you wouldn’t be able to eat for a week.
kristen said
What you need is one or two hens that will brood reliably (and take care of their colleagues’ eggs). Apparently, bantams have a higher tendency to go broody. Last year, one of my hens went broody, but as we had eaten the rooster a few weeks before, we had to go to the neighbours to get some ‘real’ eggs so our hen would not brood in vain. She took great care of her adpoted eggs, and now the chicks are twice her size.
permacultureinbrittany said
I was just going to post a comment about bantams but I see Kristen has beaten me to it. We have a mixed flock that includes one ageing bantam hen and two Silkie hens, all of which make excellent mothers, going broody regularly and then sitting on a pile of fertilised eggs from our larger hens. Of our larger hens, only one has ever gone broody; we fond her sitting on a hidden clutch of 20 eggs, which we reduced to a more sensible 12, 11 of which hatched out.
Stuart & Gabrielle
Stewart Paterson said
Ah, la petite motobineuse! Spring has sprung. Granted we can get frost until les Saintes Glace, but I reckon this is it. The old boys in the café are arguing which of the Grives are migratory and swapping tales of the earliest they’ve ever heard a cuckoo (a March 19th was the winner)
We can’t keep chickens because I’m sure the dogs would hassle them, and we get eggs dirt cheap from the neighbours. But I’m grumpy with supermarket chickens having no giblets in them, so tomorrow I’ll buy a pot chicken from the market and we’ll have that. No problems with killing and gutting, I do that often with our pigeons, but plucking a chicken looks like a major pain in the arse.
Any tips?
Scarlet said
You’re absolutely right – normally when I buy hens I just ask for layers… but this time I explained what I was going to do and she gave me a different breed altogether. She also chose a cockerel that wasn’t too big so he didn’t hurt them.
We’ve had a couple of Bantams – only one left now – but they didn’t go broody. It could be that our previous cockerel was firing blanks?
re said
I have to say that none of us have ever had the honour of having an egg layed on us!