Chicken Etiquette

We have new chickens! 

Sick of having no eggs despite feeding copious amounts of feed, corn and delicious kitchen left overs, our free range hens had given up laying entirely. I even thought they may be obese but accordingly to my chicken farmer friend they were the picture of health! After a few weeks of no eggs I even suspected that my girls had taken to laying their eggs in a different spot - behind a tree maybe? I scoured the hedgerows for a clutch of eggs but it was fruitless. We even resorted to extreme natural egg stimulation and introduced a very handsome cockerel (oh my did we have some fun with the innuendos when he arrived!! Can't resist...) Pete dropped by with his big cock late one night!

Big Bad Bill

The next incident that we had to endure was that the birds started to drop off the [metaphorical] perch, and for no obvious reason! Again turning to the sage advice of my friendly chicken farmer, he said "hens have 2 modes, alive or dead" and apparently my brood had gone for the latter option? It was time to reinvest. We moved the pen to pastures new and  pressure washed the hen house just in case there was anything untoward thriving in there.

Our Tom Good equivalent, Pete offered us 10 ex-batts and we jumped at the chance so we are now up to 11 hens, 1 cockerel. Pete also donated 6 ducklings to our cause. We have no idea if the ducks are male or female. What we do know is they make the most tremendous mess, far worse than any amount of chickens, and they drink SO much water! We made them a makeshift pond which to be fair, they're not that keen on, and they live underneath the hen house at night. I didn't for one minute imagine that ducks would be scared of chickens but they are! They cower in the corner and quack desperately if a hen approaches. I've gone as far as cordoning off a duck area so they can settle unhindered. Now that all our feathered friends have been in the pen for a week they have been given free reign over the entire garden. We have a wild flower meadow and lawn combo so as you can imagine the birds are loving it! Chasing the ducks to bed is fun especially as I'm rubbish and tend to leave it till dusk has past. Looking for nearly black ducks in the dead of night is actually quite comical, verging on farcical!


We are now getting average 8 eggs a day so the baking bowl is back out it's cake action all the way!


All the photos were taken by my 8 year old daughter as frankly I'm too lazy and she needed entertaining!