Inspired by the success of our vegetable plot we have decided to expand into free range eggs. Despite the onset of less daylight hours, the eight birds are producing five to six eggs daily on average. Mavis, Ena, Jan, Diane, Mary, Jean, Prudence and Hyacinth aptly named by missp and influenced by the names of the residents.
a lovely set of hens you have here, when I was younger my Mum used to have hens like these but also she had some others which had feathers all down their legs,looked like they were wearing fluffy boots! they were called Bantum Chickens (name probably spelt wrong!)
It's really heart warming to see these birds in a natural environment - did they come from a battery farm?
I can imagine what they did to the lawn - Nancy and I once found a very young duckling, no sign of any family and its feathers were so waterlogged, it was sinking. We took it home, built a pen and nursed it back to life. Fed it on seeds and meal worms, but it also decimated the grass it was on. We sit outside in the evenings and watch it - it was great fun. It eventually went to someone who kept both chickens and ducks and it became great friends with the chickens. We made them swear they wouldn't eat him!
We haven't eaten duck since. We'd be terrible as smallholders - no doubt we'd name the pigs etc and then wouldn't be able to eat them!
I have very good friends who are vegitarians and have a sizeable amount of land, they give homes to battery chickens, who, when they have freedom, give an enormous amount of eggs. They also have two saved ducks, several rabbits, guinie (?) pigs and two goats. Bring it on Penalope Kieth........
Our hens were barn hens, they are not quite free range as we have to put an electric fence around them to keep the foxes away but they have a lot more freedom to roam than they had before. missp has not tested the fence since her first experience, however Henry the cat despite being shooed away persisted in being a cat and got a bit of a shock. He leapt the vegetable patch in one bound. He now keeps a wary 10 feet or so from the fence.
Our neighbours had a Siamese - who was most interested in our duckling. Another neighbour's cat had no interest and would actually sleep on top of the pen. Charlie (one of ours) would always look up into the sky when it 'peeped' (it was too young to quack I guess).
The duckling was quite a noisy b*gger - first thing in the morning it'd be Peep peep peep peep peep peep! until he'd had breakfast.
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