Category Archives: Poultry

The bantams have arrived

We’ve been planning to add to our flock for a little while. Much though we love our Ixworths, they’re handsome rather than pretty, and we fancied some, well, fancy fowl. And we thought that a small flock of bantams would have some grandchild appeal. But maybe that was just an excuse.

Anyway, we paid a visit to the very excellent and highly recommended Orchard Poultry. There we asked for advice and picked out a selection of beautiful and healthy bantams.

It’s always great fun to watch to see which one will emerge from the travel crate first …

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Chicken and redcurrants

No, not a recipe!

We’ve inherited a few old fruit bushes on the part of the allotment where we keep the chickens. We kept the bushes because the birds love to shelter under them. They’re lovely and cool and shady in the summer. We don’t give a lot of attention to the bushes, pruning them rather crudely, and let the chickens have the fruit. But this year there were so many redcurrants that we thought we might take a little share for ourselves.

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Tidbitting, then death in the afternoon

We’ve often observed the apparently gentlemanly behaviour of the cockerel in sharing treats with his flock of hens. I’ve only recently found out (hat tip to @Hetty’s Hen House) that it’s called tidbitting.

Here he is being offered a gooseberry:

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Allotment planting is under way again

After our brief absence on our Suffolk jaunt, Saturday’s weather remained kind to allow more tilling and planting. The chickens benefited from the uprooted remains of the purple sprouting broccoli:

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Cleaning the coops

Today was cleaning out the henhouses day. We use a product called Aubiose for litter. It’s intended as horse bedding, but it’s absolutely brilliant for poultry. With an interim top-up, it means we only have to do a deep clean once a month.

We start by cleaning the house out thoroughly and checking for red mite, especially on the roosting bars. If we find any, the bar ends are dipped in creosote, and we also creosote the entire house every year. No problems today, I’m glad to say. Then the house is given a good scattering of diatomaceous earth, which also acts against mites.

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More allotment prep

The weather has been kind to us. A little bit of rain just to wet the soil, followed by dry breezy days. We’ve made rapid progress on our new half allotment.

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Mad as a wet hen

I took these pictures over the weekend, after the Friday night storms. In common with everybody else in southern England, we’ve had far more than our share of rain in the last few weeks. We’re not flooded, but the water table is right up to surface level. Woe betide any hen that fancies digging a nice dust bath.

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The National Poultry Show 2013 (1)

I’m a bit behind with this blog post, since the National was held on 16th and 17th November 2013. We’d thoroughly enjoyed the show in previous years, and so it’s a fixture on our calendar. We went on the Saturday. Unlike 2012, though, when it was crowded almost from the moment the doors opened, this show was nothing like as well-attended. But (to our untutored eyes at least) the standard of the birds was absolutely superb.

So this blog entry is going to be a picture-fest of chickens. Be warned!

These colourful "gate guardians" were on sale at one of the trade stands.

These colourful “gate guardians” were on sale at one of the trade stands.


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Chickens and eggs

We’ve made a start on culling the Year 1 cockerels. Last year we were fortunate in getting 9 hens and 5 cockerels. This year, out of our dozen, we had only 4 girls and 8 boys.

Although we left the hatch until fairly late, because of the unseasonably cold wet spring, they’ve matured quite early. The cockerels are fighting, crowing, and pressing their attentions on the hens. And much to our surprise, this morning we found a small brown egg, nicely formed and with a firm shell. We haven’t even put them on layers’ rations yet!

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Ixworth chicken update

There’s no real trigger for this post, other than I haven’t shown any chicken pix for a while.

Here are this year’s hatch (known as the Year Ones):

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