Category Archives: Poultry

Two generations of Ixworths

Posted on September 26, 2013 | 4 comments

It’s end of day one at the allotment for our new flock. They had a good run this morning, and a brief outing late this afternoon. The new birds are loving their outside time. They’d really worn their little patch of garden lawn to a frazzle, and now they’ve got lovely long grass once again.

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Chickens’ New Home

Posted on September 26, 2013 | Leave a comment

We’ve spent the last week or so reinforcing the second run at the allotment, which was broken into by a fox last year. Another layer of heavier duty weldmesh has been added to the bottom half.

Last night was the night that this year’s newly hatched chickens moved from the back garden, where they were getting a bit cramped, to the allotment. We moved them at dusk, putting them into the house and hoping they’d roost straight away, but they were having none of it, and came straight out into the run. I was a wee bit worried that the smell of the creosote that I’d used against red mite had put them off, but I needn’t have worried. When we checked on them after dark, they were roosting snugly.

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Fruit and chickens

Posted on September 12, 2013 | Leave a comment

Discovery apples signify late summer, but when the more mainstream varieties come on stream, we have to admit that it’s nearly autumn. The Discovery cordon on our new allotment has quite finished fruiting. It’s been given a quick summer pruning, but I’ll need to cut back all that top growth later:

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Hentastic treats

Posted on June 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

I suppose this is a bit of an unsolicited testimonial for a product called Hentastic Foraging Cake. They’re little “peck-a-block” type chicken treats, but very simply made with wheat, vegetable oil, and herbs.

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A dozen nice Ixworth chicks

Posted on June 16, 2013 | 2 comments

In the end we got a dozen chicks.

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First hatch of the year

Posted on June 13, 2013 | Leave a comment

We’re very late this year (been having the kitchen done, which rather put other projects in the shade), but at last we’re hatching some Ixworth chicks.

We put 20 eggs in the R-com on Friday 24th May, so tomorrow lunchtime makes it exactly 21 days. We have 3 early arrivals:

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Broody hen, but just one chick

Posted on April 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

We’re looking after a friend’s hens again this week. When he went away, he left two broodies sitting in nestboxes, so we’ve been keeping a close eye. One abandoned her eggs without a single one hatching. She was being pestered by other hens getting in with her and laying further eggs, which we think might be the cause. Or it might be the recent bitterly cold nights. The other hen was a little more successful:

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Spring is in the air

Posted on January 29, 2013 | 1 comment

I know that there’s still a lot of rain about, but the temperatures aren’t quite as low as they have been, and the days are getting longer. At the weekend, the chickens had a good long run outside, which gave us the opportunity to change the straw bales in the run. They certainly enjoyed investigating the nice clean windbreak, although as we left they were already busily pulling it to pieces.

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Ixworths in the snow

Posted on January 20, 2013 | Leave a comment

Here on the north-west edge of London we haven’t suffered too badly with snow compared with other parts of the country, but a good covering on Friday has been compounded by another one today. We went down after church to replace the chickens’ drinking water, and also to add a layer of Aubiose to the coop so that they had somewhere warm and dry to snuggle down.

The urban foxes had been busy! Not only were there tracks everywhere, but one hopeful had burrowed into a pile of woodchips that I’d temporarily stacked against the smaller henhouse.

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Purple Hen

Posted on January 13, 2013 | Leave a comment

We don’t give our chickens names as a rule. The cockerel is called Billy (after a vulgar expression implying that he’s more noise than action), and the senior hen is called Cromwell because she has a growth on her beak that looks like a wart. But now, albeit temporarily, we have a new name – Purple Hen.

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