We’ve swapped the chickens’ free range area from the pumpkin bed to an area under the fruit trees.
Posted in Allotments, Poultry
Tagged chicken keeping, free range chickens, Ixworth chickens
Today we let the chickens out onto the pumpkin bed. Junior hen led the way:
The chickens have been confined to the safety of their run in the 8 weeks since they arrived. They have plenty of room (12 square metres) but there’s no doubt that Ixworths love to scratch. So on Saturday we plucked up courage to allow them out. The reasons for our trepidation were that they are very reluctant to be caught and picked up, and we had no idea whether they could and would fly over our rather flimsy fencing and head off over various allotments wreaking havoc as they went.
We needn’t have worried. They were as good as gold. We set up a “chicken patio” outside the main door of the run, about 3 metres square, and scattered a few tempting mealworms around the doorway. The cockerel was the first out:
As I’ve been reading books, blogs, and all sorts of internet material about chicken keeping, I have been prompted to ponder the subject of monster chickens. I guess that we bought into the idea of keeping a few chickens for the normal rather middle-class suburban reasons: fresh eggs, maybe a little of our own home-grown meat, from happy chickens rather than unhappy caged ones.
But I’ve started to wonder whether battery cages are the greatest of the problems of modern poultry.
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Posted in Allotments, Politics, Poultry
Tagged chicken breeding, free range chickens, poultry genetics
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