Chickens, Ducks and assorted poultry have always been a big part of our family life, in the UK we caused some raised eyebrows with some of our cross breeding experiments, we loved each and every one of them!
We have a small number of brown hens that we bought at point of lay, they have settled in well and are producing lovely brown eggs which we fight over at breakfast time, we need to build our flock without delay!
Tilly and I built this rickety ladder which Hugh F-W assured us they would get the hang of (River Cottage Cook Book), no matter how many times we 'place' them on the ladder, they always fly/leap/jump into bed without giving our ladder a backward glance.
We managed to hatch just two of our Plymouth Rock eggs, our whole hatch was a bit of a disaster, with only five live chicks from 20 eggs, 18 of which were fertile and viable on day 21!
Not sure what happened but we will improve.
We also hatched three Robusta Maculata which are an Italian breed renowned for their tasty egg production.
These chickens will all be used for breeding our next generation of meat and laying birds, I think we will need to buy in more hatching eggs as so far, I think we may only have one cockerill
We have as usual defied all advice and named our chicks, real farmers say you should never name an animal you may intend to eat, it makes you attached apparently, well we get attached to all our animals, even the ones we eat. We love them all and until the day comes that we decide to go veggie, we would much rather eat an animal we have loved and reared in happy surroundings than blindly eat bought in meat without conscience just because we didn't 'know' it personally.
Our chicks are Bronson, Gino, Magneto, Banana and Alice
Tilly and Bronson watching TV
Much Love from Tineggiori xxx
Your chickens are byootiful +Julie Cook ! Sounds like you are living the good life, with fresh eggs every a.m. and such:).
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Vanessa, sorry for the late reply, I've been away in the UK for most of June, :) xx
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