From the category archives:

Keeping chickens

Chickens in the ice and snow

January 10, 2010
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We’ve had snow and freezing temperatures for three weeks now, but the chickens don’t seem to have noticed. They’re lucky: they’re not the ones that have to head out with a kettle to defrost their waterer.

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Rooster lungs

January 6, 2010

Ever wondered why environmental health departments aren’t keen on having roosters / cockerels in residential neighbourhoods? Watch this video and your questions will be answered.

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The final egg count for 2009

January 1, 2010
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Despite a serious decline in the number of eggs we got from our hens at the end of the year, the total for 2009 was 876, which averages 2.4 eggs a day – almost one for each hen in our flock.

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Scrambled eggs

December 21, 2009

Problems in the coop. The chickens are slowly starting to lay again, but they are doing it on the roosting bars, not the nesting box. The result: broken eggs that are no good for human consumption.

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November egg count

December 2, 2009
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I think we should stress the first two letters of November: NO. Specifically NO eggs from two of our three hens for most of the month.
Poor old Margot is dropping feathers quicker than a pillow fight and she looks quite a state (or at least as far as we can tell she does, but we’re [...]

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The collapse of our egg supply

November 11, 2009
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Chickens lay fewer eggs in winter. It’s a well-established fact, and the reason most commercial producers keep their hen sheds artificially lit at night. On a small scale, in the back garden, we’re obviously not going to do that.
They also lay fewer eggs as they age, and those two factors have had a dramatic effect [...]

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Barbara’s bare bottom

October 25, 2009
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Poor Barbara. She’s been moulting for a while now but it’s really accelerated over the last few days. It’s an age thing. All chickens do it every so often so they can re-grow themselves a whole new coat of feathers.
Every time she shakes herself she dislodges another cloud of them, and now her whole undercarriage [...]

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Rear your own turkey for Christmas

October 22, 2009
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If you want to rear your own back-yard turkey in time for Christmas, now is the time to find your bird and start fattening it up.

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The chickens get a new roof

October 16, 2009
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With winter on the way we wanted to make sure that the chickens didn’t suffer the same fate as last year, when they managed to churn up the earth in the bottom of their run until it was not much better than a boggy swamp.
Poor things – it was up to their chickeny knees, if [...]

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Eggs for September

October 3, 2009
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You can tell we’re heading for winter. The chickens are responding to the shorter days with fewer eggs: in September they laid just 77.

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