Chickens

[Panter]

We have six rescued battery chickens (no cockerels) they really are almost maintenance free pets with fantastic eggs as a by product! We got ours from the battery hen welfare trust. It took them about a week to get used to open spaces but now reliably provide 4-6 eggs per day! www.bhwt.org.uk

What a fantastic link, thanks for posting that

Ours came from the local egg farm, but to be honest they have a pretty good life down there so our next ones will be battery egg rescue hens for sure

Always remember to separate the cock from the enclosure when you go in to feed them or he will get you! Aggressive little b*ggers they are.....

Before we kept chickens, we had some quails. We got them from a breeder in Canterbury and I remember going there one day for some more hens and when he came out of his house to meet us he was limping quite badly.
He explained that he's been gouged by a cockerel.

I must admit I was a tad surprised and dismissed him as "obviously a bit of a wimp" if he could substain injury from a mere chicken.

Untill we saw the culprit.

I kid you not, this thing stood nearly a metre tall, a huge Glossy Black bulging-eyed monster with a spur like a dagger
I must admit I was very relieved it was safely caged

Cheers

Chris

 

[User482]

Fed-up with your cock at any daylight hour more like. It's an old wife's tale that cocks are at their most extreme at dawn, they do it all day long as well.

But you don't need a cockerel if all you want is just a few hens for eggs or pets. Obviously you do if you want them to breed, but they happily lay without any cock.

Your neighbours would never know you have hens, so have them a few months without them noticing, then take them half a dozen eggs.
Somehow a gift of half a dozen eggs laid by your free range chickens is wonderful, whereas if you'd just bought them in Tesco no-one would think much of it as a gift !
If they haven't noticed the chooks and now they're being given eggs, no neighbour will complain.

Our secret was out when the window cleaner told the rest of the neighbourhood! So now we have the neighbours' kids round to come and feed them. It's quite sweet really.

Eggs are a brilliant little gift - for example, we had to borrow some kitchen scales from a neighbour and so a few eggs in return is a nice way of saying thankyou.