Our New Life in the Country: Happy Chickens

Friday, 5 August 2011

Happy Chickens

In chicken world this morning peace reigns supreme.

Dappled shade through the trees is keeping the heat down, the girls have had the mad scramble for breakfast (last one to the food hopper is a sissy !!), and now they potter about waiting to take their turn in the nesting boxes to pay their keep (lay an egg).

Mum has been busy gathering chicken food (weeding).....

...they gather by the fence expectantly.

Soon the weeds are down and the tasty titbits are thrown over the fence, to be sorted and picked over. Chickens are brilliant at self-medicating as well as being greedy, so if they are short of various nutrients or minerals they will eat the greenery they need first, and then just fill up on what ever else is available.

One of the Hylines

So what starts as a weed feed filled veggie bed, ends up with happy, healthy hens and lovely fresh, bright yolked, free range eggs for me.

Weeds........I love them!!

Sue xx

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This was my Blog, just me writing about our day to day life learning all about and then living the smallholding life. First we started on a farm in Oxfordshire, then we moved to a smaller place in Berkshire (both in England) and then we found a place of our very own at the bottom of a hillside in North Wales. Along for the ride were all our various animals, and we ended up with just our dogs, Suky and Mavis, our cat Ginger .... who secretly thinks he's one of the canine gang, a sheep called Ethel who wandered in off the road and stayed... and a roving band of egg laying chickens that live cheek by jowl with the local wildlife.

We grow our own fruit and vegetables, selling surplus plants and edibles at the gate. We sell the eggs the chickens lay, we reuse, recycle and rethink ... and life ticks over at a pace that suits us.

It was simply the wild and wacky ramblings of a 50 something townie turned country girl called Sue, who lost her heart to a sailor and started a new life in the country .... many years ago. On a path that took us from Cumbria to Oxfordshire, to Berkshire and then we found our home at the bottom of a wet and windy Welsh hillside by a busy main road.

Pull up a chair, grab a coffee and relax into a world of dogs, cats, chickens, polytunnels and veggies with the occasional grass munching sheep thrown in for good measure.

Sue xx

Disclaimer

Our New Life in the Country is my blog.

I use it to chart the day by day, week by week, year by year goings on in mine and Lovely Hubby's life. In it I also express my views and opinions, and say what I do and occasionally how I do it. I am hoping that this will prove to be a useful reminder for myself of how we did things, as we continue in our learning process.

If you chose to follow my practices it is assumed that you will do so with care and consideration, and question where necessary any methods or techniques I use to your own satisfaction and match them to your own circumstances.

The pictures in each blog post are taken by me unless otherwise credited, and as such should not be borrowed and used elsewhere without my consent.