Chickens Galore

Yes, they've arrived.

Ten lovely, slightly bedraggled ladies arrived at 6.30 on Sunday evening. Well you'd look bedraggled if you'd been jammed into a cat carrying basket (8 of them anyway, the two biggest were in their own little cardboard box), the exchange was done in Waitrose carpark, to save them from unnecessary time in the cars ... we are notoriously hard to find!  We quickly moved them into our much bigger box, placed them in the back of the car and headed for home.

Much interest was caused by the boxes and investigations had to be done. Meanwhile work continued on the chicken pen, although the house is all finished and secure, we wanted a cage around it to deter unwelcome night time visitors.

This doesn't sound like a lawn mower Mum!!

They are White Star Hybrids and approx. 70 weeks old, free range and organically reared.  The farmer that owned them hates to send his chickens to slaughter at the end of their commercial viable life so he gives a couple of nice ladies the opportunity to re-home as many as possible before the time is up, (this time they have rehomed 500 up to date and have a 2 week extension on the deadline as they have done SO well). Seemingly we should get about 4 eggs a week from each lady, we'll see!!

As soon as we had made the cage chicken safe we let them out of the boxes, just in time to enjoy a quick supper and explore their immediate surroundings. And boy can they eat, they cleared all the food, drank nearly all the water, I guess they had a hot journey from High Wycombe.

Archie (the cat) and Sophie were amazed by them and Sophie just ran round and round the pen until she was exhausted. Archie is being much more cautious after being chased by a pheasant earlier in the week, birdy retribution in my opinion for all the little birds he has brought to an early demise.

On opening the henhouse this morning I was greeted by 10 hungry ladies, eager to explore and one little contribution to the larder.

(A little update - by the end of day one we had five eggs.)

Sue xx