Today is marked in some people's view as having the worst storm of the winter with winds of 82mph recorded at Berry Head and The Mumbles and 105kph winds in land at Cholet. So it seems obvious to us that today is ideal chicken buying weather.
Yes, we have finally succumbed to the lure of new chickens - well they are such fun, and helpful at ridding the garden of pests, and they lay the odd egg (previous chickens have laid very odd eggs - wind eggs, shell-less, double yolkers). John checked out the market this afternoon with little hope and called in to say that there was a good selection - he would get the feed and bedding and collect me for purchasing.
Now, we have had a bit of damage from the gales, so perhaps this wasn't the best idea, but what the heck. We selected a fine white with black bits (probably Light Sussex), a very pretty black with golden head, and a really rather cute grey speckled chicken, and watched them be stuffed into the obligatory cardboard carrying box tied up with blue string (it HAS to be blue).
On the drive home, we reminded Black, White and Spotty that they really were the luckiest chickens in the market that day, as they had found English owners, and once I had lined the coop with all things a chicken needs, rebuilt the cover for the feeding trough and tipped them out of their box, it took them 30 seconds to find the scran and agree with us.
Then the rain started, hence no pictures and actually the chickens might not totally agree with us on their luck. But we are once again poultry owners and life is good!
There will be a proper follow on to this post when we get the pictures out of the camera, but suffice it to say that today one of the Newbies produced an egg for us, and very good it was too, though the yolk colour wasn't as we would expect from one of ours. It goes to show that they have lived in a shed or closed space for much of their lives, and haven't had much by way of greens or slugs/worms/yukky bugs yet. That will change!
Posted by: Jane | 12 March 2008 at 01:06 PM