A 21st century good life in Bristol: part 9 - chickens!

Tue, 07/06/2011 - 18:08

Submitted by Fergus Collins

Keeping chickens is easier than I’d thought. What you need is very keen neighbours with a huge garden to house the enterprise and a vast rabbit house that converts very easily. What you don’t need is me making the overblown nestbox extension – and taking two months to complete it. Norman Foster eat your heart out. You can just see my nestbox at the far right of this terrible photograph that I took – better to come.

 

Still, once my hefty construction was attached to the main hen house, it wasn’t long before four rescued hens made their appearance. They actually looked in good shape – this was because they’d been rescued from a free-range producer.

 

When I was a child, my parents rescued some ex-battery hens. They were bald and barely knew how to forage. They never really produced many eggs but they were very friendly with me and my siblings.

 

Our ex-free rangers were 17 months old so already ‘declining’ in terms of commercial production. Usually they are killed off at this age but these four were going to have a long stay of execution and they should be productive enough for a good while yet.

 

Best of all, the kids (the neighbours’ three and our little boy) are enthralled. Especially when one of the birds made straight for my nestbox (extremely heartening for its creator).

 

By evening, two eggs had appeared and one of next door’s children popped around to us with one of them, still warm. We poached the egg (left, prior to poaching) and wowed at its intense golden yolk. It was too tasty for me to take a photo of this…

 

As I write, four days later, my wife has texted me to say we’ve been given two more eggs. I’m ecstatic.