Fowl Fanciers Fantasies | Part 1


Part 1  |  Part 2



We have decided to publish this on the website because after having exhibited over the years at possibly a hundred shows or more, the same sets of questions keep getting asked. The potentially new poultry keeper is at a loss to get the answers to the simple question they need an answer to. Hopefully this little bit of information will help. It is not to say that our ideas and observation are the absolute way, but just our own approach to keeping a few hens for fun.


So you want to keep a few birds. You have decided to satisfy a long held ambition and keep a few hens, simple thought, can't be difficult to find out what's involved. Go down the library and get a book. There's old Harry who lives on the corner. Down to earth old boy is Harold, calls a spade a "whatsit", he'll be a good source for information, after all he has got a few hens and has had for as long as you can remember, we'll ask him what's involved. On the first count going to the library - sounds a good idea until you get there. A shelf of books on "Keeping Poultry In The Garden" for garden read at least ½ an acre with high security fencing. Books about "Producing Meat For The Table", "For Showing", "For Eggs", books on keeping, large fowl, water fowl, rare breeds, bantams. In short there is no shortage of books, some covering specialized aspects of fowl keeping, some generalizing. But, which book gives you answers to your simple questions, like do you need a cockerel to produce eggs? Already you're starting to get confused. What is a bantam? Is my garden big enough. How many birds does a normal family need to supply eggs? Am I normal to even want to keep chickens?


So you select a book, you choose this one because it has a "nice" cover picture. A big Kellogg's cockerel on the front (you know, like the one on the cornflakes box) with a lot of lady chickens at his feet, and set in a tidy farmyard (there's a contradiction) which fits the vision you have of your own "Archers style Brook Field Farm". You have not exactly got the tractor, but you do have a ride-on mower.




Now for the real fun, open it, there's an interesting section on chick development in the egg, you never even thought about the inside of an egg, now you are a baby eater. A comprehensive section on genetics and colour sexing at day old, to distinguish boy chicks from girl chicks so you can kill the boys, now you're into infanticide. Feel the panic rising when you see with help of those useful line drawings the way to "dispatch" (and know that does not mean send them on holiday) the old birds that have served their purpose, does euthanasia mean anything to you? The pictures of up a chick's bum, and the informative pic's showing how an egg is formed inside the hen with her oviduct laid out on a slab, is a subtle mix of gynecology and your local butcher. There is that really interesting article on what to feed your birds and how to mill your own wheat and mix your own feed not forgetting to add those vital minerals, whose absence will give your hens the chicken version of rickets. The different mixes read like a recipe for down market muesli but on the grand scale. Mix 2 buckets of this, 1 scoop of that, 1lb of this, 3 buckets of something else. They give handy addresses of obscure suppliers for milling equipment, that are based in Cumbria and judging by the lack of post code, and the title "Messrs Bloggs and Bloggs from Mongers to the Gentry" there is a good chance they ceased trading about the same time somebody called Mr Wilson was telling my mum and dad it wouldn't affect the pound in their pocket. The author suggests that a handy tip is to invest in a cement mixer. This saves time as hand mixing seven hundred weight of "mix" is quite arduous and can take up valuable daylight hours when you could be digging the swedes or milking the goat, but suggest that milling and formulating your own feed ration can be both interesting and rewarding and make an ideal after work pursuit to while away those long winter evenings. You have got to have a serious problem if the highlight of your day is mixing chicken feed.


The section on diseases is brilliant, the things that can go wrong with a hen are mind blowing. There's fowl pest, apparently a notifiable disease, so you must inform the Ministry of Agriculture. Vent pecking, an amusing little trait when birds start to peck an individual's bum, and can turn to cannibalism. Feather pecking, this time they peck out the feathers resulting in semi-naked birds. Crop binding, the hen get a blockage in her neck which results in the food not passing through -result, hen with a fat neck, skinny body and dead. The fleas; the red mite that sucks the hen's blood until its anemic and dies, the mite that lives on the birds and causes something called scaley leg, that looks like the legs are disintegrating, on and on. Now at this stage I'm quietly confident the Enid Blyton image of keeping a few hens to produce nice fresh brown eggs for breakfast has disappeared behind a wall of confusion and an overwhelming thought that it's not worth the trouble.


Now it's Harold's turn. You wander down on a Sunday morning to have a word about keeping a few birds. At last Harold has got somebody interested in his hobby. You'll be enthralled with stories of birds of old that eat nothing, produced 2 eggs a day all year round, would face and back off a fox and after 7 years of laying double yoke eggs was present as the main attraction for Christmas dinner in 1953 when it fed a family of five until twelfth night, and Harold built a climbing frame for the local kids with the carcass. In those days we had real chickens, not like the "mamby pamby" birds today. As you approach the chicken run, make mental notes on how the imaginative use of disused fire guards and old iron bed frames can be implemented to not only block off the gaping holes in the perimeter wire but to add a certain surrealistic charm to the overall concept of the domestic poultry run. Then be guided through the maze of wire and nettles, note the selection of assorted feed utensils, in this case old chipped enamel saucepans and rims of bowls gone by, sticking out of earth would make an archaeologist's heart flutter and a pink baby bath that doubles as drinker and pond for a white (at least it should be white) duck that splatters through the black grassless mud. This is a "real" chicken run. That reminds me, do not go and see Harold if it's raining, the black stenching mud that forms the ground would give Torvil and Dean trouble in maintaining the vertical, and would give their rendition on the "bolero" an essence of Keystone Cops. If you do go base over apex, the smell will stick by you until at least the third bath on Wednesday. Rising from the mud is the Quosimodo of the chicken house world.


Before you is Harold's pride and joy, the chicken house that's built to his own design, based on tried and tested theories of poultry keeping, on lessons taught to him by his Dad (can you imagine Harold's Dad) with its special features like the hanging-off doors, the clever way the house leans and twists one way to stop the pophole shutting and combined with the torn and missing mineral felt (Circa 1965) allows the rainwater to come in through the roof across the floor and forms a handy integral drinking place. Hinges made from strips of old wellingtons cut and lovingly nailed with assorted clout nails and screws to allow the old bed head that is now the next box roof to hinge up to reveal the designer tomato box nest with their carefully arranged selection of eggs and dung. The vision and smell is reincarnated at teatime just as you take the first mouthful of real egg.


Now I've probably put you off keeping hens for the rest of your natural life, perhaps you could relent later when in later life you become senile when your nearest and dearest will acknowledge your insistence on keeping hens as positive proof you need locking away for your own protection.




Part 1  |  Part 2