Phew

So – that scrawny little thing eventually made it out (five hours later). And I’m proud to say I resisted the temptation to prise away the shell….It is flailing around quite horribly now, and its proud Mum is nudging it around with her beak –...
Birth pangs

Birth pangs

OO la la, sometimes life in chickenville gets seriously exciting. Peaches, our darling little Pekin – so docile, so pretty – got in the mood for babies a month or so ago (inspired, naturally, by my putting three white plastic eggs in her nest). Being in...

How to feed ourselves?

Seems a silly question, I know, when there’s so much of it about, when we’re burdened not by hunger but by obesity and early onset diabetes. It’s only the crazy doom-mongers with nothing else to worry about who nag about our importing more grub than...

let them eat milk

Life’s hard for a farmer when the cold comes. And for us mini-farmers too. With the ground solid as concrete and the grass stiff and grey, I am painfully aware how dull life has suddenly become for my chickens. There they huddle on the barren ground, unable to...

Woman’s Hour

Nice promotional number recorded in London earlier in the summer – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00bf1jz

Marek’s Horror

So – little snowball the silkie got the chop today. Well, not exactly the chop. Jay tried to dislocate her spine in the usual fashion, but her head came away in his hand – her whole musculature was so degraded, her little body so emaciated. This time the...