Old Style Book - Anyone Keep Chickens?

I have 3 girls, all bantams. We paid £6 each, I think the £1 chickens you mention are normally ex battery hens that the farmers want to get rid of as egg production has died down. We were recommended to buy the chicken at point of lay (?!) which is about 18 weeks, this means they should start laying eggs. At the moment one of our chickens lays every other day, the other 2 are just not bothering !!!

I have been told that egg production should improve as the weather gets better. So they have not really saved me any money yet !! However that said, they make fantastic pets for my boys who have named them Josie, Penny and Edie, after the Balamory programe !. They all have different characters and make us laugh when they are the garden. The eggs do taste fabulous and it is great to know that they have come from a healthy chicken which has not been fed antibiotics, kept in barns etc.

I would definately recommend keeping chickens !

Bek x

Our first two girls were from our school farm (now closed down by Evil headmaster and governors boo hiss) and were used to company - we used to take them down to the allotment handily placed at the end of our garden, and they used to dice with death by snatching worms just where we were digging! We used to let them free range around the garden, but the fox got in one afternoon - wily city beast!
We replaced them with four from the Wernlas collection - they are flighty and scared of human contact - and I am worried about letting them out. We got them at the end of September and havent had the time to 'make friends' as we did with the other two. We will have to work at it in the Summer. We bought them as point of lay but it took about 2 months before the eggs came - we get at least 2 a day and usually 3 or 4.
I read later in Kitchen Garden that it is better to get them younger if you want them to get used to you.
It is definitely worth the time and money - we have cakes. meringues, icecream, egg fried rice, omelettes. pancakes.....

Wouldn't call myself an expert but started to keep chickens 3 years ago. We purchased 3 Black Rock Hens for £6 each at a poultry auction.They were point of lay in the Autumn and had been vaccinated. They all started laying one egg a day within the first month, fab big brown eggs with deep yellow yolks. They were kept in an ark which had to be moved every day as they completely trashed the ground they were on. The orchard started to resemble a bomb site between the hens and the moles!

I gave them layers pellets in the morning (when they were most likely to eat it) and corn in the evening. They would not go to bed until they had had their corn! They were very companionable and we allowed them to free range when we were gardening. Unfortunately we got complacent and one day one hen vanished, sadly. The remaining two laid nearly every day for two years before a mysterious ailment caused them both to die.

Meantime we were given an Araucana hen and cockerel. She laid beautiful blue-green eggs for a year and a half, no chicks though despite an enthusiastic cockerel and her tendency to become broody. Haven't seen any eggs for ages so they are now decorative pets who completely free-range and put themselves to bed at night. They are sweet and shy in comparison to the garrulous Black Rocks, although both are okay to handle.

Will restock soon as so miss those eggs! Black Rocks again probably because they are outstandingly productive and I understand there are no incidents of salmonella in the breed. Definitely reckon they repay their keep quickly.
We also tended to give them any leftover beans from meals as there were certain disadvantages to giving these to the dogs!

Chickens aren't really demanding but do need regular daily care.

Sorry these are not tips just the story of our experience.

I see I have cross posted with another Black Rock fan!

When comparing the cost of bought eggs and "homegrown" make sure the shop price is freerange (or even organic) and a convenience store price rather than a big supermarket so you are comparing like with like (though you are unlikely to have a shop as close as your back garden)!

I have waxed lyrical on some of the other chicken threads on the benefits etc so won't repeat much here except to say even after buying eggs in the shops with a long bb date, I had always struggled with properly poaching eggs (i.e. in water not an "egg poacher"). When I poached 2 eggs the other day one was fresh that morning and the other was a couple of days old and the difference was really noticable. Basically if you want a proper poached egg, you need to keep chickens.(conversely v v fresh eggs are a little difficult to hardboil as the shell doesn't come off easily so you need ones from a few days ago for that).

To stand any chance of the chickens saving you money rather than costing you money overall I guess housing is probably the key - make it yourself or buy it secondhand. Don't buy an egglu!

I think with chickens as with vegetables and other things self-sufficient, you won't save that much money - but you will be getting better value-for-money which is what its all about really. Also as someone said on OS the other day, its not just about the cost to you its about the cost to the environment too (e.g. food miles, pollution).

My four girls were given to us as a gift when they were chicks. I'm glad they were - they were destined for a battery farm! :eek: I converted an old playhouse that was at the bottom of our garden and added a fenced run. When we are at home, we let them free in the garden.

They were a couple weeks old when we got them in Easter 2005. They might be a Rhode Island mix. They laid their first eggs in November and are now each laying one egg a day.

I spend £2.20 every two weeks on hay. £8.99 on Layer's mixed corn, £6.50 for Layers pellets and £11.99 on mixed grit every few months.

They are fantastic characters and make great pets for children. I should know, there's an old family pic of me as a four year old carting an enormous hen around underneath my arm.

Fence your bedding plants off - the scratching and general eating of anything succulent and tasty will soon put paid to these!

Oh, and they like 'visiting' the neighbours. Fortunately, mine come to heel when I call, pretty much like a dog, but they do have their stubborn moments!