Half a dozen...

Since my last post, Clarabelle has been in prolific form. She started laying last Friday and then has continued to bless us with eggs for 6 consecutive days. We had some with gammon the other night and it is lovely to be eating fresh eggs once again. The taste is beyond description and it's lovely to see yolks as bright as the sun once more.

Her first few eggs were laid in the middle of the run, but since then we have treated the girls to an Eglu cube. Unlike with the nest box in their original Eglu, she is nesting in the larger Eglu Cube nest box.

One of the best things about eglus is that they hold a significant proportion of their value. We sold our 8 year old pink Eglu for £257! Which pays for 3/5 of the cube we bought second hand from Cotswold Chickens near Stratford Upon Avon. We have a spare green Eglu aswell which we will sell and hopefully that will pay off the outlay we made on the cube. After our honeymoon we will probably add another 4 or so hens to our flock, we were going to add them sooner but a few things popped up and I didn't want to introduce new hens and then leave them under the supervision of an inexperienced owner whilst we enjoy the Parisian sunshine!

Thanks for reading, enjoy the summer weather before the storms set in tomorrow.

Martin

We just did the 'First Egg Dance'!!

We have been waiting for what seems like eternity for this moment.

I was just about to start making our dinner, a Friday treat of Sausage, chips and beans but beforehand I thought I would go and give the chooks their evening corn.

There it was bang in the middle of the run... our first egg at Paddingon House, laid courtesy of Clarabelle.

It's a fantastic example of a speckled egg isn't it, with those lovely dark brown spots covering it all over. Looks like we will be having sausage, EGG, chips and beans now!

Have a lovely weekend everyone, we'll be doing the egg dance through til Monday!

Martin 

The race is on..

Almost 2 weeks in to our latest chicken keeping venture and we still haven't had an egg. As you may remember we recently purchased 3 POL (point of lay) hybrid hens from Cotswold Chickens near Stratford Upon Avon.

We have no idea exactly how old Clarice, Clarabelle and Clara are but point of lay suggests anything from 15 weeks - 6 months old. From my previous experience with poultry I would guess that they are all around 18 weeks old. 

Despite currently being eggless there are promising signs from both Clarice (White Star) and Clarabelle (Speckledy) that eggs are not too far off. Clarice's comb has doubled in size this week and it seems to be getting a darker shade of red every single day. Clarabelle's comb although small is bright red and in the last couple of days she has started 'crouching' when you approach her. Normally hens begin to do this at maturity and it is a signal to the cockerel that they are ready to mate. We don't have a cockerel, but anything tall enough to hover above them is easily mistaken for a potential mate!

So the race is on, who will lay first? Will it be a brown egg from Clarabelle? Or a white egg from Clarice?  I guess I've jinxed it now and it will be a blue egg from Clara, but she's showing no sign of wanting to lay at all! Clara is an Aracauna cross and Aracaunas are known for taking a lot longer to get in to the wing of things than other breeds.

As I write this Clarabelle is sat in the next box...

Have a great day!

Martin

A new home was ALWAYS going to mean new chickens

It was always inevitable. A new home was always going to mean new chickens!

We managed to buy a pink eglu for £35. It was in a pretty bad state. The bolts had rusted and were not budging so the run was stuck to the eglu. After days of WD40, penetrating fluids etc. we finally managed to get a little bit of movement from the rusted bolts. Admittedly all 4 bolts did snap, but due to this we were able to drill them out. A few new bolts later, a can of green spray paint to respray the run and a couple of new bits from Omlet, we finally had an eglu which was in pretty good condition.

We visited Cotswold Chickens in Kineton, near Stratford Upon Avon. We chose chickens based on the eggs they would lay rather than considering any other factor.

We decided to go for their own blue egg laying hybrid creation which is Aracauna x Leghorn, they call it a 'Blue Angel' and we called her Clara!

Our next hen is Clarice, she is a traditional white star. She is already number 1 in the pecking order without a doubt. She is very flighty around us at the moment, but this is completely normal for the breed. She will lay beautiful, big, white eggs, perhaps in excess of 330 of them in her first year. Very exciting!

Our final choice was a beautiful Speckeldy, I have always wanted one not only for their big brown eggs but also for their pleasing appearance. Clarabelle is absolutely adorable, she appears to be very sweet natured. I thought she might have been number one in the pecking order based on first impressions, but she seems happy to sit back and let Clarice rule the roost.

(LtR - Clarice, Clarabelle, Clara)

We actually have some bigger plans for this space, maybe a walk in run eventually, but I will definitely be getting them off the grass and on to a wood chip area in the very near future.

Thanks for reading,

Martin

The joys of Spring...

Spring has sprung and signs of optimism have come with it. Delightful days full of sunshine and fresh air have arrived!! There are crocuses and daffodils here, there and everywhere and I may even sow some tomato and chilli seeds in pots on a windowsill tonight.

The only slightly annoying thing is that their has been a frost for the last 2 days, and that has put me off continuing my digging at the allotment. Never mind, at least it will break up the ground which has already been seen to.

Another bonus of Spring is the first bantam egg of the year (foreground). There is nothing worse than buying eggs through the winter when you are having to feed chickens at home which will not lay! I think this one is from Barbaradeux, but I am not sure. It has felt like so long since we last had one of our own hen's eggs to eat.

I hope March brings you all a tiny piece of happiness and joy! After all, more daylight hours means more time in the garden or up at the allotment. Don't forget the clocks go forward on Easter Sunday too!

Enjoy the rest of your week!

I'll be back with another update before the weekend!

Martin

A month of fun and things..

Well, it's been exactly one month since we last posted about that delicious green pepper.

Amy is back studying again now and I go back to Uni on the 3rd October. Despite not blogging, we've been keeping up with 'Our good life' and the tomatoes just keep coming, the apples are almost ready for eating, the runner beans won't stop running and we're enjoying gluts of delicious produce aswell as sharing it with friends and family too.

Today brought a momentous occasion. Despite having the Bantam girls for several months now, until today we have been eggless. But only moments ago came the groundbreaking discovery...

It's very small but very perfectly formed. We think it Barbara, but we can't be sure yet. We'll be watching carefully these next few days to see who is making all those right signs.

Anyway, you might be wondering what else we have been up too. Well we've started a radical health plan, we are visiting the gym daily, and we've made radical changes to our eating habits which have been conducted with immediate effect.

We're making big plans for next year already, including upscaling our operation to cover a wider range of all things good. We are far from where we want to be in the long term, but these little strides make it seem like a realistic aim to have.

Well, we hope to blog more frequently this month. We've missed reading your blogs, but it's been nice to have a break. Dare I say it, but with Christmas now only around the corner we are already starting to buy, make and think of presents and puddings ready for the big day.

Thanks for reading the blog, we won't abandon you again!

Martin and Amy

Potting, Planting and Pickling

Three of the most glorious and rewarding things to do on a lovely sunny afternoon.

Because we have been collecting all the seeds in the Daily Mail promotion we realised we had a lot of sewing to do. Some of the varieties such as the brassica seeds can wait for now but we were keen to get the tomato seeds planted so that we get a good tomato harvest. When we grew tomatoes last year our dog ate the lot the minute we had our back turned, you will see a picture of our greedy dog later when we get to the pickling section!

This was today's make shift potting table. You can see the pots with the tomato seeds in at the front and there are some strawberry plants at the back. Amy had to get a pink watering can too to feel the part.

Tomatoes are very easy to grow from seed and they are very easy to grow in small spaces as long as they get enough nutrition and water. No excuses for not growing your own in my opinion. I remember going to my grandparent's houses when I was younger and seeing the tomatoes they were growing. Home grown tomatoes are irresistible and are also like pringles. Once you've had one you will proably eat the lot.

At the back of the picture you can just make out the old chicken area, this is now mainly inhabited by weeds but I do have some good plans for this area in the coming weeks and months so watch this space!

The third 'p' of the day, pickling is always good fun and it is easy too. I absolutely love pickles. My favourite though has to be... Pickled Eggs! When you have two chickens laying daily you soon build up a mass of eggs. Sometime's you have just too many for you and the rest of your family so a good way of storing them is to pickle them.

Ingredients:
20 medium sized Free Range eggs
1litre Pickling Vinegar (available from all good supermarkets)

To make the pickled eggs I hard boiled 20 eggs for 15 minutes before allowing them to cool in cold water (in the pan). Then when the eggs are cool just simply peel off all of the shells and you will have the eggs nice and ready. Take a sterilized kilner jar or any other air tight jar and add the eggs. A large kilner jar should comfortably accomodate 20 medium sized eggs or 15 large ones. Then pour over the pickling vinegar. You probably won't use the whole litre so you could make a medium sized jar of pickled onions or alliums with any that is left over.When the pickling vinegar covers the eggs up to the rim you then need to seal/close the jar and store them in a dark place. I normally leave the eggs for 2 days to 'mature' a bit but you can eat them after a couple of hours if you can't wait. The eggs should store for at least a month. If they last that long of course! Right who's making the chips?

Remember that I mentioned the greedy dog earlier who ate all the tomatoes? Well when I went to take a picture of the pickled eggs she could't resist a good look. Here is Jess showing off her pickled eggs...

Enjoy the rest of your day. Looks like it is going to be a pleasant evening.

Martin