Meet the Girls

I have kept a few hens in the garden for over 10 years now. Sadly due to visits by the fox and despite my best efforts to keep him out, none of the current girls are more than 3 years old. Jemima (because she survived the last fox visit) is a white leghorn hybrid who is definitely the boss. She is a small, very upright hen with a large red comb and is very partial to fingers so you have to take when feeding her. She will also pick slugs off the bottom of plant pots with a little encouragement - a very handy skill! She loves sitting up high in the run and looking down on everyone. She lays an enormous cream coloured egg.

The other hens are all less than six months old and just in lay for the first time. I have three cream legbars - Milly, Molly and Mabel. They are very pretty hens with brown and gold plumage, Milly & Molly have black tails and Mabel's is grey. These hens lay the holy grail of hen keeping - blue/green eggs - colours you can on the F&B paint chart! Each lays a different coloured egg from the palest blue to olive green. Henrietta and Nora are black & white speckled hens - Nora has feathered legs and both lay a small dark brown egg. The final two are Ambers called Sugar and Spice both are creamy coloured and Spice has brown speckles, they are very friendly.

Their home is a 30x20 foot run under the shelter of a large pine tree which gives some protection from the rain. I have netted the roof to keep the collar doves out. I lock the hen house at night as I have discovered the hard way that foxes can climb vertical fences.

They are particularly fond of cauliflowers and cabbages which disappear in seconds under a scrum of greedy chickens. I have banned them from the kitchen garden now as seedlings are beginning to appear and the girls are very effective rotovators in their efforts to find worms. They escaped at the weekend and it took me ages to round them up. Friendly and biddable when they are in their run, once out they turned into fully fledged members of the escape committee and couldn't be tempted back by anything. Needless to say the grass always looks greener.

The chooks are fed organic Layers Pellets which they find less exciting than kitchen scraps and left over pasta, they are also very fond of fish and chips. The also get a handful of mixed corn. Because they are in a restricted run I also give them oyster shell and grit to keep their gizzards healthy and calcium levels up. The run has a good covering of wood chips which keeps the mud down and gives them a good layer to have a scratch through. Last year we had some tre work done and consequently have a large pile of coarse woodchips - perfect. I have also been using them to mulch around newly planted trees and shrubs over ground cover fabric to help keep the roots moist.

Today I collected half a dozen eggs. Hen House Poulty in Teston, Maidstone is a good source of all things poulty and supplies all you need to keep your own hens. I got my cream legbars from Dudley at Highdown Poultry near Tenterden.