The Sales and Marketing Department (ie the Other Half) recently informed me that demand was outstripping supply for eggs from our hens and, in her roundabout way, intimated that it might be worth finding a few more eggs.
With squeezing the hens out of the question - thanks for the idea boys, but somehow I don’t think that will work - I turned my attention to sourcing about eight new hens.
Tempting as it may be to go for more rare-breed Scots Greys, I prefer to continue our breeding programme to build a proper, dual purpose flock over the next few years.
So, until then I had to find a hardy, attractive layer that fitted in well with our approach.
And what better choice than the other hens we have - ISA Browns. A hybrid breed that results from crossing Rhode Island Reds with Rhode Island Whites.
Our existing eight birds proved well up to our local conditions and environment and, while one died as a result of laying too many over-large eggs, the rest have continued to thrive.
After Googling Scottish suppliers of Isa Browns, we settled on the family business of AA McIntyre Poultry. While based in Ayrshire, they deliver regularly throughout Scotland and were happy to supply us with the relatively small number of POL pullets that we wanted.
We’d just returned from Elgin with our lamb carcases today, when the AA McIntyre Poultry blokes arrived in their pickup with crates of chickens.
Our eight were quickly unloaded into the byre and checked over, where they proved to be a bonny bunch of girls and we parted with the grand sum of £59 - including delivery.
They were settled with some water and feed, then at 11.30pm I took them out in pairs to be introduced to the existing flock.
I placed each pair on perches between the established hens and, after a few clucks, all the birds settled back to sleep.
Now all we have to do is wait and see how they settle in.
It seems to me that you will becoming quite an “eggspert” on this whole fowl business mate as time passes. It all sounds very interesting to me.
On reading some of your ‘posts’ I feel that you may be able to put me wise on the laying habits of hens. Ours seem to be off laying at the moment, which from one of your posts seems to be normal. 3 however are sitting in the box and swearing at me when I go near. I have removed several eggs from them a couple of weeks ago so they are not actually sitting on anything. Any idea how long this may go on? The other two hens and two cocks are still going out into the enclosure during daylight, yet these hens are not laying either. We live in Spain and the weather in our part can get very cold at times although of late it has been very mild.
We hope to breed a few more hens when it warms up to increase the flock a little.
PS. Thanks for your timely advice on wing clipping, and aerodynamics!!