Keeping Chicken

Keeping Chickens - Introduction

Inspiration to have some chickens first came in June 1999. I went to a local breeder, brought 2 Lohmann Browns and a 6' x 3' Chicken Arc. After the elation of the first egg some 3 days later (fried I think), I started feeling sorry for them cooped up in such a small space. The disused Barn next to us has hundreds of old apple boxes from the days when there was an Orchard here, so I used a couple, made some holes and put them upside down against the end of the arc. Well, that was OK until I had to move them once a week. I decided to build them a shed (see how in the Frugal Living page) and attach a small run of about 10' x 10'. This was good so I brought another 2 chickens.
Now, at the back of us, the Landlord had told us we could use the wasteland.

So I strimmed out a larger area of about 30' x 30' to give them even more room. At that time I heard about the poultry auctions at the local market and off I went to have a look at what happened. I found chickens were selling anywhere from 25p to £3 each and I'd paid £5 at the Breeders. So I brought another 4!Keeping Chicken

So by the time I left the railway in May 2000 I had 8. Going to the Auction became a regular Wednesday morning event; I saw what breeds there were and picked up loads of useful information off farmers who obviously knew what they were talking about.
By this time we were getting more eggs than we could eat so we started selling them up at The Golden Ball. More people were asking for eggs so by February 2001 I had 18 and extended the run to 100' x 60' surrounded by a 5' high fence (some of which looks remarkably similar to the fencing used by Railtrack !). In May we were getting over 80 eggs per week.