Blogfromthebarn

Now I be officially a farmer... so get off moi laaaaand


Amongst the many wonderful things with which I was blessed on my recent Birthday was a huge cardboard box containing an Eglu and chicken run. I've long harboured a desire to join the poultry keeping classes (mostly driven by a realisation that the road to perfect poaching is a very fresh egg).
My lovely in-laws therefore decided to make it happen and Good Friday saw Mrs Stuffy and myself selecting three pullets from hundreds of identical birds and transporting them to their new home. We selected three different breeds, there's a real need for muticulturalism in Surrey and it does make them easier to tell apart having them colour coded.

Naming is officially on hold since Mrs S promised Rhett (Currently away on business in the Caribbean) that he will get to choose and name the first one but they seem to be bearing up under the strain of anonymity and are affectionally known as the stupid white one, the stupid black one and the stupid brown one. By the way, they're not bright.

So far they've appeared to settle in well. Despite sharing the wood with the incumbent family of foxes, (3 new cubs) my strict regime (defined by repeated viewings of Shawshank) of supervised exercise and an enforced dusk lock-down along with the cunning design of their polycarbonate coop has resulted in happy chucks and vulpine disappointment.

The design of the coop is really very clever and makes it easy to collect and compost the prodigious amounts of poo they produce pretty much constantly.
Guano is the only output so far, I'm assured that eggs will arrive soon, to encourage this I've pinned a recipe for coq au vin up in the run, "p0ur encourager les ouefs"

posted by Stuffy @ 2:00 pm