Fresh eggs from your garden
Keeping hens in your back garden is easy. They make great pets and provide fresh eggs for the kitchen. They'll even eat slugs and snails for you, and you don't need to keep a rooster. And chicken manure is great for the garden!
Hen Solo and Princess Layer
The low down on keeping hens
- Hen Solo and Princess Layer
- Chickens love oatmeal
- Hens on the Alternative Kitchen Garden
- Eggs from the garden
- Chickens love: tomatoes
- Rehome a hen
- Chickens love: sweetcorn
- Grow your own chicken treats
- My hens
- Organic or not?
- Save 10% at 1800petmeds.com
- Say hello!
- Beanie the Chicken's Blog
- Chicken linkin'
Chickens love oatmeal
A warm treat on a frosty morning
It's a little messy, but on cold mornings your hens will love a bit of oatmeal for breakfast. Make it with water, and no sugar or salt, and let it cool down so it won't burn their beaks. You can mix in some of their other favorites if you're feeling generous! Hens on the Alternative Kitchen Garden
Hen Solo and Princess Layer are the stars of episode 62 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden - all about keeping chickens in your garden! Eggs from the garden
If you've never tasted a freshly laid egg, you're missing out
Hens make great pets, but most people keep them for the eggs. A hybrid hen, bred for egg laying, will lay an egg most days during the spring and summer. Egg production tails off as the days shorten, unless you have supplementary lighting.Eggs from hybrid hens are generally brown or tan. If you want fancy colored eggs then you need pure breed hens. You may find pure bred hens more attractive, but they don't lay as often.
Freshly laid eggs are very different from ones bought in a store. If your hens have access to green veggies or grass, then the yolks will be very yellow. The yolks are also very firm - if you're making scrambled eggs you'll have to break them with a fork before whisking. The main difference you'll notice, though, is that old fashioned egg flavor.
Chickens love: tomatoes
Like children, hens can be wary when you introduce new foods. When I first gave mine tomatoes, they ran away.The next time I tried it, I had made my tomatoes into juice (for me!) and gave them a plate of pulp. They loved it and now it's a treat for them in the summer.
Don't stand too close though - hens shake their heads a lot and you'll be covered in little drops of tomato juice!
Rehome a hen
Battery hens live short, unhappy lives - unless they find a new home
Even though awareness of the plight of battery hens (kept in cages so small they can't flap their wings) is rising, many people aren't aware that battery farm eggs are used in many processed food products. This means there's still a market for cheap battery farm eggs and hence millions of hens are kept in horrible conditions.The Battery Hen Welfare Trust is one charity that aims to make their lives better - once they've reached the end of their 'productive' life.
Hens only stay in battery farms for a year. After that their egg production drops off and they are replaced. The hens which are removed are sent for slaughter unless new homes can be found for them. The Battery Hen Welfare Trust collects hens that are being retired and rehomes them with families who will care for them properly.
Rehomed hens can go on to live happy lives and will still produce plenty of eggs for their owners.
Chickens love: sweetcorn
Chickens go nuts for sweetcorn. Mine recognize the sound of me opening a can, from the other end of the garden!Too much will make them fat, but it's perfect for an occasional treat.
If you grow sweetcorn in your garden then it's probably intended for human consumption, but if you get a few cobs that don't make the grade then your hens will happily polish them off for you. Pecking a corn cob can keep them entertained for hours!
Grow your own chicken treats
Chicken feeds are designed to provide all the nutrition that a laying hen needs However, providing fresh greens will give more yellow yolks, gives the hens something to do and makes you popular!Like us, chickens have differing tastes. Mine love lettuce and leaf beet or chard, both vegetables which are easy to grow in the garden. Chard has the advantage of being both very hardy and attractive.
Remember to fence your hens out of the veggie patch though - or they won't leave any for you!
For more details on growing chard and leaf beet, listen to episode 6 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast.
Organic or not?
Save 10% at 1800petmeds.com
They don't carry items for poultry yet, but if you've got a pet dog, cat or horse then you can save 10% on your order at 1800petmeds.com by using the promo code PETE. You'll also get free shipping on orders over $39. Say hello!
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Euryale
Fantastic! We're seriously considering getting chickens at my house too, but we've got to rework some of the backyard so that we can provide them appropriate shelter and space to do their chicken thing. And your choice of chicken names is the BEST! Posted October 06, 2008 |
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Euryale
Fantastic! We're seriously considering getting chickens at my house too, but we've got to rework some of the backyard so that we can provide them appropriate shelter and space to do their chicken thing. And your choice of chicken names is the BEST! Posted October 06, 2008 |
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StephenC
One unique lens! Posted September 30, 2008 |
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Tiddledeewinks
Great lens. We have a few chickens and I use the manure for my garden.Glad to hear about rehoming a hen. Posted August 21, 2008 |
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EmmaCooper
Thin-shelled eggs are usually caused by a lack of calcium in the chickens' diet. Make sure they've got plenty of grit, and consider supplementary calcium. You can get supplements for chickens, or you can dry out and crush eggshells for them, and add them to their grit supply. Posted July 29, 2008 |
Beanie the Chicken's Blog
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byChicken linkin'
- Chicken - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Chicken From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Breeds of Chicken
- Breeds of chicken from the dept of animal science at OSU
- Omlet UK | Keeping chickens and keeping rabbits
- Omlet provides you with everything you need to keep chickens delivered direct to your door!
- Battery Hens - The Battery Hen Welfare Trust
- The Battery Hen Welfare Trust aims to educate the public about the egg laying industry focussing on battery farming. We also re-home battery hens covering several Counties across the UK. Find out how you can make a real difference to laying hen welfare.
