Keeping hens in your garden

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Fresh eggs from your garden

Keeping hens in your back garden is easy. They don't need as much space as you might think, and you don't need to keep a rooster. Just provide them with shelter, food and fresh water and they'll make great pets and provide fresh eggs for the kitchen.

Chickens will even eat slugs and snails for you (and spiders and centipedes and all kinds of garden pests). They'll keep you company when you're working in the yard and chicken manure makes a great fertilizer for your plants, or a compost activator!

Hen Solo and Princess Layer

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Choosing and Keeping Chickens 

Choosing and Keeping Chickens

Amazon Price: $12.89 (as of 11/08/2009)Buy Now

"Do you raise chickens as part of the family or as a livelihood? Are you looking for helpful information to provide the best care for your chickens? Or are you just curious to learn more about this popular animal?

Choosing and Keeping Chickens provides detailed information about the most prevalent types of chickens. Learn all about their appearance, key traits, general temperament, health concerns, and estimated life span. This book also describes characteristics of the eggs laid by each type of chicken as well as birds that best mix with each breed, so you can make better choices in setting up your coops. Seasonal guides detail the changing needs of chickens over the course of a year and reveal what every chicken keeper should look for as well as how to best arrange chicken housing during various climates.

Whether you seek help with your chicken keeping, or just want to know more about chickens, Choosing and Keeping Chickens can help you become more knowledgeable about this fascinating bird. "

Battery Hens - First Hours of Freedom 

Battery Hens first hours of freedom

We decided we would like a couple of hens in our Garden near Bristol. Grizelda contacted The Battery Hen Welfare Trust (www.thehenshouse.co.uk) and I collected three 18 month old hens from Gordano Service station Car park on the M5 near Bristol. This is what happened when they got to their new home after spending all of their previous life in a battery cage.

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Chickens love oatmeal 

A warm treat on a frosty morning

Princess Layer loves porridgeIt'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.

My hens 

Princess Layer and Hen Solo

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anaturalphenomenon wrote...

Great lens! I had chickens in my garden a few years back. But no more. This lens makes me miss my chickens all over again. Beautiful pictures, thanks for a great lens!

ReplyPosted July 19, 2009

WhitneySegura wrote...

Great lense, stop in sometime and check out Hydroponic Production blog, a new blog, but soon to be big! If you enjoy gardening or hydroponics this blog is for you. :) Thanks,
http://hydroponicproduction.blogspot.com/

ReplyPosted February 21, 2009

elliespark wrote...

This is one AWESOME lens!! I looove chickens and gardening very much; in the US, my childhood friends had a bunch of chicks that they raised up to be lovely, plump hens but then they had to give them away because the neighbors complained that they were too loud or smelly or something. I hope to one day raise some, too! Thank you for putting up this charming tribute to hens!! 50000 stars and favorited!!
(Hahaha @ the hopeful cat in video of the battery hens; what an obedient cat! He/she looked like, "These hens be treats for me?" Tooo cute!)

ReplyPosted January 09, 2009

Fluffymuppet wrote...

Great hens... I mean lens! he he

ReplyPosted October 26, 2008

niniane wrote...

Great lens thankyou - as a new rehomer of exbatts the information on here is very useful

ReplyPosted October 13, 2008

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Big Green Chicken Blog 

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Chicken 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.

by EmmaCooper

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