Our Chickens
It is lovely to have chickens at Tan yr Eglwys. As part of my 60th birthday celebrations we invested in new chickens 3 new “point of lay” pullets 2 Black French Marans (which lay dark brown eggs) and 1 American Leghorn (which lays white eggs) and also 3 Legbar 8 week old chicks. The Legbar chicks are now 23 weeks old and on the point of lay. The Legbars laid their first eggs just before Easter. It was well worth the wait because they are as we hoped blue or some might say turquoise.
Chickens
Visitors to Tan yr Eglwys cottages can obtain eggs and feed the chickens at Tan yr Eglwys. The Marans and Leghorn started to lay soon after we got them (August 2015) and laid right up to Christmas. Long nights and short days stopped egg production then, it still hasn’t kicked back in yet but each day the daylight hours increase. The chickens are released each day to roam around the garden, from a gardeners perspective they are great because they eat slugs and snails.
The downside to chickens in the garden is that they invariably will scratch around in the plots where I have just planted seedlings or sowed seeds of some kind.
It is a constant battle of wits between me and the chickens to keep my cultivated plots “chicken free”, most of the time I win, but only most of the time. In the moments they get in somehow by magic they are drawn to the sections of garden were maximum damage is wrecked in minimum time. Still I suppose it is better than having to battle with slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.
Hopefully the next update will deliver news of further varieties of chickens at Tan yr Eglwys. What colour eggs next?
