Our laying hens are going mobile
Gala Bailey-Barker
Those of you who have walked on the farm will know that our chickens currently live in an orchard at the bottom of the farm track. It is a lovely place for hens to live but they have lived there too long and the orchard needs a thorough rest. To this end we are purchasing two mobile hen houses that we will rotate around the fields. Allowing the hens the joy of foraging all the lovely bugs and plants they can find in our pastures and giving the land the benefit of their very rich muck. This will also allow us to produce a more consistent supply of biodynamic eggs for you and give us the chance to give the orchard some attention and hopefully get on top of the docks and thistles that are taking over. Perhaps there will be some sheep grazing through the apple trees in time.
We are also making changes to our garden hen flock. The older hens have always kept our garden flock lay very inconsistently, sometimes the whole flock of 30 hens only lays 2 eggs a day; a challenge for the shop to manage because of demand. We did try to turn one of our large flocks of hybrid hens soya free, but they have been bred to be very efficient at turning relatively high protein feed into eggs and were very unhappy without their Hi Peak organic feed. We are therefore raising 30 Sussex day old chicks to become our new garden hen flock. Sussex hens lay around 250 eggs per year as opposed to the 300 our hybrids lay. As a traditional hen they are more suited to a traditional diet of oats and whey. They need to eat a lot more than hybrids to produce eggs, but what they eat we can grow ourselves. Keeping this small flock soya free is an attempt to figure out how possible it is to do and how much more expensive the eggs would need to be, taking into account that they will be the same work, they will eat more and will produce less. We want to see if these Sussex hens are capable of laying 250 eggs a year on a diet of oats, barley, wheat, whey and what they can forage, or if their lay will be less. I, for one, am excited about this new mobile hen adventure. It is such a joy to give any animal fresh pasture especially one as curiosity filled as a hen.