Spring has sprung

Life has now settled down - it's quiet, in fact its very quiet. Ruby is getting more confident and will happily take food from your fingers but touching her? Oh not a chance. Harriet remains a big white fluff ball of poultry happiness.

Both were producing an egg a day, garden devastation down to a minimum and truth is it was all getting a little to easy - and then they both decided to go broody. Ruby first but in truth the sniff of a hint of broodiness and it triggered Harriet as well. Most improper that both insisted sitting in the same box even though they had no eggs!

Hmm......an opportunity we thought. We are looking to replace the chooks that have gone but not sure what we wanted. Several breeds came to mind, more silkies in perhaps different colours, bantam Orpingtons and of course another attempt at bantam Sussex. No chance of buying all of these however as we now had two broodies it seemed a good idea to get some eggs for incubation.

As we were visiting Mum up in Cheshire a quick internet search found Sue Feild in Chester offering a selection of the breeds we had already talked about. May 23rd saw us (Mother included)off to visit Sue and collect the eggs and into the bargain got a tour of not only all Sue's wonderful chickens and marvellous garden but some great ducks as well! We left very happy with 12 eggs but some trepidity in that there is no way we can keep 12 more chickens if they all hatch however boys will needless to say have to find a new home (noise factor alone I imagine though Sue did say that the cock silkies were quite quiet)

So what did we get egg wise? 2 x BOBS (buff Orpington bantam), 2 x black Orpington bantam, 2 x speckled Sussex bantam, 2 x light Sussex bantam, 2 x white silkie and 2 x blue silkie.

A gorgeous black Orpington bantam hen

Both lots of Orpington bantams were stunning, the blacks especially so. The speckled Sussex were bigger than Ruby however Sue's light Sussex bantams were smaller than Margot was. As for the silkies we did see red silkies, never seen them before but very impressed, unfortunately Sue had no eggs available. Also saw for the first time miniature (bantam) white silkies. Tiny and absolutely lovely!

So eggs in today, 25th May and we await with anticipation the 14th June - hatch date!