A Warm Welcome to The Poultry Pages
Latest On The Site
Things have grown since I started the Poultry Pages and now I'm
frequently asked "Where can I buy some chickens to keep at
home?" So I've started putting together a list of suppliers
of live poultry, live eggs for hatching, point of lay pullets etc.
It's early days and we haven't many listed yet but it's growing.
Take a look at Live
Chicken, Poultry & Egg Suppliers
New Articles on the site
Surplus eggs? Why not sell them at the gate or
on the market?
Know
Your Eggs - ever wondered what Farm Fresh, Barn, Free Range
etc actually mean?
Check out the poultry
articles for all the information for the backyard chicken & other
poultry keeper.
Poultry Chat on
Allotment Forums
When I was a child I came home with a book - Poultry Keeping for
Beginners – which stated ‘All you want to know about
poultry keeping whether you start with day old chicks, 8 16 or 20
week old chickens or pullets in laying condition’
This was not well received by my parents who felt getting me to
clean out the rabbit hutch was work enough and the book went to the
shelf to remain there for 40 years.
Then, in the 1970’s, I came back from a holiday in Wales with
the Backyard Dairy Book and the Backyard Poultry Book. Dreams of
a smallholding, milking the cow and eating eggs still warm fresh
were not, sadly, to become reality.
Jobs that involved staying away and working all hours didn’t
fit with milking the cow and feeding the hens but the dream remained
smoldering in the back of my mind.
Fast-forward to a couple of years ago and I took on my allotment.
Growing my own vegetables and actually becoming self-sufficient to
a degree fanned the smoldering dream back into life.
Around this time, I wanted to use an illustration from an old copy
(1977!) of Practical Self Sufficiency magazine. This sent me to Broad
Leys Publishing and Katie Thear who granted permission to use the
picture. Some talk ensued and I took over the task of producing her
web site. Katie Thear is an acknowledged expert on poultry and I
obtained some of her books to update my knowledge before jumping
in to keeping chickens. You can buy her
books direct from Broad Leys via this site.
Next was a bit of a battle w+ith the local council, which resulted
in permission to keep poultry on the allotment. Our back garden isn’t
really suitable for a number of reasons but mainly our cats. It's
not that the cats would hunt the chickens but that the cats are phobic
about large birds after living for three years by the seaside and
being subject to attack by seagulls. Hence the great keeping
chooks on the plot war with the authorities.
Being nearly ready to go I have been doing research and this site
will pass on the results of that and my experiences. At present I’m
holding back as the avian flu scare is continuing. I am not personally
concerned about it but some of the other allotment holders have reacted
as if I proposed to bring the Black Death onto the site!
Who knows, when I retire I may even have that
smallholding.
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