is it worth it?

When raising animals for food, and eggs, or growing veg, it always has to be questioned whether it is actually worth it, financially and effortwise.
Well I think it is on many levels.
Financially, it is. But it depends what you take into account – I have seen so many times the question on a forum; “how [...]

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cream of legbar soup

Well the hens are definitely slowing down for winter – most are in a moult, and we are only getting three eggs a day.  The good girls still laying are the two hybrids we bought last year – a Columbian blacktail and a blue maran, and one of the girls we raised in the spring [...]

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14 in the cockerel run

We recently moved the 14 ‘chicks’ into the cockerel run, and they are having a  whale of a time – they have their old home, the growers coup in there too at the mo, and they like to perch on the top of it, they are dust bathing, flying and generally doing what chickens do.
It’s [...]

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animal husbandry day

Today we killed and dressed and jointed the three cockerels, which are nearly 19 weeks (I miscalculated before) – a little early but two of them were crowing so much it was bothering me, nevermind the neighbours (who have not complained yet, and we would like it  to stay that way!). A little skinny but not [...]

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summer again

That’s a change – sunny day, lovely.  And for first time for days we are not living in a low cloud, so I took some pictures of the animals
The pigs are huge:

The three chicks that I was not sure of the gender.. are all boys, and 16 weeks now:

the fourteen chicks and their foster mum [...]

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incubators vs broodies vs both

Brown -neck – the broody hen is off the nest and has two chicks, out of the six eggs we gave her three weeks ago.  We are fairly happy with the result – more would have been better, but it was completely no hassle to us, and the only expense was the eggs we put [...]

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red cabbages badgers and foxes

We harvested the rest of the red cabbages today as far from allowing them to get bigger, leaving them to the ravages of the slugs and caterpillars could mean we lose the crop. Fifteen, although to be fair some are only half size – and those along with the couple we had already put in [...]

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resisting a broody

I’m useless at it. 
We worked it out, I even made a special chicken hatching calendar on my PC, we agreed it was the wrong time to hatch more eggs. In fact we decided to stop now and not hatch any more until spring. It all seemed very logical.
But the broody is a good mum.. and [...]

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