Keeping chickens in your back garden is seriously back in fashion, as Rosie McGlade discovers
As any good cook will tell you, it’s the quality of your ingredients which count, particularly in cake baking and puddings, where eggs really come into their own. But who knew that it’s fun to produce your own eggs in your back garden?
I had an inkling of the pleasures of back garden hen-keeping, informed mainly by the re-runs of the Good Life on UK Gold, before I met Vicky Pepys and her brood. But after a morning with Vicky, Hen Head Girl Dolly and her feathered friends, the inkling has been proven and I am now building my own brood.
Vicky, who has had hers for 18 years now, says simply: “Chickens are the most interesting animals I’ve ever kept. They take away all the stresses and strains of life. Some people go to Barbados, I go to the chicken shed.”
Vicky has become quite serious about her hens and has been known to win prizes for their eggs. She is also chief steward of this month’s Northumberland County Show poultry section, which this year has been accorded regional status, meaning the chickens you see there are among the best you will get.
For Vicky, though, it is their personalities which attracts. “I always say the garden would be a lonely place without them,” she says. “On a hot summer’s day, you have the bees buzzing and the hens sunbathing, slowly raising a wing here or there, murmuring to each other. Then, every now and then one of them with think, ‘oh my God, I’m going to lay an egg’, and off they go. They’re delightful.”
Dolly is on the kitchen table. Having assumed she’d be spending the morning stalking in bushes, our photographer Nicky has never had such an easy job – she’s even worried people will think Dolly’s stuffed.
Dolly is mostly Maran, which means she’s full and heavy with beautiful specked grey plumage which glistens in the sunlight.
She’s got it all – looks, charm, a lovely temperament and a giving nature. I eat one of her eggs scrambled on a piece of wholemeal toast. It is bright yellow and so much tastier than anything in the supermarket, even the organic range.
Chickens have a far fuller life than you may think. There’s breakfast of mixed corn hand-stirred with a loving dollop of cod liver oil. They also get pellets which smell like a farmyard, mashed potato because they love it and a saucer of grit to break down the corn and strengthen their eggs’ shells.
After breakfast, there’s a bit of dashing around, then it’s through the hedge to the field for pecking. Then there are eggs to lay, followed by more important jobs. Let’s just say that each egg is individually fertilised, a daily ritual which keeps Mr Cockerel busy.
Lots of clucky daily meetings, pecking and rummaging for caterpillars and similar delights (they may eat your cabbage seedlings but they make good pest control), then there are dust baths and idling around until dusk, when it’s back to the shed for supper and bed, locked away safely from Mr Fox.
Even a small town garden will host two or three birds, but you can’t have a cockerel in town because of the crowing. “You don’t need one, though,” Vicky says. “Hens are perfectly happy without one and will lay eggs just the same. “
Vicky started out with a broody hen lent by a local farmer and six eggs, one of which got so tame when it hatched that she would sit on Vicky’s husband’s shoulder and watch EastEnders.
Dolly and her sister Peg arrived as six-week-old chicks. They used to crawl on Vicky’s lap and put their heads under her chin. The cockerel came as an egg, as did Angela, the little black bantam.
There are seven or eight other birds who look very similar to Dolly, some more fluffy than others, and a brown, very fluffy Favorelle.
The eggs are an assorted splendour of green, brown, cream, terracotta and speckles in all shapes and sizes. They’d all hatch chicks if they were sat on for three weeks. Un-sat on, they won’t develop and taste no different from fertilised eggs.
Vicky is a self-confessed ‘chicken geek’, and as we go to print, she is working up to her role in charge of the poultry section at Northumberland County Show in Corbridge on May 30, which will be busier this year than ever.
For while the economy slows, it’s boom time for back-garden poultry, and that brings even more visitors to the poultry section at the Show, keen to learn from the experts. But you can’t go into it lightly, says Vicky, who says keeping them is the small-time equivalent to having a horse.
Your lawn, for all the added nitrogen, can also suffer. Vicky’s now produces corn from all the seed and an abundance of dandelions and daisies. You need to love chickens more than a perfect bowling green finish.
You can buy them at a specialist sale, like the ones they have at Hexham Mart, through the classifieds or at a poultry show. It’s important to take advice from breeders and buy birds that appeal to you, Vicky says, as they can live a long time.
Never buy just one, as they like company, give them a balanced, varied diet, keep them safe and clean with lots of fresh air in their hut, cast your eye over them daily to make sure they’re healthy, and they should be very happy.
They need a variety of surfaces, with bare soil for dust baths, short grass to pick at, rough ground to peck around and trees or bushes for shelter.
The result is more eggs than Vicky and Simon can eat. Unless you’re fully registered with Defra, you can’t sell eggs, but you can give them away.
“We barter ours with neighbours,” Vicky says, “so there’s the odd fruit cake or bunch of garden flowers comes our way. They bring us nothing but pleasure, our chickens. If you’re suited to it, they repay you 100 times.”
Check out the poultry and a host of other agricultural and family attractions at Northumberland County Show on Monday, May 30 at Tynedale Park, Corbridge, NE45 5AY, 9am-6pm, free parking and easy access on the train from Carlisle and Newcastle. See www.northcountyshow.co.uk for tickets and details of attractions
