Tiphayes Farm

How to buy and what's involved

What I try to do is to provide a complete service so that my customers have to make just a few exciting choices and then leave the rest up to me to worry about. I then deliver the House and Run and install it in the chosen position and if required I will provide a "Starter Pack" to include Drinker, Feeder, Food, Meds and Hygiene Products including a large Bale of Shavings. I then provide the chosen chooks and give the new and usually very excited owners a informal training session covering all the essentials. The chooks move in and the rest is as easy as 123.

The excitement of the first egg is absolutely fantastic and if you buy young birds and keep them for several weeks before the onset of lay, the tension builds up to fever pitch. That first egg will be hard fought over and be the best food you ever tasted.

When you reach this point you have taken one large step for mankind and at least the egg section of your supermarket becomes a no go area! It feels great. 

Now I'll try to cover all the important points that you need to think about from the time you decide to keep your own Chickens.

How many chooks

Usually I encourage people to think about how many chooks they think they want, a lot of people make the mistake of getting too many with the result of being swamped with eggs that they don't need, don't want and can't be bothered to sell. Remember if you chose a breed that are prolific layers you will get one egg per day, per hen for up to 300 days per year. Put another way, if you have six good laying hens you will be getting about forty eggs per week, certainly during the Spring and Summer. So I encourage people to keep Traditional Breeds rather than Hybrids which lay fewer, usually more attractive eggs, are certainly more spectacular to look at and you will be helping to conserve the breed that you keep which is important for the diversity of chickendom. Having said all that it is very easy to find regular buyers for your excess just ask around your friends and colleagues, you'll be surprised how many people are keenly interested in your new hobby.

Another thing to consider is that hens are intensely sociable animals and should NEVER be kept on their own, so three or four is really the recommended minimum. Hens love each others company and will usually, quickly settle into a happy group even if you mix up the breeds which is perfectly ok. There is always one that wants to be boss and there are always a few punchups but once they have established their own particular pecking order they settle down nicely. During the winter they snuggle up together  on the perches to keep warm and although chickens are very good at withstanding cold they much prefer to be in a group. Any experienced chicken keeper will tell you that if you offer a flock of 30 chickens three houses designed to take ten hens each they will always, by choice, end up crammed together in one! So first decision, how many hens.

My Goodness - What a lovely cock you've got!

Right  lets get this one out of the way early on, you do not have to have a Cockeral for your hens to lay eggs, they automatically start laying at about twenty weeks old. They usually make a few mistakes at first, laying them without shells, mishapen or whatever, they then settle down, automatically adjust their diet to cope and they're off. The eggs they lay are infertile and could not be hatched out, that is where Cocky comes in (quite literally), he fertilizes the hen, she then lays eggs that are viable to be hatched out.

If you do have the room and can put up with the racket it is nice to have a Cockeral about and they do usually look after their hens very well. Our Prize Cockeral has the finest manners and marshals his ladies around all day calling them over too him every time he finds a tasty morsel, they come running over, find the treat and he promply jumps on ones back - Men eh!

Be warned - If you do decide to keep a Cockeral you will have to put up with every "Cock" joke imaginable. The heading of this section was said to me at an exhibition recently by a group of very respectable looking elderly ladies, they all laughed so hard I had visions of - well lets just say that fortunately they were all on the continent that day. As I have said keeping chickens can be great fun.

What Age Birds Should I Buy?

There are several stages of development at which chickens are commonly sold, Hatching Eggs, Day Old Chicks, Growers off heat and Point Of Lay Pullets

Hatching Eggs - these are fertile eggs that you can buy from a variety of sources and hatch them out yourself, either under a broody hen or in an incubator. Fertile eggs are available from breeders such as myself who will sell eggs that are surplus to their own requirements for around £1 - £3 per egg depending on the breed. They can also be bought at Poultry Markets which are held all over the UK at major Livestock Markets, usually monthly during the spring and summer. You simply identify which eggs you require and then bid for them when your chosen lot number comes up. Prices vary widely and you can pay anything from a few pence to several pounds per egg, again depending on the breed and the reputation of the supplying breeder. Thirdly you can buy fertile eggs through Ebay and receive them by post. I have just done a search and there are at this moment 1,338 lots listed under hatching eggs on Ebay.co.uk. so poultry rearing has become a very popular hobby. I have bought eggs from all these sources in the past and would advise that you get very mixed results indeed. By far the worst method is receiving them through the post, the rough handling that they often receive will dramatically reduce the viability of the eggs. I have had far and away the best results from my own eggs laid here on the farm.

Day Old Chicks - they are so cute they're hard to resist. Day Old Chicks used to be sent around the country with impunity by post or train and in huge numbers. When chicks are first hatched they have a built in starter meal to get them going and don't need to feed for the first couple of days. As they are hatching they absorb into their abdomens the last goodness from the yolk and this sustains them. In the natural world we should remember that a chick will be brooded by its mother keeping it safe and warm with her warming breast radiator and downy feathers. So if you buy day old chicks, they will need to be kept warm and dry for between five and seven weeks in a brooder. A brooder can be bought from a smallholding supplies firm or can be made from a simple cardboard box with a light bulb suspended above. Whichever course you choose they will need a lot of attention, checking on them several times per day and keeping fresh water and chick crumbs in constant supply. At about six weeks they should be well grown and feathered enough to do without the heat and at this point they can be housed in a Chicken House with a run and preferably access to fresh grass.

Growers - these can be anything from five week old chicks that are just weaned off of suplementary heat to point of lay pullets at around twenty weeks. My recommendation is to buy at about twelve weeks old, at this age you can begin to see what you will end up with. Any younger than this and the growth of feathers is only partial and it may be difficult to tell the pullets from the cockerels. Many will argue that this is too young and that to buy point of lay is best. My thoughts are that at around twelve to fifteen weeks you can see what you are getting and you will both have plenty of time to settle into a routine before the onset of lay which is a stressful time for the new mother. If children are involved in the caring process this is a great time for them to make friends with and handle the pullets and the growing excitement and anticipation of that first egg grows and grows, it's great fun.

Point Of Lay Pullets - the traditional stage at which to buy. A point to note is that if you buy well bred Hybrids they may come into lay at about seventeen weeks as they grow quickly on the other hand if you buy Traditional Old Fashioned Breeds they may not start laying until perhaps twenty five weeks as they are generally much slower growing. The advantages of buying Point Of Lay are that with luck you shouldn't have to wait very long before you get your eggs. Eggs - Eggs - Eggs this is where the emphasis has always been, well I think its changing and the Hen's welfare and wellbeing should be be where the emphasis lays. You should factor in all sorts of other value points to keeping chickens above just getting fresh eggs. They are great pets and really fun creatures to have around providing endless entertainment. They are also of huge educational value to children, teaching them responsibility when caring for dependent creatures as well as the provenance of our food.

When pullets approach point of lay they are subject to an amount of stress, the actual production of eggs takes a hens body a bit of time to get the hang of and it sometimes takes weeks or even months for them to settle into a regular pattern of laying. They will need a good diet of layers pellets, access to fresh clean water and also a supply of Grit & Oystershell. If they have access to enough grass they will find all the greens that they require, if they are confined you will need to give them supplementary greenstuff.

I hope this has been of help in making your mind up.