I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for your Chicken Keeping for Beginners playlist. I have learned so much, and feel that I am far better prepared to begin my chicken keeping adventure than I would have been without it. Your clear, concise, and calm delivery of information is deeply appreciated. Our chicks will arrive the beginning of October and I am now prepared.
You've made me very happy. I really did want to make the series to help new chicken keepers as it can be daunting. Thank you for taking the time to comment. You've made my day. Good luck with your chickens. They are incredibly rewarding.
We have backyard chickens, 6 hens and 1 rooster. This is the first time we've ever kept chickens and I'm loving it! They are wonderful, wonderful pets. They follow me everywhere like puppies. They get all the pulp from my juicing and the cut offs from our vegetable preps, so no waste. We have lots of wild apples, blueberries, and rose hips which they love. They love to be handfed and are loads of fun to watch. I challenge anyone not to laugh when they watch a chicken run....especially from the back view 🤣🤣🤣
Loved this video. We've just added 5 rescued barn hens to our flock of 4. They are all settling in well. Love the loop system idea. I will make sure we make good use of our chicken poo from now on.
I love the videos for all of the reasons already listed. Please keep up the good work. As I sit here with a head cold, watching these vids are as soothing as a hot cup of tea. Also, I loved the Dalek comment thrown in! 😂😂😂
Another great video thanks for doing my video suggestion so many great ideas. I have blue egg layers bantams, gold tops and silkies and quail and lots of chicks. I also use the poop on my vegetable patch and the flowers do great on it too. I sell eggs to the shop where I work which works really well to pay for the feed of the animals.
Great to see a video about 8 reasons to watch the #floofs I mean, chickens! What would you say is the best overall breed of chicken to keep for overall friendliness, foraging skills, egg production / meat taste etc?
I have to say Orpingtons are amazing as all rounders, so friendly and really do like foraging. Yes there are other utility breeds like Marans that have great egg laying and meat quality BUT Orpingtons are self-sustaining as they will also incubate the next generation of chickens for you. Raising chickens naturally using broody hens, as you know, I am almost evangelical about. It's so much better for the chickens and easier on you to leave it to the instincts of a great broody hen. Go on.....get a #floof!
Had no idea chickens eat fruit and vegetables. As someone who eats a lot of eggs (not an unhealthy amount) and chicken and don't trust the quality of the ones I buy at reasonable prices, this should be my future project.
My three girls will not touch brassicas. Belle even managed to break into the veggie patch but didn’t touch any of it and she’s the one that goes for lettuce and spinach. However they all love watermelon 😂. They are Copper Marans, two black and one blue. Love your vlogs they are so calming and informative. 👍
That's really interesting that they won't touch brassicas. They're all fussy in their own way. Ours turn their beaks up at red cabbage and at kale!. Thank you for being do kind about the videos. I'm glad you enjoy them.
Hey Fiona I have a question if you don’t mind can you make a video of you telling us step by step on butchering a rooster because I know you might have a good amount of them.
Hi Axel. Its something we have discussed covering, but we are cautious of offending our viewers or TH-cam censors. Until we do cover it, our friends over at @OurSmallholdingAdventure have an excellent video th-cam.com/video/gsVkwfwToy4/w-d-xo.html
Great video! As always. I would really be happy to have you talk about common ailments or illnesses that hens might get. I saw your de worming video and its extremely helpful! What other illness can happen? I have one healthy, 8 month old Austrolorp who's waddle is suddenly all kinked up. She acts fine. Eats, drinks, and lays fine. We checked her for visible parasites. Everything seems fine. We did have a heat wave come threw, could that cause it? Our hottest days were about 97 degrees farenheit. But most Summer days are about 80-90 degrees farenheit for us.The hens seem comfortable normally, but that heat wave was a difficult week. I used all of your keep cool tips. Ug, the heat was aweful. All 13 of our other hens are fine. Any ideas? It's only one of her waddles.
We were talking today about making a video about ailments but the problem I've got it I would struggle to demonstrate any of the issues because we maintain high biosecurity and I can't find a reasonable amount of royalty free photographs of the problems to show what they look like. With your hens waddle. Is it that she's suddenly walking like John Wayne? On our recent hot days (short spell only) I noticed Thunder, one of our Marans do the same thing. It stopped when the weather became cooler so it seems a reasonable deduction that the weather is the cause. If she develops soft shells, thin shells, lethargy, general malaise, goes off her food or has discharge it would be worth seeking advice. Does that help?
@@EnglishCountryLife yes! This helps alot. Thank you. I think I need to be more trusting of myself and my instincts. ;) And thank you for letting me know your thoughts on the ailment video. Bummer about the pictures but yes, of course. I hadn't realized that. Bah. Hahaha Anyways, thank you Fiona and Hugh! You two are great!
@@jennytaylor3409 It's never a bad idea to ask. I do it all the time. Last year I asked the Twitter community if they had noticed their hens moulting after brooding because I couldn't find any reference to it at all. It turns out for broodies it's common but I think because most people incubate eggs that books and websites just don't reference it. Clearly my advice is as an experienced chickenkeeper and not as a veterinary professional. Trust your instincts. You know how they behave each day and you clearly notice the changes. Only you can gauge how severe any change is so yes, trust your instincts.
i made your recipe for pickled cucumbers, they're still pickling. Also great video!!!!! edit: what do you do with a hen that has died? would you bury it? or take it to the vet?
Thanks! I'm glad you like the cucumber recipe. For the question about the hens it depends on the circumstances of its death. If it was an old hen or a very young hen we would bury it or cremate it. If the hen was showing symptoms of a disease e.g. mucus from eyes etc, we would consult a vet before taking it to them as they would need to know before taking an animal with a potential communicable disease to them. It's really important to check for symptoms of notifiable diseases such as Newcastles Disease or Avian Flu. In the UK these must be notified to AHVLA if you suspect the chicken has them. If the hen was a healthy age (not very young or old) and showed no external symptoms, we might perform a post mortem ourselves to determine if there was a digestive blockage, abnormal heart or other issue. After which we would bury or cremate it.
If i go there in your small holdings i would be chasing every chicken of yours (lol, me, saying as an adult person).. and rub them one by one, hahaha.. ^_^! I live in a suburban city in Indonesia (South East Asia country), and in the place i living (my house) there is no more land space, even for planting plants, because all my land space is already fully built by the building. So back there when i was a kid, i remember i have a roster, and i rise him from a baby through adult roster (since back there my house still have land space to build a small house for the roster), and he very tamed, he following me everywhere when i play out side of the house, and someday my roster gets sick and die. I miss my roster so much back there. So now i can`t raise chickens in a coop, and i agree, raising chicken would be psychological benefits that make you calm. I would plan to make a small coop someday :)
Chickens can be very tame if they know you from when they hatch. If they associate you with good things like food they come running to you. I hope you get to keep them again!
Thanks for this extremely useful video. What worries me is how you deal with disposing of the chickens destined for the table? This is what concerns me most about this kind of venture especially ending up with masses of chickens and cockerels that I can’t bring myself to destroy and eat! Do you have any advice about this? It’s not exactly very fluffy to talk about but I’m trying to be a realist here.
We're still navigating the family friendly policies on TH-cam so I don't think we can describe the techniques to you in detail but we do choose to do it ourselves so there is no transport involved which may distress our chickens. We do dispatch in line with UK law which means stunning to render them unconscious before dispatch. If this is an area of concern for you there are a few things you can do: 1) Take a practical course on the subject prior to breeding chickens. This way you'll know if you can go ahead. 2) Find someone locally who already dispatches chickens and ask them or pay them to help you/do the job. 3) Form a group in your region of likeminded people. Even if you can't dispatch the chickens, you may be able to dress out the chickens or joint them after resting. Basically you could share the duties with predefined roles for all chickens owned by the group. Do any of those options sound possible for you?
English Country Life Thank you for your very full and sensible response. It’s good to know that there are various options to deal with this trickier more sensitive aspect of keeping chickens. I’m thinking though that it’s maybe not something you can decide on until you’re actually facing it. I think I would probably start with layers and enjoy the eggs initially. If I was a chicken I’d like you as my owner. Looks like hen heaven!
@@lilymcghee8363 Thank you so much! I would suggest a practical chicken dispatch course. That way you can at least see it practically demonstrated. If you can't get past being in the room when the task is carried out, you know it's not going to work for you. If you can, you can move onto assisting. I am so impressed that you are really thinking about this. The worst thing anyone can do is get into chicken breeding and not have a plan to deal with the excess cockerels. There is virtually no market to even give them away so this is the only real viable option. You are being thoughtful, considerate and compassionate both to the chickens and to you too. 👏👏👏
#9. Keeping chickens in your apple orchard prevents codling moth in your fruit. #10. Keeping free range chickens greatly reduces insect pests in the garden.
I still want chickens. xD how do you deal with a rooster when you hatch your own meat birds? I remember you mentioning something about borrowing one for the sanity of your neighbors.
Hi Seth. We never bring new live birds onto the premises. We only ever hatch birds. We buy in eggs in autumn and hatch a new rooster for spring and once we have enough broody hens sitting the rooster becomes a table bird. That minimises the crowing outside to a 4 month period. We also keep thd crowing rooster in a coop in a location surrounded on 3 sides by hedges so if he crows in the coop it's unlikely to cause anyone any issues. The final thing we do is programme the auto opening door on the coop to stay closed until 7:30am during the 4 months of potential crowing. This video explains our breeding cycle. I hope all of this information helps: th-cam.com/video/JDaMa8FawvM/w-d-xo.html
Hi Fiona, love your videos 😊 I have chickens, 6 hens laying at present and they are all free range all the time bar night time in their coop, 5 of them lay eggs with almost orange yolks but one lays and her yolks are very pale....sometimes almost white. She looks healthy so I looked up information about it and it would seem she’s just not choosing to eat what would make her yolks a deeper colour so I’ve nothing to worry about... would you disagree? You mentioned ‘take your money elsewhere if you find a pale yolk as that means they’re not getting outside. My girl is, should I be checking for something else? 🤔😬😊
I'm sorry to have worried you. What I meant was that commercially free ranged hens can be kept in giant barn structures with access to the outside. Many hens in this scenario feel safer inside and although a large proportion of them go out and graze, some will choose to stay in the shelter and eat their pellets where they are available indoors. The yolk is purely down to what the hen chooses to eat so you are right your hen is just choosing not to eat the green stuff. Shd may well still be eating fruit or worms and other outdoor goodies so I am so sorry to have worried you.
English Country Life aw you didn’t worry me at all - honestly don’t you fret, just wanted to check. She’s the first at my feet when I brush the yard or at my hand when I weed to eat bugs. She’s like a child who won’t eat her veg then 🙄 thank you. Yes I’d heard that about free range hens. There’s a lot about the commercial side of poultry that makes me very sad. We love our wee flock here. They all have names and we raise them only for their eggs and the pure joy they bring with their daily antics. Would you please do a video on eradicating red mite? Thank you again 😊
@@agracefilledlife1397 Thanks for letting me know. I bet she just prefers the protein in worms and bugs to the green stuff as you say 🤣🤣🤣 It's strange you should ask about red mite as you're the 2nd person to ask today about pests and ailments as a theme. I have to admit I've avoided the subject because I'm not able to demonstrate what infestations or ailments look like but I think I can do something around eradicating mites without having them. It would be great if I could show pictures of them but I have struggled to find royalty free pictures of pests to use for these types of video but I'll keep trying. This week I need to film making tomato powder as we've had a lot of requests. Are you OK to wait for a short while?
BTW I have names for all of the brooder hens and our egg layer hens and of course for the stud cockerel. I also have 1 pet and that's Gannet who you will see in many of the videos. She's 7 now and still at the head of the flock.
English Country Life yes of course, happy to wait. Mites kindly arrived on a bale of hay here and I have declared war on these very unwelcome invaders. You are so blessed to have no issues with parasites or ailments 🙏🏻 we are visited by migratory birds so I think they brought them with them, the wee skitters 🙈🤪
Hi Stuart, its something that we have considered, but do not want to fall foul of TH-cam's family friendly guidelines. I suggest the excellent channel run by Scott Rea for excellent butchery advice.
Great question. In the commercial environment male chickens are generally culled on day 1 when they hatch. Our approach is not to do this but to give them a great life free ranging, experiencing sunshine and grass. Yes, they are ultimately table birds but we know how we have cared for them, that their welfare has come first. As a meat eater we feel this is an honest approach to our food. It shouldn't be an arms length approach to our food and that's why we share our approach with others. We do appreciate this would be difficult for many but if we can show what high welfare looks like and encourage just one person to select high welfare food for their table whether or not they have been personally involved with that animal, that would be a great result.
Honest answer? Yes, they may well. We keep ours inside an electric fence that prevents them from getting at flower & veg beds & keeps them safe from predators
I see you are using hen's faeces in the compost which is obviously a good idea - but not the best. It is estimated that there are more than 50 billion chickens in the world and to put this into perspective, that’s nearly seven chickens for every one person on the planet. One needs to remember that poultry are more efficient than cows per kilo live weight to produce nitrogen. Some people already generate electricity from hen faeces, and in Israel they are going one step further to produce ammonia for poultry to generate refrigeration. Just a thought for you.
Returning manure to the ground is a vital part of soil health and crop fertilisation. All manure produced on the property (including our own) is returned to the soil to improve its long term productivity, moisture retention and invertebrate balance
![일상 속 기분 좋음 [Proto disco meme]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/DwmEIaZ7XGQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for your Chicken Keeping for Beginners playlist. I have learned so much, and feel that I am far better prepared to begin my chicken keeping adventure than I would have been without it. Your clear, concise, and calm delivery of information is deeply appreciated. Our chicks will arrive the beginning of October and I am now prepared.
You've made me very happy. I really did want to make the series to help new chicken keepers as it can be daunting. Thank you for taking the time to comment. You've made my day.
Good luck with your chickens. They are incredibly rewarding.
What a beautiful scene, sitting there hand-feeding your chicken.
There are many worse ways to spend time 🙂
GREAT INFO EVERY TIME, CLEAR AND SIMPLE, NEVER FEEL CONFUSED AFTER WATCHING. MICK FROM SURREY,
Thank you so much 😊
@@EnglishCountryLife THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR HARD WORK. MICK
We have backyard chickens, 6 hens and 1 rooster. This is the first time we've ever kept chickens and I'm loving it! They are wonderful, wonderful pets. They follow me everywhere like puppies. They get all the pulp from my juicing and the cut offs from our vegetable preps, so no waste. We have lots of wild apples, blueberries, and rose hips which they love. They love to be handfed and are loads of fun to watch. I challenge anyone not to laugh when they watch a chicken run....especially from the back view 🤣🤣🤣
Chicken runs are hilarious!
Rose hips? I knew they contain a lot of C vitamins. I will try to fed then to my cricket.
Loved this video. We've just added 5 rescued barn hens to our flock of 4. They are all settling in well. Love the loop system idea. I will make sure we make good use of our chicken poo from now on.
Thanks for being so kind.
Isn't it great that we can use the poop to provide more food? I just love it.
@@EnglishCountryLife it really is. I've been out the morning scooping 🤣
I love the videos for all of the reasons already listed. Please keep up the good work. As I sit here with a head cold, watching these vids are as soothing as a hot cup of tea. Also, I loved the Dalek comment thrown in! 😂😂😂
Thank you so much
Another great video thanks for doing my video suggestion so many great ideas. I have blue egg layers bantams, gold tops and silkies and quail and lots of chicks. I also use the poop on my vegetable patch and the flowers do great on it too. I sell eggs to the shop where I work which works really well to pay for the feed of the animals.
That's fantastic. It sounds like you have a great arrangement.
Thank you so much for the video idea. I really do appreciate the suggestion you made 👍
Great to see a video about 8 reasons to watch the #floofs I mean, chickens!
What would you say is the best overall breed of chicken to keep for overall friendliness, foraging skills, egg production / meat taste etc?
I have to say Orpingtons are amazing as all rounders, so friendly and really do like foraging. Yes there are other utility breeds like Marans that have great egg laying and meat quality BUT Orpingtons are self-sustaining as they will also incubate the next generation of chickens for you. Raising chickens naturally using broody hens, as you know, I am almost evangelical about. It's so much better for the chickens and easier on you to leave it to the instincts of a great broody hen.
Go on.....get a #floof!
>>TO ALL SUBSCRIBERS
That's really, really lovely of you. Thank you
Had no idea chickens eat fruit and vegetables. As someone who eats a lot of eggs (not an unhealthy amount) and chicken and don't trust the quality of the ones I buy at reasonable prices, this should be my future project.
It's one of the reasons why we started chicken keeping. 👍
Great ideas!
I'm glad it was helpful 😊
My three girls will not touch brassicas. Belle even managed to break into the veggie patch but didn’t touch any of it and she’s the one that goes for lettuce and spinach. However they all love watermelon 😂. They are Copper Marans, two black and one blue. Love your vlogs they are so calming and informative. 👍
That's really interesting that they won't touch brassicas. They're all fussy in their own way. Ours turn their beaks up at red cabbage and at kale!.
Thank you for being do kind about the videos. I'm glad you enjoy them.
Nor will ours, dandelion is great but strawberries and tomatoes are favorites. As for entertainment the chickens, dogs and cats are so funny together.
Hey Fiona I have a question if you don’t mind can you make a video of you telling us step by step on butchering a rooster because I know you might have a good amount of them.
Hi Axel. Its something we have discussed covering, but we are cautious of offending our viewers or TH-cam censors. Until we do cover it, our friends over at @OurSmallholdingAdventure have an excellent video
th-cam.com/video/gsVkwfwToy4/w-d-xo.html
Great video! As always.
I would really be happy to have you talk about common ailments or illnesses that hens might get. I saw your de worming video and its extremely helpful! What other illness can happen? I have one healthy, 8 month old Austrolorp who's waddle is suddenly all kinked up. She acts fine. Eats, drinks, and lays fine. We checked her for visible parasites. Everything seems fine. We did have a heat wave come threw, could that cause it? Our hottest days were about 97 degrees farenheit. But most Summer days are about 80-90 degrees farenheit for us.The hens seem comfortable normally, but that heat wave was a difficult week. I used all of your keep cool tips. Ug, the heat was aweful. All 13 of our other hens are fine. Any ideas? It's only one of her waddles.
We were talking today about making a video about ailments but the problem I've got it I would struggle to demonstrate any of the issues because we maintain high biosecurity and I can't find a reasonable amount of royalty free photographs of the problems to show what they look like.
With your hens waddle. Is it that she's suddenly walking like John Wayne? On our recent hot days (short spell only) I noticed Thunder, one of our Marans do the same thing. It stopped when the weather became cooler so it seems a reasonable deduction that the weather is the cause. If she develops soft shells, thin shells, lethargy, general malaise, goes off her food or has discharge it would be worth seeking advice.
Does that help?
@@EnglishCountryLife yes! This helps alot. Thank you. I think I need to be more trusting of myself and my instincts. ;)
And thank you for letting me know your thoughts on the ailment video. Bummer about the pictures but yes, of course. I hadn't realized that. Bah. Hahaha
Anyways, thank you Fiona and Hugh! You two are great!
@@jennytaylor3409 It's never a bad idea to ask. I do it all the time. Last year I asked the Twitter community if they had noticed their hens moulting after brooding because I couldn't find any reference to it at all. It turns out for broodies it's common but I think because most people incubate eggs that books and websites just don't reference it.
Clearly my advice is as an experienced chickenkeeper and not as a veterinary professional. Trust your instincts. You know how they behave each day and you clearly notice the changes. Only you can gauge how severe any change is so yes, trust your instincts.
i made your recipe for pickled cucumbers, they're still pickling. Also great video!!!!!
edit: what do you do with a hen that has died? would you bury it? or take it to the vet?
Thanks! I'm glad you like the cucumber recipe.
For the question about the hens it depends on the circumstances of its death.
If it was an old hen or a very young hen we would bury it or cremate it.
If the hen was showing symptoms of a disease e.g. mucus from eyes etc, we would consult a vet before taking it to them as they would need to know before taking an animal with a potential communicable disease to them. It's really important to check for symptoms of notifiable diseases such as Newcastles Disease or Avian Flu. In the UK these must be notified to AHVLA if you suspect the chicken has them.
If the hen was a healthy age (not very young or old) and showed no external symptoms, we might perform a post mortem ourselves to determine if there was a digestive blockage, abnormal heart or other issue. After which we would bury or cremate it.
If i go there in your small holdings i would be chasing every chicken of yours (lol, me, saying as an adult person).. and rub them one by one, hahaha.. ^_^!
I live in a suburban city in Indonesia (South East Asia country), and in the place i living (my house) there is no more land space, even for planting plants, because all my land space is already fully built by the building. So back there when i was a kid, i remember i have a roster, and i rise him from a baby through adult roster (since back there my house still have land space to build a small house for the roster), and he very tamed, he following me everywhere when i play out side of the house, and someday my roster gets sick and die. I miss my roster so much back there.
So now i can`t raise chickens in a coop, and i agree, raising chicken would be psychological benefits that make you calm. I would plan to make a small coop someday :)
Chickens can be very tame if they know you from when they hatch. If they associate you with good things like food they come running to you. I hope you get to keep them again!
#1 reason - EGGS!!!!!
#2 reason - they're highly entertaining :'D
Both true 🙂
Thanks for this extremely useful video. What worries me is how you deal with disposing of the chickens destined for the table? This is what concerns me most about this kind of venture especially ending up with masses of chickens and cockerels that I can’t bring myself to destroy and eat! Do you have any advice about this? It’s not exactly very fluffy to talk about but I’m trying to be a realist here.
We're still navigating the family friendly policies on TH-cam so I don't think we can describe the techniques to you in detail but we do choose to do it ourselves so there is no transport involved which may distress our chickens. We do dispatch in line with UK law which means stunning to render them unconscious before dispatch.
If this is an area of concern for you there are a few things you can do:
1) Take a practical course on the subject prior to breeding chickens. This way you'll know if you can go ahead.
2) Find someone locally who already dispatches chickens and ask them or pay them to help you/do the job.
3) Form a group in your region of likeminded people. Even if you can't dispatch the chickens, you may be able to dress out the chickens or joint them after resting. Basically you could share the duties with predefined roles for all chickens owned by the group.
Do any of those options sound possible for you?
English Country Life Thank you for your very full and sensible response. It’s good to know that there are various options to deal with this trickier more sensitive aspect of keeping chickens. I’m thinking though that it’s maybe not something you can decide on until you’re actually facing it. I think I would probably start with layers and enjoy the eggs initially. If I was a chicken I’d like you as my owner. Looks like hen heaven!
@@lilymcghee8363 Thank you so much!
I would suggest a practical chicken dispatch course. That way you can at least see it practically demonstrated. If you can't get past being in the room when the task is carried out, you know it's not going to work for you. If you can, you can move onto assisting.
I am so impressed that you are really thinking about this. The worst thing anyone can do is get into chicken breeding and not have a plan to deal with the excess cockerels. There is virtually no market to even give them away so this is the only real viable option. You are being thoughtful, considerate and compassionate both to the chickens and to you too. 👏👏👏
We want to get Bantams! But having difficulty finding Plymouth rock! Any info on where to go to buy please. I've googled till blind🙄
I'm so sorry, we know a lot of breeders, but only of large fowl, we don't keep bantams 🙁
@@EnglishCountryLife oh bless thank you. Maybe I'm not meant to have them yet😉
@@ASmileAdayful Or perhaps you are meant to have Silkies? 😁
@@EnglishCountryLife I don't fancy fluffy feet, and the ones with the head cone! Can't remember name atm lol
#9. Keeping chickens in your apple orchard prevents codling moth in your fruit.
#10. Keeping free range chickens greatly reduces insect pests in the garden.
#10 does add plant eating pests 😁
I still want chickens. xD how do you deal with a rooster when you hatch your own meat birds? I remember you mentioning something about borrowing one for the sanity of your neighbors.
Hi Seth. We never bring new live birds onto the premises. We only ever hatch birds. We buy in eggs in autumn and hatch a new rooster for spring and once we have enough broody hens sitting the rooster becomes a table bird. That minimises the crowing outside to a 4 month period. We also keep thd crowing rooster in a coop in a location surrounded on 3 sides by hedges so if he crows in the coop it's unlikely to cause anyone any issues. The final thing we do is programme the auto opening door on the coop to stay closed until 7:30am during the 4 months of potential crowing.
This video explains our breeding cycle. I hope all of this information helps:
th-cam.com/video/JDaMa8FawvM/w-d-xo.html
@@EnglishCountryLife thank you!
@@seth2854 Anytime 😊
Hi Fiona, love your videos 😊 I have chickens, 6 hens laying at present and they are all free range all the time bar night time in their coop, 5 of them lay eggs with almost orange yolks but one lays and her yolks are very pale....sometimes almost white. She looks healthy so I looked up information about it and it would seem she’s just not choosing to eat what would make her yolks a deeper colour so I’ve nothing to worry about... would you disagree? You mentioned ‘take your money elsewhere if you find a pale yolk as that means they’re not getting outside. My girl is, should I be checking for something else? 🤔😬😊
I'm sorry to have worried you. What I meant was that commercially free ranged hens can be kept in giant barn structures with access to the outside. Many hens in this scenario feel safer inside and although a large proportion of them go out and graze, some will choose to stay in the shelter and eat their pellets where they are available indoors.
The yolk is purely down to what the hen chooses to eat so you are right your hen is just choosing not to eat the green stuff. Shd may well still be eating fruit or worms and other outdoor goodies so I am so sorry to have worried you.
English Country Life aw you didn’t worry me at all - honestly don’t you fret, just wanted to check. She’s the first at my feet when I brush the yard or at my hand when I weed to eat bugs. She’s like a child who won’t eat her veg then 🙄 thank you. Yes I’d heard that about free range hens. There’s a lot about the commercial side of poultry that makes me very sad. We love our wee flock here. They all have names and we raise them only for their eggs and the pure joy they bring with their daily antics. Would you please do a video on eradicating red mite? Thank you again 😊
@@agracefilledlife1397 Thanks for letting me know. I bet she just prefers the protein in worms and bugs to the green stuff as you say 🤣🤣🤣
It's strange you should ask about red mite as you're the 2nd person to ask today about pests and ailments as a theme. I have to admit I've avoided the subject because I'm not able to demonstrate what infestations or ailments look like but I think I can do something around eradicating mites without having them. It would be great if I could show pictures of them but I have struggled to find royalty free pictures of pests to use for these types of video but I'll keep trying. This week I need to film making tomato powder as we've had a lot of requests. Are you OK to wait for a short while?
BTW I have names for all of the brooder hens and our egg layer hens and of course for the stud cockerel.
I also have 1 pet and that's Gannet who you will see in many of the videos. She's 7 now and still at the head of the flock.
English Country Life yes of course, happy to wait. Mites kindly arrived on a bale of hay here and I have declared war on these very unwelcome invaders. You are so blessed to have no issues with parasites or ailments 🙏🏻 we are visited by migratory birds so I think they brought them with them, the wee skitters 🙈🤪
How many chickens do you keep year round?
Usually 8 or 9 Orpington hens, one Orpington cockerel & a few other breeds just for eggs
Thanks! Have loved your videos too!
@@kayshakespear7979 Thank you 🙂
Hi interrested in yout Video how can I reach u sir
You have reached us. We are on Twitter & Instagram too @engcountrylife
You are missing a vid on culling, slaughtering and processing birds for meat
Hi Stuart, its something that we have considered, but do not want to fall foul of TH-cam's family friendly guidelines. I suggest the excellent channel run by Scott Rea for excellent butchery advice.
How do you manage to kill and eat a chicken that you have cared for? I kept rabbits once and did not have the heart to kill them
Great question. In the commercial environment male chickens are generally culled on day 1 when they hatch. Our approach is not to do this but to give them a great life free ranging, experiencing sunshine and grass. Yes, they are ultimately table birds but we know how we have cared for them, that their welfare has come first. As a meat eater we feel this is an honest approach to our food. It shouldn't be an arms length approach to our food and that's why we share our approach with others. We do appreciate this would be difficult for many but if we can show what high welfare looks like and encourage just one person to select high welfare food for their table whether or not they have been personally involved with that animal, that would be a great result.
Will chickens eat my flowers if they get into my flower garden? 🤔
Honest answer? Yes, they may well. We keep ours inside an electric fence that prevents them from getting at flower & veg beds & keeps them safe from predators
@@EnglishCountryLife Hello there, I am looking for a buff orpington cockerel, one of yours if there is anyway I could acquire one?
@@willhoward3079 Hi Will! We do sell cockerels but we have sold all our surplus stock until the Autumn. Sorry.
@@EnglishCountryLife And the two reputable breeders you mention?
I see you are using hen's faeces in the compost which is obviously a good idea - but not the best. It is estimated that there are more than 50 billion chickens in the world and to put this into perspective, that’s nearly seven chickens for every one person on the planet. One needs to remember that poultry are more efficient than cows per kilo live weight to produce nitrogen. Some people already generate electricity from hen faeces, and in Israel they are going one step further to produce ammonia for poultry to generate refrigeration. Just a thought for you.
Returning manure to the ground is a vital part of soil health and crop fertilisation. All manure produced on the property (including our own) is returned to the soil to improve its long term productivity, moisture retention and invertebrate balance
Knowing where your food comes from is kinda worse for my flock. I've seen them devour roaches, lizards, dog poop, and a bunch of other stuff.
Chickens are little dinosaurs 🙂
@@EnglishCountryLife Definitely
Boo quality meat - quality companions!!!!!
That too, but too many cockerels is bad gor the hens - and the cockerels!