When our local egg lady said she was moving away, we panicked a little bit. Fresh eggs are so much nicer than supermarket ones and we really don't want to go backwards.
So what do we do? Where can we find a new supplier? After much research and no luck finding anyone local, we came to the obvious conclusion. We'll get our own chickens.
We've never done anything like this before, so we have no idea what we're doing. We did a lot of research and decided to take the plunge.
We decided that the best thing to do would be to adopt some rescue hens.
There's an organisation called Fresh Start For Hens (www.fsfh.org) who specialise in re-homing farm hens who have outlived their commercial value.
Now here's a shocking thing I didn't know. Chickens in commercial egg farms - including the good free-range ones - are sent to slaughter at the age of 72 weeks because the laying rate drops off slightly and they're not as profitable. Chickens usually live 8 - 10 years and can keep going even longer. Sure, egg production will decrease, but these hens could have a long life ahead of them.
So FSFH take these hens on and find loving new homes for them. The charge £2.50 per bird to cover their costs. We've asked for four of them in the upcoming re-homing.
We should be picking up our hens on 13 August.
The coop has been ordered and will be arriving on Monday. I'll assemble it Monday evening and post more details and some pics after that.
Then we've got a week of intensive Amazon browsing to get the rest of the stuff we need. Feed, bedding, feeder, water, grit, anti-mite stuff... It's a long list.
So excited right now and a little bit scared too.
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