Quackington Haven Hens

Our chicken journey began a number of years ago with 6 silver laced wyandottes kindly donated as a 'starter set' by Goo's friend Fran. It wasn't long before the chicken bug had bitten, and before we knew it we had acquired various pekins, rhode island red bantams, barred wyandottes, english game, sussex', welsummer and marans. Our flock is now around 40 strong, depending on how many chicks we have. They are all free range in our garden, other than Harold and his two ladies, who live with the ducks, since he cannot be relied upon not to pick fights with the other cockerels.

For reasons that neither of us can recall, we started naming our birds after serial killers, so we have Harold, Myra, Rosie (dec'd), Lizzie (dec'd), Aileen, Beverley, Joanna and Genene etc. It wasn't long before (despite concerted research) we had to depart from that theme and a few are named after Star Wars characters (Darth Vader, Princess Layer, C3PO etc). Perhaps unbelievably, two of the original six silver-laced wyandottes remain - Big Bird and Neither Big Nor Dead Bird - these two remain in rude health and take themselves to bed with a mug of Horlicks several hours before the rest of the flock go in for the night.

As well as our pure breed bantams we also have a number of cross-breeds (English Game x Pekin). It turns out that English Game birds are very set on motherhood, and both our hens produced unauthorised hatchings (from under the summerhouse) last year. One then determinedly became broody in December, of all times, and hatched another batch!