Surrey Homes | SH30 | April 2017 |Gardens supplement inside

Jane Howard’s
Fables from the Farm
Jane’s frustrated flock ride out their confinement in the wake of a bird flu outbreak
Easter is quite late this year. It’s
not easy to work out when
it will come but if you’re
interested it’s always the first Sunday
after the first full moon after the
spring equinox on 21 March. Phew!
In pagan times, chickens and eggs
were seen as signs of fertility and new
life and so were used around the spring
equinox. When the early Christians
came along they copied this symbolism
as it helped them remember the
Resurrection and, to this day, chickens
and eggs still feature large at Easter.
But this year all is
not completely well in
the chicken world. Our
“backyard flock” – as Defra
now refer to a few hens
kept in a garden – consists
of half a dozen Buff and
Speckeld Sussex hens and
Phil the cockerel. They have
spent years wandering round the farm,
looking wonderful but rather annoyingly
making dust baths in the flower beds and
wrecking neat seed drills in the veg patch
by scratching around and messing it all up.
This year however they are penned
up in their run because a severe strain of
Avian Influenza (bird flu), H5N8, has
been found in wild and captive birds in
the UK. So now, all us backyard poultry
keepers (must e-mail Defra to tell them
I have a garden not a backyard) are
required to take action to reduce the risk
of the disease spreading. The chickens
“this might be
the first year I
get straight lines
of lettuce, radish
and rocket”
now have to be confined to a pen and
beaks are most definitely out of joint.
When they had the run of the farm
they might deign to use the nest-box
attached to the hen house to lay eggs
most of the year but as soon as they
felt broodiness approaching they would
wander off to find the most secretive
nook and cranny in which to lay their
eggs and hatch a brood of chicks.
If you don’t know about how the
chicken and egg thing works here’s a
short guide. An old fashioned hen (as
opposed to a modern commercial one
who lays every day and
never goes broody) will
lay an egg most days
from about February
to October and if she is
running with a cockerel
the eggs will be fertile
and for about three weeks
capable of developing into
a chick. However this development will
only commence once, and if, the egg is
kept consistently warm for 24 hours in
an incubator or under a broody hen.
Becoming broody for a hen is a
hormonal thing and as soon as her
temperature starts to rise she will seek
out a special place to lay her eggs. Once
she has a good enough number, usually
around 14, she becomes truly broody,
plucks the feathers from her breast – skinto-shell
contact being warmer with feathers
out the way – and sits tight. And there she
stays for 21 days. She generally foregoes
food and drink – unless you pick her up
and make her leave the nest – and also
ceases to give off any smell so that in the
wild any passing fox won’t find her. Clever.
And then on day 20 the chicks begin
to cheep inside their shells. This is the
signal to the hen to turn off broody
mode and turn on maternal mode.
As all the chicks hatch she becomes a
protective mother and will carefully raise
them for about twelve weeks before she
loses interest and the little ones have to
take their chance as part of the flock.
This year’s enforced incarceration
will however result in a couple of useful
spin-offs. The broodies can’t slink off
to lay a clutch in a far flung corner and
if I can catch them in time there’s a
chance of putting them off motherhood
altogether, but more importantly this
might be the first year I get straight
lines of lettuce, radish and rocket
in the veg patch. Happy Easter.
Follow Jane Howard – and the farm
– on Instagram @coopersfarm
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