Christina Websell wrote:
Remind him you do not eat the shell ;-) What is inside is the same.

Yeah, but it's still got novelty value. :-)
Anyhow, psychosematic or not, I still get tummy pains after eating the white
ones!

You need Welbars for green/blue eggs - or pure bred Araucanas/

*nod* Already well researched! He knows what he wants, just doesn't know
where he can get one as of yet. Anyhow, got to wait till after we go away
for the weekend first.

For a completely black chicken, Black Leghorn might suit. They are quite
good layers of big eggs, although the eggs are white.

*nod* We have a whitestar leghorn, and she lays huge white eggs. She's
also the bully - affectionately* known as That Evil Bugger White Chicken.
She doesn't seem to mind.

Do consider rescuing some ex-batts, though. You can get as few as four.
I don't regret getting my 4 (3 within 36 hours :-( )
They can look oven ready when you get them, but I find children often like
the idea of getting them back to health, seeing the new feathers coming etc.

I liked the idea of ex-battery hens, but having had Chickeny be periodically
ill for the last few months, and the stress that caused, I'm not sure I'd be
a fit adopter after all, unfortunately. :-( And we have to feel safe that
they're not going to cause any problems if we go away for a few days and
leave our (getting on a bit!) neighbour to chicken-sit. She's happy to open
and close the door and top up food and water and collect eggs, but I'm not
sure what she would do when faced with a legs-in-the-air chicken corpse .. !

My 3 (which I got just before last Christmas) are laying like stink. Which
is sad in a way as they were off out of the battery they were in to be stock
cubes and chicken pies unless for

http://exbatteryhens.webs.com/batter...lfaretrust.htm

These hens have a lot of more life left.

I'll bookmark and revisit when we feel more ... competent, perhaps. :-)
Thanks.