"David WE Roberts" wrote in message
...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...en-flocks.html

"Study co-author Iveta Karabozhilova called for greater regulation of back
garden chickens and more communication between householders and health
officials."

I thought it was Labour who wanted to legislate everything.
If there are 500,000 people keeping chickens then applying regulations to
them isn't going to be easy or cheap (cheep?).

No doubt this will also roll over to allotments.

I would invite any health official to see how I keep my chickens. I doubt
they'd do it better. But..do they keep chickens themselves? and if not how
can they tell me what to do better? They can't, can they?
I am proud to say that my chicken hut is cleaned every day from what they do
in the night. Once a week they get the hut filled up with small wood chips.
Then I throw a bit of wheat in. That's very exciting as they have to
scratch around to find it.
When you get hybrid hens you aren't supposed to feed then anything except
layers pellets. I do feed them greens too.
If it makes them lay slightly less, I don't mind.
but atm the moment are laying like crazy. 3 eggs today from 3 hens, two
yesterday and three the day before. The hen who doesn't lay by 4 pm when I
feed them a bit for bedtime is always the first egg in the morning.

I tried to eat three eggs a day for my breakfast for weeks. It's just not
possible.
I've started to sell them to my brother and his mother in law.
I only want enough cash to cover their food and a little towards their
horrible cost. I could buy half a dozen
eggs a week for more than a year to buy those girls.

I gave up breeding my rare
chickens when I kept getting ill and expecting others to look after them
when I was in hospital(again and again)
I gradually let them pass away with old age.

I now have three hybrid hens which are more than enough. They were very
disappointing at first. I bought them at point of lay in May. I have a
White hen (Coral) and Copper Black Maran and a "Pied Ranger" who went down
broody after laying 20 eggs and never laid \nother egg for 14 weeks. The
Maran did not lay until August although she doing well now laying very dark
brown eggs
The Coral - well she's a star. She lays a big egg every day although she
might take a day off in 14. Alhough her egg is nearly white, and a white
egg is not popular in the Uk, we do not eat the shell \and the contents are
the same.
In the US, white eggs are best, I think.
How interesting. the darker brown shell on an egg the better we like it.