Chickens #1

We currently have 7 lovely "Light Sussex" hybrid chickens which we bought from Stewart at http://www.salspurebreedpoultryinwales.co.uk/.  They are really productive (I made one of Jo's friend's boyfriends laugh the other day when they visited by showing him a run-chart of eggs per day, with calculations on 'laying efficiency', histograms and standard deviations! - I know, I am a bit sad) laying 6 eggs between the 7 of them per day very reliably, except in sub-zero temperatures!

I have a little 'egg round' in work, selling about 5 half-dozens per week to colleagues in the office, but often get asked if I could add people to my 'round.  In one of the Alpaca sheds there's a big old hen-house which looks like it might be ok with a LOT of cleaning and re-water proofing.  I think it could probably hold about 20 hens comfortably. 

Just need to decide on how to get the next batch of hens - not sure at the moment whether to buy point of lay, which would mean pretty much 'guaranteed' healthy, good quality birds, or to buy an incubator and hatching eggs, which would probably work out to be about the same price over all, but would give us the means to cheaply hatch more hens in the future.  Need to give it a bit more thought, in the meantime hopefully they'll keep up the 83% efficiency!

My little helper!