Hawkley Hens

Hi all, with all the beautiful weather lately I've been so busy outside that I've not had time to tend to the website. However, after waking up this morning to find it grey and overcast I thought I'd finally get round to doing something I've liked the idea of for ages: writing a blog!

I'll hopefully be posting every couple of weeks to keep you all updated with what we're up to with our Pekins and any changes that might be happening. At the moment everything is thankfully quite settled after a recent fox scare shook everything up a bit. The pens are all full with either breeding Pekins or young birds for sale as well as the stable which has turned into our quarantine area for this week! With all the moving around the girls have been a bit stressed so it seems like a safe place to feed them up and keep a close eye! 

The most recent additions have been 2 beautiful fresian fowl pullets which Tom bought from Petersfield Poultry (formerly Horndean Hens). They're very much his thing so I can't comment much on them! Hopefully I'll have some photos up soon.

The other exciting development is I'm finally sorting out our hatchery! While its been great over the past few years the runs are beginning to fall apart a bit and cleaning is getting harder and harder. I've drawn up the plans and started clearing out today, pulling up the old carpet and burning the old runs. Mum also popped out to pick up an old hoover I'd found on gumtree which will be reserved for chicken jobs only, shavings and carpet don't mix well! With most of the clearing done I've laid down a vinyl floor which will allow the runs' base to be completely waterproof and completely aired the room. Tomorrow's job is to start building the frames of the brooder runs, hopefully in the morning before it gets too hot - I drew all the plans and measurements up already so it's just a case of spending a few hours piecing the boards together. The plan is to have 3 narrow but long runs with separate house compartments at each end, open topped so we can hang the heat lamps (approx 1.5m length) and netting over the top to stop escapees! Again I'll stick some photos of the new set up once its done.

With all the new hatchery space it would be great to find a new and slightly bigger incubator. Our Brinsea Polyhatch has been great over the past 5/6 years but the turner motor has stopped and the hatch rate hasn't been so good lately, I'm worried its on its way out... The new one will hopefully hold more eggs and be fully automatic, I've been looking at a covatutto 108 which could work nicely in the spare room.

Finally, we have so SO many Pekins at the moment! Anyone thinking of adding to their flock ortho knows of anyone starting up get them to give us a shout, the pekin eggs here are all fertile so we have plenty of stock

Enjoy the coming heat wave and watch those drinkers, I have a feeling our chickens are going to need all the help they can get with all this 28C!