Meet The Resident Birds

I think it is correct to say that we have a motley collection of birds from a variety of sources that we have rescued.

HENS My favourite chickens are the battery hens that we have rescued which arrive in such a parlous state. They have hardly any feathers and are very pale and anaemic-looking from the days and months they have spent in cramped cages in the dark. The ex-free range hens are almost as bad as they have hardly a feather between them. When you get them they are known as “spent hens” on the assumption that their egg-laying days are over, but in fact that is far from the truth as they go on laying until the end of their days. You have to cosset the poor battery birds initially as the shock of being in the sunshine in the great outdoors would kill them, so at first they are kept in an ark with food and water close by but slowly, slowly we let them outside into the main enclosure and eventually you can hardly distinguish them from the others. It is lovely to think that they have the opportunity to lead a proper hen’s life at last.

	GUINEA FOWL Guinea fowl are quite mad with small heads and presumably small brains - maybe the term bird -brained refers to them. Paddy Dancey, the sheep breeder asked us to take some in as she had far too many. Trying to get them in is almost impossible though in really bad weather we usually succeed eventually.
	TURKEYS Turkeys are possibly even more stupid than guinea fowl and are quite likely to die of hypothermia unless you put them in in winter unlike hens who are very intelligent. Ours are called Naraganset turkeys and were given to us by the poultry breeder Terry Beebe who no longer wanted to breed with them and asked us to take them on.
	GEESE Having had too many we are down to 2 Ebdens at the moment. Unfortunately in our experience when one loses his or her mate it often dies of grief itself within a day or two.
	DUCKS All our ducks have come to us from elderly people who could no longer cope. Looking at a crowd of ducks on a pond they all seem very impersonal but, like the hens, when you get to know them they all have very individual personalities.