January sales

There's a good chance Poppy's and my blips will be similar today.

Poppy found someone yesterday who was selling 'point of lay' pullets and being the good pal she is called to see if wanted her to get us some.

Our hens are about 4 years old and although still laying well are probably about to slow down in the quantity of eggs they produce. Now bearing in mind that there are four of us in the house, we have 4 hens and even if they only laid one or two eggs a week we would still have loads. We now have 4 new gals which, once they start to lay, will probably produce one egg a day for the next 2 or 3 years. By my reckoning these young ladies should provide us with 28 eggs per week, add if say we get 3 eggs each from the old gals and that's about 40 eggs per week.

Aside from our fridge being full of eggs chooks are a lot of fun as they are totally bonkers. If you're nice to them they can be pretty affectionate (this is cupboard love but I don't hold it against them). And if you train them properly they will happily hold up passing tourists by standing in the middle of the road, which gives you enough time to nip out and sell them half a dozen eggs.

There are a few hen keepers on blip and I'm sure they'll all recommend keeping a few hens if you've got a bit of space in your garden. You can even get a designer coop. We don't eat the birds being veggie but I'm sure it's better than anything you can get in the shops.

The new chickens were confined to the coop for an hour or so this morning, to get them used to their new home and then it took them about another hour to be brave enough to venture out. In fact I think they only did because one of the older hens sent them packing when she wanted to use the nest box.

Now they are happily exploring their new home and squabbling with the other hens to establish there place in the pecking order, god help them when they encounter Mad Eye!