We had a poultry building on our farm. Incredible hobby. My old rooster Pedro had a set of lungs that would overpower the best piper. In the fall, burning the leaves from the hardwoods around the farm buildings was a smoky outdoor family ritual. My wife undertook this one day in the rain, to the amusement of those of us who could contain our urge to burn leaves til the weather was fit. He effort was overcome by rain. Three days later, the winds rose, the sky cleared,and the last of the leaves fell. The forset floor dried up, Elaine's fire rebirthed itself, and the entire treed plot around our house in the middle of the farm, an area of ten acres, was subject to the burning off of the floor of the forsest and anywhere leaves lay. This cost us our chicken coop, and almost the drive shed and maple sugar production building. Alas, Pedro and his family were defeated by the nasty leaf fire, and died a roasty death. It took three fire trucks to extinguish the blaze. At the fair last week, I saw birds from Spain that were interesting. And the bantams always attract attention, more by their attitude than their looks I think. We raised barred plymouth rocks one summer, a marginal dual purpose bird. stephen On Sep 15, 2007, at 2:40 PM, Sian Thomas wrote: > Yes poultry is shown at all the local shows. Quite a lot of keen > Poultry > breeders in Orkney. My hens are mainly Marans, with two regular > brown hens. > The Brown Hens are cross-breeds and are very friendly birds, > consistent > layers too. The Marans have a tendancy to go broody which can be a > bit > tiresome. But all my birds are completely free-range, as are all the > chickens on Graemsay. Gardening can be a bit of a challenge as you > need to > protect young plants from chickens scratching them up! We have no > predators > here so they can roam safely. Usually each summer I have one or > two hens > that wander off and sit on a clutch of eggs and return with a small > brood of > chicks. Again I let the hen do what comes naturally. Normally she > will > take them into one of the barns and keep them in a corner, where I > provide > water and food. Then she returns to the hen coop after a few weeks > and the > new chicks integrate with the regular flock. We swap new hens > around on > Graemsay to keep each flock's gene pool fresh. If there are too many > cockerals they get offered to whoever wants them. Undoubtedly some > end up > in the pot. But I make a point of not eating anything I have been > personally acquiatined with. :-) > > Sian > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "stephen davie" <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2007 5:13 PM > Subject: Re: [ORCADIA] Intrigued with Graemsay? > > >> Do they have a poultry show in Orkney at any of the fall fairs? Our >> smaller rural fall fairs here are big on fowl. We raised Auracanas, a >> south american bird that lays blue eggs low in fat. At least that was >> the story, but the eggs were blue to be sure. >> Do your birds run free? Free range birds taste so much better. >> Interesting note....thanks Sian...Stephen >> > _______________________________________ > Orcadia Group Photo Album > http://tinyurl.com/28bx9x > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ORCADIA- > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message