I try at least once a year to do a Chicken Stocktake, mostly to fix in my head the numbers and types of our ever changing flock of chickens. The old girls die, youngsters are born or accidents happen like last weeks and we lose a girl suddenly.
Some good news to share with you all is that we got one of our stolen girls back :-)
She had been chucked over the hedge into a field of sheep and one of our neighbours spotted her fending for herself and let us know. It took Alan literally two minutes to catch her and bring her home ... where she got stuck into the Layers Pellets like a thing possessed.
So with her return to the flock it seemed like a good time to do this years stocktake.
Heading his harem of lovely ladies is Jack, the Lavender Pekin Bantam cockerel, who is now a magnificent mature specimen of miniature manhood.
Once again, thank goodness, we have four 'Green Girls'.
We have four 'Blue Girls'. they are named as such from the bands on their legs, so we can remember when we bought them, although in this instance the purchases were only two weeks apart.
These are all Calder Rangers.
We have one Light Sussex cross.
We have two older Calder Rangers.
Our older girl is Harriet the Light Sussex, she's approximately six years old now.
There is Jack's sister Jill.
We have one remaining Skyline, our blue egg layer.
We have two of last years 'Welsh Girls'.
We also have Poppy, another Lavender Pekin Bantam and one of our original girls, born way back in 2011.
There is one Large Black Maran left from 'The Gang', and she is feeling very sorry for herself with her sister and best friend gone.
And last but not least, there is Ebony, the Black Pekin Bantam, usually to be found in the nesting boxes ... she not particularly broody, but just likes her own company most of the time.
And that completes this years stocktake -
1 cockerel 3 Pekin Bantams 16 large chickens (of which 12 are regular layers)
And after munching their way through lots of spinach leaves while I got these photos, the chickens all then trooped back off into the woods to carry on with their chickeny business for the day.
Sue xx