The Hens just begin to lay eggs when they get to a certain age. You don't need them fertilized to cook and eat them

We keep chickens as both pets and for eggs. They are remarkably easy to look after, change their water and top up their food every day, and clean them out once a week. It's a common misconception that you need grass to keep chickens, but so long as you buy a good quantity of bark chippings, they can scratch around quite happily in those.

go to the omlet website, and they do a who package of a run, an eglu (roost) and 2 chickens, plus first bag of food, and grub and glug bowls for around £300. and once you've got all that, the food is very reasonable, and chickens cost between £15 and £25 on average.

You also do NOT need a Rooster for them to lay eggs most hens lay around 300 eggs in their first year, you only need a rooster if you want them fertilized and to breed. We get about 1 a day from Poachy, her partner Scramble passed away a couple of weeks ago now, so because chickens don't do well on their own, on account of them being a flock animal, we got 3 new girls, Miss penny apple, Angua, and Pecan, all of which are point of lay hense (about 2 weeks off first lay hopefully) and we get about 6 a week off Poachy, so we should eventually get about 24 a week. But sally loves to bake, and we give some to the neighbours and friends and family etc.

also people think chickens are noisy, so cant be kept close to other residents, but thats not true either, its the ROOSTERS that make ALL the noise.

hope this helps, but check out the omlet website as the forum there is incredibly helpful, I'm on there under the same name. and prospective chicken keepers are welcome to sign up an ask questions, they're a great crowd.

thanks house will check out omlet site with kim for sure sounds like a plan to me

dont know where i got the idea you needed a rooster i think i was thinking along the lines that they mate and then have an egg lmao!!!! i didnt realise that they just lay eggs anyway :-)

and all those eggs would come in handy for sure :grin:

Yeah, they're just unfertilized chicken ovulations. And there's so much you can do with them,
Cookies, quiches, cakes...
as well as poached / scrambled / fried eggs etc.

and because we feed our on organic food, and they freerange all the time and are such happy chickens, the eggs taste AMAING!

let me know what your username is on the omlet forum if you like, and if you have any questions i'll do my best to answer them.

Come on House...you've given them names....that makes it personal...

"yeah, I just love Gladys' unfertillised ovulations..."

Made two good friends locally who both keep chooks...One even had them as part of the house purchase! getting alot of Bantham eggs from a couple up the road...gorgeous...never want another supermarket shelf egg again! And watching my 10 month daughter chow down on something so good and natural is pricelss...
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yeah, they're pets :P we don't eat them. lol
1) cus Sal is a veggetablist
and
2) she won't let me, even though so long as they died of natural causes, I'd have no issue with it.

Angua is a little banty, she's just a little ball of fluff, she's so cute.

http://1isf.webs.com/thegang03.jpg

http://1isf.webs.com/Angua01.jpg

http://1isf.webs.com/misspennyapple01.jpg

http://1isf.webs.com/pecan01.jpg

http://1isf.webs.com/P29-09-09_10.41.JPG

http://1isf.webs.com/P30-09-09_13.00.JPG

This is basically the standard Eglu MkII with standard Run, but we added an extra 1meter run extender because we went from having 2 chickens to 4 chickens. an Eglu can hold 2-4 chickens, maybe 5 with a couple of bantams, and the Eglu Cube can hold up to 10. They are all fox and rat proof.

Egg layers ain't worth it...they're not good eating anyway...

some birds 'fer eatin' ,some fer layin' as they say in Norfolk...

Can you sex them? A Vietnamese colleague of mine can, but its a rare skill in Blighty these days...
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well I did wonder, especially because hopefully they will get to a good age, and an old bird probably wouldn't have much eating on her.

But personally, No I have no diea how to sex them, and I know one woman who has had to change breeder, because her breeder kept selling her cockerels instead of hens. kept wondering why she was getting no eggs lol

Miss Pennyapple looks a bit of a dirty minx...phwwooaarrr!
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err i thought all chickens were female and cockrels were the males that have those big feather tails and red crests on there heads ??

a bit like foghorn leghorn lol:grin: