Poultry Keeping is Booming
Poultry are popular.
Hardly a week seems to go by without a magazine or newspaper carrying an article about another celebrity's new-found love of keeping poultry.
Not since the heady days of the 1850s, when 'hen fever' was at its height and people vied with each other to purchases new breeds of poultry for enormous sums of money, have our feathery friends been so in demand.
For those people who had been quietly keeping poultry for many years, it initially came as something of a shock to discover more and more people deciding that they wished to add poultry keeping into their lives.
After all, prior to all this recent interest, they had been classed as the add ones out! One of the reasons for this rise in popularity stems from the fact that people have realized that they need to become more curious as to how their food is produced.
Added to this is the growing awareness of the large distances most food has traveled to reach our plates.
It is estimated that 23% of our carbon footprint is taken up in food miles.
Eating eggs, meat and vegetables from your garden or allotment, not only reduce your carbon footprints, but also adds to a healthy way of life and provides an enjoyable pastime the whole family can get involved in.
The rescue of battery hens from cages, allowing them to live out the rest of their productive lives cage-free, is perhaps one of the fastest-growing ways that people are being introduced to the pleasure of having eggs from your own hens.
With their missing feathers and trimmed beaks they look a far cry from the fancy show birds.
Yet once they have regrown their feathers and are living happily in your garden, you will discover that as well as laying eggs, they also arrive fully equipped with a personality.
Although at first you may become involved in poultry trough keeping a few laying hens, sooner or later the chances are that you will visit somewhere that has other, more exotic-looking breeds of poultry and be tempted to enlarge your flock.
Not all breeds are suitable for novices.
If you already keep laying hens you can hardly be classed as a novice, but some breeds may have a temperament trait that you are unaware of; or maybe their care will consume more time than you can afford if you have a busy lifestyle.
Hardly a week seems to go by without a magazine or newspaper carrying an article about another celebrity's new-found love of keeping poultry.
Not since the heady days of the 1850s, when 'hen fever' was at its height and people vied with each other to purchases new breeds of poultry for enormous sums of money, have our feathery friends been so in demand.
For those people who had been quietly keeping poultry for many years, it initially came as something of a shock to discover more and more people deciding that they wished to add poultry keeping into their lives.
After all, prior to all this recent interest, they had been classed as the add ones out! One of the reasons for this rise in popularity stems from the fact that people have realized that they need to become more curious as to how their food is produced.
Added to this is the growing awareness of the large distances most food has traveled to reach our plates.
It is estimated that 23% of our carbon footprint is taken up in food miles.
Eating eggs, meat and vegetables from your garden or allotment, not only reduce your carbon footprints, but also adds to a healthy way of life and provides an enjoyable pastime the whole family can get involved in.
The rescue of battery hens from cages, allowing them to live out the rest of their productive lives cage-free, is perhaps one of the fastest-growing ways that people are being introduced to the pleasure of having eggs from your own hens.
With their missing feathers and trimmed beaks they look a far cry from the fancy show birds.
Yet once they have regrown their feathers and are living happily in your garden, you will discover that as well as laying eggs, they also arrive fully equipped with a personality.
Although at first you may become involved in poultry trough keeping a few laying hens, sooner or later the chances are that you will visit somewhere that has other, more exotic-looking breeds of poultry and be tempted to enlarge your flock.
Not all breeds are suitable for novices.
If you already keep laying hens you can hardly be classed as a novice, but some breeds may have a temperament trait that you are unaware of; or maybe their care will consume more time than you can afford if you have a busy lifestyle.