Yesterday afternoon we bought a turf for the girls. They have just started selling turf at our local D.I.Y. store and we bought one to cut up into squares and treat the girls to some grass. We put a strip into the run and the girls were very wary at first.
Dotty was the first to investigate the grass
They all cautiously take a look
They soon decide this is good
Definitely good!
This won’t last long
We like grass
After half an hour I decided to take it out as the girls hadn’t moved from it since I put it in and I was afraid they would overfill their crops with grass.
I will put it back in this morning and let them have it for a few hours a day. They certainly love the grass.
A quick update on my search for bantams. I decided on a different approach and put “poultry farms in Amesham” into google search. This gave me eighteen farms with addresses and telephone numbers. Over the last few days I worked through the list ringing them all.
Most didn’t have any bantams, some didn’t have poultry at all, some didn’t exist any more, some simply didn’t answer and only the first one on the list gave me some hope. The farmer has a few silver and gold laced wyndotte bantams and although reluctant to let the gold ones go he agreed that we could go see them this afternoon and he may be able to sell me one of each.
It’s the gold ones that I really like, their feathers are gold edged in black and really striking. The silver ones are actually white with white feathers edged in black.
I also phoned the farm that I got my little girls from last year and she gave me two numbers to call. From one I got no reply but the other lady chatted to me for a while. She has a few blue laced Wyndotte bantams from last year but explained that I was looking for them too early. She said most breeders will be starting to hatch now and the bantams will be ready to sell in June, July or August. This is encouraging as it means that if I can’t get some now I can wait a while and try later in the year.
She also said that when integrating them into my flock it may be better to take bantams that are not too young to give them less chance of being bullied. I feel much better prepared for integration this time but I think she is right and if today the farmer has last years wyndottes and would be happy to sell them to me I will seriously consider taking them.
Once again watch this space!
Click here to see the history of my flock.
That sounds very promising and I will be watching with interest ,but most important where did you get the grass and how much?
I am excited but that’s for tomorrows post. The turf was from Homebase and is four pounds per turf. The girls are loving it.