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Last week was the Gosford Poultry Fair which we all trooped off to, hoping to sell the Barnvelder birds we had bought as day old chicks at the last fair. Two of them had turned out to be boys and one of the boys wanted the world to know about it! All the time. We took five of the six to the fair, after reading up on these birds I decided I wanted to keep one of the girls. While we were packing them up in the guinea pig cage (just go with it. . . ) the gorgeous wee Pekin hen I had hatched from Granda’s eggs last year started to CROW. He had never done it before and had he started the next day I would have had the trouble of having to get rid of him too. . . All in all we took seven birds with us.
Now, visualise this. We are directed to a space in the big field about fifteen minutes after the fair had begun. We parked up. We opened the boot. We then had about 20 people all over us wanting to know if we would take a fiver for ALL the birds. We hadn’t time to blink with surprise. One of the guys told me he had just bought a pile of Barnvelders from a car two or three up the row for 15 euros each and he would give me the same for my three girls and take the boys off my hands too . . . Euros? Pounds? Currency Convertor to the ready. I really didn’t like the idea of letting them go so quickly – it felt like we were being cheated out of the fun of wheeling and dealing, but I let them go with him anyway. So much for us having a rare breed at this fair – the guy selling the chicks at the last fair must have had hundreds of them!
We had the rest of the day to sell the Pekin and one of Granda’s Speckeldy hybrids. David and I had decided we would let them go for a fiver each, but near the end of the fair we got £8 for the Pekin and a fiver for the Speckeldy - not bad going for birds we secretly thought we would have to give away!
While Iain took the dog for a walk I sat under the cover of the boot lid and chatted away to people as they passed by. One couple had a bag with two Rhode Island Reds in it and admitted to having a basic set up, no food yet, and to these being their first birds! David took them down the row of cars to find a cheapy hybrid to keep their two girls company. I also chatted to another woman who kinda fancied keeping chooks, but had no room, although she could use her mum’s yard . .. but didn’t like the idea of having to close them in at night. . . she then looked at the boxes of eggs I had for sale and told me in no uncertain terms that they looked “very small and pale” to her. Egscuse me? Small and pale? From someone who didn’t know one end of a chicken from another? How RUDE! Needless to say I developed an interest in the next people and totally blanked her.
Well, over the past week I have been thinking about her on and off as our girls have really got back into the stride of laying. We now have eight eggs a day from ten hens, at least one of which simply isn’t old enough to be laying yet. Three days in a row we have had a large egg (I think from Buffy) and today’s was massive. From what I remember from my days on the Omlet forum, anything over 100gms is considered large and this one weighed in at 103gms! Even David crossed his eyes and said “Ouch!” at that one.
Starting at the left, this is a fairly small egg, most of ours are as large as the middle one. Look how much bigger the right hand one is!
Small and pale? Pffffft!