Poultry & Waterfowl

Buff Orpington Chickens (pictured above)

Buff Orpingtons are registered as endangered by the Rare Breed Survival Trust. We have a small breeding flock producing chickens for meat and eggs. The original Orpington, the Black, was developed in England in the town of Orpington in Kent in 1886 by William Cook. They went to the US in 1890 and gained popularity very rapidly, based on their excellence as a meat bird. As the commercial broiler and roaster market developed, the Orpington lost out partly because of its white skin.

Buff Orpington Hen

Buff Orpington Chick

Crested Cream Legbar Chickens

Cream Legbars are another traditional rare breed which lay beautiful blue/green eggs. Quite a prolific layer and rarely becoming broody, it has all the qualities of a good 'pure breed' layer - hard shells, dense white, and large yolk - the egg is a generous size with a magical blue shell. The Cream Legbar lays up to 130 eggs in the first year and many birds still lay well in their third and fourth years if well managed.

It all began in 1929, at Cambridge University, when Prof. R. Punnett acquired three mongrel Chilean hens (Araucanas) which laid blue eggs, from explorer and botanist, Clarence Elliott, whose family still live in the Cotswolds.

At the start of his voyage home to England, Elliott had four birds, one of which was a cock, but unfortunately the cock suffered an early demise when roasted for dinner one stormy night by the ship's cook, who misunderstood a command from Elliott, to console the bird. It was the loss of the cock that spurred Elliott into offering the three hens for use in the genetic studies at Cambridge, which would eventually lead to creation of the blue egg laying Cream Legbar as we know it today.

Cream Legbars were first shown at the London Dairy Show in 1947 and were standardised by the Poultry Club of Great Britain in 1958.

During the last ten years, the Cream Legbar has enjoyed an astonishing increase in popularity, undoubtedly due to the now famous Old Cotswold Legbar eggs which have done so much to brighten up the shelves of our supermarkets and increase customer awareness of the value of traditional breeds.

Aylesbury Ducks

These are the classic meat duck and were originally bred just down the road from our farm.

Khaki Campbell Ducks

These are a smaller duck, ideally suited to egg production as the eggs are nearer to chicken egg size.

Chickens and Ducks

Our Chickens and Ducks are are kept with outdoor runs so that they can free range on the grass and scratch in the soil. They are also fed an organic poultry feed.

Our breeding stock of Cuckoo Marans free ranging, the lighter coloured bird on the right is the cockerel

According to Lewis Wright in the 1880's the Aylesbury ducks should be of the purest white with a bill set well up on the skull and the beak almost in a line from the top of the head to the tip (similar to the Runner) and of a delicate flesh colour . Although pure ducks exist and are thriving as a breed most of those that the general public perceives as an Aylesbury are commercial meat crosses which are frequently pictured in children's story books.

Historically they were walked from the Vale of Aylesbury to London (40 miles max). Each of the inns they stopped the night at allowed the birds to be kept in large enclosed yards and in the morning the birds were driven through a cold sticky tarry solution in a shallow ditch and then through a layer of sawdust. This made somewhat crude shoes to protect their feet for the day and the next night this was repeated with a charge of a few birds at each stop. The alternative was to try to camp on the common or 'waste' and stop the local poachers from removing a few for the pot.

The breed is thought to have evolved during the early years of the eighteenth century by selective breeding of the common duck, usually brown or grey in colour but occasionally white. Breeders were aware that the London dealers had a preference for white plumage, the feathers being popular on the continent as quilt-filling and the pale pink skin of a plucked white bird is somewhat more attractive than the yellow of coloured ducks.

Prior to 1839, the ducklings if not "walked" were transported to London by packhorse or carrier's wagon, the opening of the branch railway line from Cheddington to Aylesbury in that year providing a boost to the industry. J. K. Fowler, writing in 1850, tells us 'oftentimes in the spring, in one night, a ton weight of ducklings from six to eight weeks old are taken by rail from Aylesbury and the villages round to the metropolis'. Throughout the nineteenth century the main market for duck meat was provided by the wealthy people of London, very little of it being sold locally. Aylesbury ducks start laying eggs in early November, the two month old ducklings coming to market from February whereas the Rouen, its main competitor, began laying in February, coming to market as a six-month old bird in the last three months of the year. Peak season for Aylesburys was therefore late March and early April, the Rouen being geared for autumn and Christmas.

The number of establishments in Aylesbury began to decline after 1850 due to a number of factors, including the introduction of sanitary regulations which made duck rearing in cottages difficult. The deterioration in the quality of soil in Aylesbury following many years of duck raising has also been given as a contributory factor.

Some of our newly hatched Aylesbury ( Yellow ) and Khaki Campbell ducklings.

Cuckoo Maran Chickens

Cuckoo Marans lay dark brown eggs and are also quite large in size, so are suitable for meat production on a smallholder’s scale. There are 9 recognised colours in the French Standard: Cuckoo, Golden Cuckoo, Black, Birchen, Black Copper, Wheaton, Black-tailed Buff, White and Columbian . Black Copper is the most common of these. All have red or orange eyes and white feet. They all tend to be relatively medium sized in comparison to other breeds, the average weight of a Cockerel being around three and a half kilograms. Marans are quiet, docile, gentle birds, but they are quite active, taking well to free ranging in rough terrain and are also tough and disease-resistant. Marans lay around 150 dark brown eggs each year. They originate from France and were imported into Britain in the 1930’s.

We usually have eggs available for sale. These eggs have yolks that are yellow from their organic feed and natural outdoor diet and not from additives in the feed. They are not vaccinated or fed routine antibiotics. As a result our customers regularly comment on the better flavour of our eggs.

Some of our hens run with a cockerel so that we can incubate the eggs to replace our laying birds. Our male chicks are reared for meat and females for laying. This contrasts with commercial egg producing farms, organic / free range or other, where the male chicks hatched (approximately 50%) will be killed immediately. This is usually true of dairy farm calves too. This is a luxury of the smallholder not governed by the tight profit margins of commercial poultry farmers and fussy standards of the supermarkets. Every life has a purpose on the farm and not one fit, healthy animal, which is fit for human consumption, is wasted. They are slow growing breeds, when compared to commercial meat birds, and ours are just coming off their heat lamp when the broilers are full weight and heading for the processing plant.

And here they are, all grown up!

Campbell's have a well known history ...it was introduced in 1901 by Mrs Adelle Campbell of Uley , Gloucestershire who wanted a breed for laying white table eggs that was not broody, reluctant to fly off and reacted nearer to a fowl. It was bred from Mallard; Fawn and White Runners and Rouen with a very vague standard in order to keep the utility properties of the breed. From these a white sport was standardized as the White Campbell and a Dark Campbell was created by a Mr H R S Humphreys in Devon to enable a classic gold / silver cross mating for sex linkage. This colouration did not find favour after the second world war and declined to almost critical levels and although the white and the khaki are often seen, very few breeders keep the dark Campbell and due to the small gene pool a number throw eye stripes which are incorrect for the breed and a throwback, as are any of the colours that lay blue or green eggs ... these birds should not really be bred from as not up to the breed standard!

This breed is autosexing, from birth they have different markings which indicate the males from the females. The chicks with the dark brown stripe on the head and down the back are all female whilst the ones which look a grey colour are cockerels. The black and white ones are cuckoo maran chicks.