Hooray!! The poultry have finally worked out what to do with their cabbages!!! It is safe to say that the woodchip is now fairly littered with bits of shredded greens: a lot has been eaten, it’s just in keeping with their hay-eating four-legged friends over in 4-acre, wastage is common!! Nonetheless, fun is being had and we are sure that the addition of natural vegetables to their diet will, once again, translate into bright yellow egg yolks!! Maybe!! It is just over five weeks until the end of the current lockdown (Feb 28th) BUT we should not assume that it will be automatically lifted then. Cases of Avian flu in domestic birds continue to arise: there have been two in Lincolnshire (both poultry farms, the most recent on 16th of this month) and two more in backyard flocks in Yorkshire and Wales. In addition there have been 16 cases of the virus being found in wild birds, the latest, worryingly, in a buzzard in Somerset.
Whilst we are very keen to see our birds roaming around the smallholding again, we are now in a ‘comfortable’ routine with our birds being inside. The extended run has helped to make it feel less of a hardship for them: seeing them getting a bit of sun on their backs has been great for a start.
For other poultry keepers, the hardships are much greater with breeding programmes on hold, rare breeds potentially under threat, loss of income, welfare issues etc all concerns. It is quite likely that winter lockdowns will become a regular occurrence and we do wonder what this might do to the poultry industry as a whole and backyard keepers in particular!!