2021, January
Last year we took on a task. We started hatching to breed our Marsh Daisies (MD for shorter) back up to standard. We marked our hatchings, tagged our chickens, we had a good number of birds and very good specimens matching the specifications of the breed. We also had a few impurities after the last two years of mixing some of the birds to improve egg production. However we always selected pure brown MD cockerels and hens for hatching eggs.
Marsh Daisies’ eggs are smaller than average chicken’s eggs. They are also more turgid, orange, and flavoursome. People refer to the MD as a game bird style. The meat is definitively tougher and red. You must know how to cook game to enjoy it. It releases oil -not lard- when cooking, which makes it a very good choice for soups.
After all that breeding, my hatching note book was mistaken with useless paper to start fires. I lost some information about characteristics that link to the purity, and that can only be seen in chicks. But I still had some good birds. We can put things right. Right? Wrong!! Later in the year we had a visit. Mr Fox had been lurking. We kind of knew it. We saw the signs of him visiting. We did not anticipate that he was just preparing the attack, not just trying and failing.
Making honour to his fame, the fox fooled us and eighteen birds were left in a macabre view of the beautiful orchard. A few birds were also taken away leaving behind no more than some feathers. The laying box wide opened, a few eggs left orphan. We still can’t figure out how it happened and we didn’t even realised. The fence was lifted and the birds dragged under. The ever loitering neighbours must have notice it, the fox left through their field carrying various birds probably in more than one trip. Maybe it happened in the night, the mess left behind was sore. Our hard work left secretly over the hedge, leaving feathers here and there adding to the pain.
As in a frenzy I picked all the eggs I could find intact, and put them in the incubator. These were not from the breeding group, but we need eggs and meat anyway. Seven little chicks came up. Two pure brown, one black mix with whatever that is, the rest mixture of wheaten and brown MD. Not a great recovery. Some old hens are still around and two young cockerels. We might be alright. This year, we start again.
There are two groups of birds in the farm at the moment, the MD are not producing many eggs. Some of my girls are as old as four years. The rest should be laying soon. We are separating the hens to collect and mark eggs selected for breeding. MDs really are beautiful birds. Hope they have passed some genes. Looking forward to new birds later on in the year. We shall keep you posted.
Kestle Alpacas 