The chicken and the eggs

Lockdown has made the idea of keeping hens–and harvesting their eggs–even more appealing, but the populations of a surprising number of delightful native breeds are dwindling. Kate Green canvasses expert opinion on rewarding poultry to consider

- Kate Green canvasses

AS pandemic panic-buying hit the country this spring, the unassuming egg suddenly became under-the-counter contraband in village shops. Soon, lucky chicken owners were swapping half a dozen fresh eggs for a bag of pasta, a couple of loo rolls or last week’s COUNTRY LIFE. As lockdown set in, together with an innate reluctance to return to the office, the idea of a few hens tranquilly clucking in the background has made staying at home even more beguiling.

Peter Hayford, an octogenarian poultry farmer near Totnes, Devon, reports a glut of requests for birds or eggs to hatch in the first few weeks of lockdown. His own lifelong interest stems from shortages in the Second World War: ‘It’s all down to Hitler,’ he explains. ‘My mother hated the poultry and, on the day the war finished in Japan, she gave them to a neighbour. Unfortunately, rationing went on for another eight years.’

Mr Hayford is president of the Rare Poultry Society (RPS), a body that, essentially, looks after breeds that don’t have their own club and he would like to see more people keeping native fowl than the ubiquitous faster-maturing, commercial hybrids. He keeps some 20 different breeds and says that, if forced to choose one, it would be the Dorking—‘a lovely, traditional chicken that has a nice shape’.