Hello all. Newbie from Nottinghamshire

[valeriebutterley]

Please don't clip their wings, if you do they simply cannot take off out of danger from the fox for instance should it show up.
I think it is a dreadful thing to do, and would never under any circumstances consider doing it.
I sold a bantam once to a woman who returned it saying it would not settle. I was horrified to see she has clipped its wing during the half day she had had it, I'm not surprised it did not settle with her. Funny woman.

 

[valeriebutterley]

Further to my previous, chicks love their surroundings, their mates, and usually their doting humums, they have no wish to fly away from it all. That they do is a total myth. Wings intact!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Marigold]

Au contraire Marigold- I learned from the experts on the forum!!

Yes, me too, like all of us when we needed help - but usually after some of my pretty awful experiences and mistakes. I started keeping chickens in the 1970s, long before the internet was invented, because our elder daughter wore me down by crying herself to sleep every night for weeks on end because her friend had chickens with chicks and she just HAD to have some as well. Of course I wanted chickens as well, but in those days I couldn't even find any suitable books for beginners, and had to make it up as I went along. Luckily for our hens, there was an old couple who lived nearby on an untidy patch of land where they kept chickens, geese, and goats - they would take the goats for a slow walk around the town, letting them eat anything green they found on the way. Not always popular with people who had very neat front gardens. She had long dangly tangled hair and my children called her 'the witch' and her husband had an eye patch and a beard, so he was 'the pirate.' She was unfailingly kind and helpful and we went over there every time something awful happened and she gave us lots of advice and told us what to do in a very straightforward way. She was extremely outspoken, and would get up in the annual Town Meeting when the Mayor was delivering his report about how the town had been getting on in the year gone by, and put him to rights on what she considered to be Council failings. Town Meetings were always well attended because everyone enjoyed Mrs Davy's contributions - everyone except the Mayor, of course.
But it is very nice to be able to pop on here any time to share a problem, like me and my strange hen Violet, a good example of how chickens can always come up with something you've never experienced before.