One of my regular duties is cleaning the hen house. Scraping poo off roosting bars may seem a dismal task, but honestly, the shit is it.  Along with stray feathers and bits of straw, it goes on the compost heap. Then it works a sort of horticultural alchemy with the green kitchen waste, shrub trimmings, grass clippings, shredded seaweed and some partially rotted horse manure from the other side of Lewis. Over six months or so, the concoction heats up and rots down to become among the best soil improvers on the planet. You don’t need synthetic or commercial chemical fertilisers, ever, if you regularly apply this home-made compost to the soil.

As for these hens, the faeces may be their most valuable contribution to the croft, as both of the breeds -- Buff Orpington (the orange one) and Maran -- are not especially noted for their egg production (particularly the Orpingtons, originally from Kent). Hybrids are best for that. We’ll get several certainly from the Marans (a French breed), however. Any excess will go for sale with an ‘honesty box’ on our country route, or perhaps I’ll be making regular batches of mayonnaise.


life in the hen house

They also could be useful as mothers, because we have added eight Indian Runner ducks to the croft. We'll need to cull at least a couple of drakes (those with dark heads), but should we ever start raising ducklings, the chickens will do a better job of hatching the duck eggs. Ducks are apparently horrible mothers, regularly dragging about their offspring. Indian Runners (believed to be domesticated perhaps 1,000 years ago in and around Java) are supposedly good at laying, producing potentially 200 per year. Ours are still too young, so we'll see.


ducks on the run

As an aside, I should add that both species are totally free ranging but were on the skittish side (with the ducks not coming out of their shed) this past weekend. Two young Golden Eagles were hovering overhead, soaring with little effort on strong northerlies. Not convinced they're after our domesticated birds, however.