Faverolles Archives

Waiting List

Chicken Breeds, Chickenguard, Equipment, Faverolles, General Chit Chat, Incubation, Latest News, Swedish Flower Hen / By HHens / 6th October 2024 / Chickenguard, Green Frog Designs, Henlays Roost, Waiting List

Waiting List Information

Our waiting list is a Brevo list whereby we can send an email to all our waiting list subscribers who would like to know as soon as we have some chickens for sale. You can find the waiting list option on our contact form here

HOT NEWS

We have plenty of stock at the moment of all ages so the waiting list is not needed. Please contact us if you wish to purchase hens via our contact form or call us on 01244-/646/026

WE HAVE BEEN INCUBATING IN 2024 SINCE APRIL AND WE HAVE SOME STOCK READY TO GO

Wrapped up chicken — A chicken is the gift that keeps on giving

Avian Influenza

Many years of lockdowns due to Avian Influenza has meant that a growing number of breeders will keep their stock very low again over the 2024/2025 winter period. Feed prices have sky-rocketed, therefore both events will take their toll on general chicken supply. In response to the almost weekly rising price of feed, many poultry breeders are cutting their losses and reducing their breeding flocks. Demand is brisk but mainly for point of lay birds which obviously take some time to grow.

This year 2024

So far in 2024 we have been getting NO deliveries of Black Rocks from the Muirfield Layers hatchery in Scotland. We also cannot supply a Brown Rock which is a Rhode Island Red over Light Sussex resulting in a brown chicken with a black tail. We are hatching as fast as our incubators allow so there is usually something we can offer you. Give us a call on O1244646O26 to find out what is available or to ask any questions.

How old are chickens when we sell them?

Chicks are sold whenever people want them. Unsexed chicks are available from day old. (There is a risk that they could be cockerels so please bear that in mind). We can determine the sex of our chicks at 6-8 weeks old and we offer a hen guarantee with those. Any that turn out to be boys will be swapped in line with our guarantee. We don’t swap boys when we have specifically sold them as unsexed. If you are looking for hens (albeit rather cute youngsters) then take a look at our latest stock post. We update our availability here on our blog page. We will be having Swedish Flower Hens, and Salmon Faverolles. Hyline Brown hybrids will be available at some stage during year. We also have “guest” hatchings of breeds such as Cream Legbar, or Marans from time to time.

Essential things to do while you are waiting

Research the Care Requirements by joining our Instant Access Online Course

While you are on our waiting list, you may wish to research some good chicken husbandry minimum requirements. Chickens don’t require much but they do require the correct care to enable them to lay well and remain healthy. Get a jump start in your chicken knowledge by looking into doing our online Chicken Keeping Course. The course can also make you realise that perhaps chicken keeping is not for you once you have more knowledge on the subject. This is a two edged sword because if your heart isn’t in it, you will have wasted money on setting yourself up to no avail if you decide at a later date that it doesn’t fit into your lifestyle. Either way it is money well spent.

Day Old and Young Chick Care Research

If you are looking for day old chicks or young chicks then it is very wise (essential) to consult our blog article on the care needs of these more delicate creatures. We will be asking for proof of your preparedness. It you don’t get the conditions right to look after young chicks, they will die. We have another course running on incubating and rearing chicks if you want to start from scratch.

Horror Stories

It is coming to our attention that some people are of the opinion that they can just dump chickens in the garden and they will stroll around popping out some eggs every day. Chickens require housing for safety and also some weather protection. We have been hearing of people feeding them on old bread and left-over takeaway rubbish. Their welfare needs to be high priority so this is quite shocking. Chickens need to be fed well with a diet that is properly formulated and best suited for avian digestive systems. They are not feathery dustbins. Feeding them household scraps is not legally allowed and is certainly not going to give them a diet which will allow them to be their most productive or healthy. Based on the saying rubbish in, rubbish out; with hens it is definitely rubbish in, nothing out.

Attend to Foxproofing as high priority

Most important is how to avoid your new hens from becoming a convenient take-away snack for a hungry fox or badger. Check out our chicken foxproofing post for tips to safeguard your chickens

Avian Influenza Current Information

We have a blog page devoted to the current regulations relating to Avian Influenza which had raised its head again in the winters of 2020/2023 in the UK. Make sure you are up to date with what you MUST do to comply with the current laws. There are unlimited fines and probably imprisonment for those not heeding the requirements.

How to get notified of new stock

Please use our Contact page to be added to our waiting list. Tick the waiting list option along with the “opt-in” to give us permission to contact you. Our mailing lists, which are infrequent, have an easy unsubscribe link to unsubscribe at any time. We do not wish to annoy you by emailing you unnecessarily. Please know that we take your privacy very seriously and will not spam you without permission. As we say, spam is for fritters and we hate fritters.

Update your Chicken Coop equipment

We are now stocking fabulous coops called Henlays Roost which are easy to clean and are easy to manage from a Red Mite eradication perspective. If you need to have a lie-in in the morning instead of living in “chicken-time” then invest in a Chickenguard. This will let your chickens out at a time of your choosing so you don’t have to rise with the lark at stupid o’clock. It will also shut them away safely at night thus rushing back to close your coop is now a thing of the past. We now have Chickenguard for sale on our web shop. Nestera Coops (previously Green Frog Designs) have approached us and we are happy to be providing these coops also in the very near future.

Waiting List Read More »

Latest Stock

Chicken Breeds, Copper Black Marans, Cream Legbar, Dayold chicks, Faverolles, Hybrids, Lavender Leghorn, Opal Legbars, Popular, Poultry For Sale, Silkies / By HHens / 4th January 2025 / chickens for sale, current availability

Latest Stock For Sale

and Breaking News

Latest stock page so you can see at a glance what we have going on and what is the latest chicken availability for sale.

Latest Chicken availability as at 5th January 2025

Our breeding stock have just just finished their moult and the hens are beginning their rest period. We have some hens at close to point of lay available now. Our plan is to get some dayold Hyline Browns in during February. These should be ready to lay late Autumn which will give eggs over the winter. Winter eggs are only available in new hens. Hens that have been through a moult will probably not lay over winter. We have some beautiful Swedish Flower Hens now and a few Salmon Faverolles left from our 2024 hatchings. Faverolles are not yet laying and the Swedish are due to start laying in the next few weeks.

New Breeds Available

We are planning two new breeds for 2025. Lavender Leghorns which will lay a white eggs and Opal Legbars. I have no idea what colour the Legbars are going to lay. I am hoping for blue, but who knows.

Hatching Eggs – Not Available now Till 2025

We don’t have hatching eggs available now till Spring 2025. We should be having Salmon Faverolles, Swedish Flower chickens, Opal Legbar, Lavender Leghorn and USA Silkies.

Enquiries – please use Our Contact Form

You can ask us questions using our contact form. We also produce a newsletter when we have stock available or better yet – actual news!! We don’t email very often so we won’t be filling your mailbox with weekly spam.

Latest stock Available Listed below. Price rises with age each Monday

Cockerels – All £15 each (Swedish Flower) – stunning, and Silkie
Faverolles – nearing point of lay £45 each
Black Rock ® – Delivery awaited
Brown Rock ® – Deliveries at intervals during the year – Awaiting a delivery
Cream Legbar – available from Summer 2025
Swedish Flower hens – point of lay or very close £45
Marsh Daisies – available summer 2025
Ixworth – Not currently available
Norfolk Grey – available summer 2025
Opal Legbar – available summer 2025
USA Silkies – a trio available (1 cockerel and 2 hens) £105 for the trio.
Hy-line Brown – available in chick form mid March 2025
Lavender Leghorn – available summer 2025

Breaking News!!!!

Exciting development. Our chicken keeping and incubation courses are now ONLINE. See our Poultry Courses Page for details so you can START ONE TODAY.

Easy to follow

We are hoping that people will find the easy-to-follow bite size chunks an enjoyable experience. It is crammed with masses of information you should know about keeping chickens. It will take you on a deep dive into the fascinating world of this wonderful creature. We guarantee that you will therefore learn things that will make you think about chickens in a totally new light.

Getting it right

It will help you to make good equipment choices, and get your husbandry right. Spotting illness quickly is a biggie because unless you are able to spot sickness, it can rapidly get way out of hand. A slow or wrong diagnosis can then be catastrophic for the chicken.

Easing the burden

Getting the right coop for example will make the cleaning out of your chickens a 10 minute job rather than a real thankless task. We help you get it right, first time. This saves you money and time and who doesn’t need some of that?

Benefits

Chickens are enjoyable however making poor choices can take the shine off it very quickly.

Book Your online course here £49

We are now able to offer Chickenguards for your coops

Having chickens is great but getting up early in the morning however to let them out especially in Summer is not so great.

Fitting a chickenguard on your coop means you can have that lie-in or even just get up at normal time rather than chicken time.

Chickenguards will allow you to go out of an evening and not have to get back at dusk to shut your chooks away. Chickenguard will do it all for you. Your chickens will not demand that you become party poopers.

Battery powered with 4 AA batteries which last from 6 to 12 months.

Visit our shop page for more info

We are now stocking Henlays Roost chicken coops.

Perfectly designed coops that are manufactured from 12mm thick recycled plastic sheets. That is thicker than most other plastic coops.

Built with both chicken welfare and human welfare in mind because humans matter too. They look and feel solid.

No more back breaking stooping or crouching to clean out. Contortionism is also not required. Just open the roofline, lift the well spaced perches out and hey presto, the entire coop area is at the mercy of your shovel and scraper.

Red mite will be spotted in double quick time so therefore you can treat if necessary as they have no where to hide.

Visit our shop page for details

Latest Stock Read More »

Chicks for Easter is Upon Us

Black Rock®, Blacktail, Dayold chicks, Faverolles, Hybrids, Latest News, Poultry For Sale, Swedish Flower Hen / By HHens / 13th March 2024 / Incubation

Easter Chicks

Chicks for Easter are very popular with young families. Schools are very keen to uphold the typical imagery of Easter. This excitement passes to parents who keep the traditional events of Easter going. Of course, Easter is an original religious celebration which is very important to those of faith.

In nature, whenever you think of Easter, it is normal to also think of it as a Spring festival. Spring heralds new beginnings when birds begin nesting and gardens wake up after the long Winter’s slumber. Snowdrops, Daffodils and Crocuses poke their heads through the cold soil to give bees and other insects their first feasts of the year.

The animals often thought of as Easter icons are baby rabbits, and baby chicks. Both animals feature heavily on Easter cards because they are so cute and fluffy. Chocolate Easter eggs also appear on cards but come a close second. Adding pictures of chicks on almost every product is common around this time of year

Chicken breeders often begin to incubate chicken eggs in Spring. Easter is the date in the calendar when hatching starts in earnest. Fertility and egg numbers increase as the daylight hours become longer. This is good news for us as we can then start to think about building up our stock of chickens for sale. Raising baby chickens is definitely one of the nicest things about what we do. It is very much a guilty pleasure handling as many as possible.

Our pure breeds are Swedish Flower Hens, Salmon Faverolles, and USA Silkies. We also take delivery of official Black Rock, & Brown Rock at intervals during the year. Hy-line Browns are also available during the year. Hy-lines lay as many eggs as the better known Warrens or Lohmann Browns but they lay a darker egg.

Pitfalls of chicks to be aware of

If you are wanting to buy chicks for Easter then we will have plenty by then. We will want to know that you have done your research, so that they will be well looked after. If you want to check out our blog page on how to care for chicks, this will stand you in good stead. Baby chicks have specific care needs otherwise they can die. We want to avoid that at all costs.

Male or Female chickens – that is the question?

Our pure breed chicks are not sexed at the fluffy stage so there is a potential high risk of boys. Boys will turn into loud cockerels and are difficult to re-home if you cannot keep them.

Need a Guarantee of Hens?

How early can you sex a chicken? It depends on the breed. Some breeds are easy at 3 weeks, whereas some are impossible until some weeks later. We don’t offer a return on chicks that we sell as unsexed. If you want a hen guarantee, then you will need to wait until the chicks are roughly 6-8 weeks old before purchasing. This means they are beyond the fluffy stage but they still look quite cute because they are diddy versions of the older birds. We could sell male chicks like some other breeders do and promise that we have sold hens, but it is not our way. Honesty is important and our customers appreciate that.

Guaranteed Hens at Day Old

Hybrid chicks like our Hy-line Browns, Black Rock and Brown Rock are hatchery sexed. We offer a female guarantee with those at day-old.

Eggs and Science

As a bit of excitement for parents with children. Check out this website to have fun with eggs.

Chicks for Easter is Upon Us Read More »

Salmon Faverolles

Chicken Breeds, Faverolles, Poultry For Sale / By HHens / 28th February 2023

The Salmon Faverolles Chicken is one of our favourites

The Salmon Faverolles is quite an unusual chicken. They have a lot of facial fluff (a muff and a beard to be precise) making their little choochy faces look so sweet. We keep the large fowl version but there is also a bantam variety which is a quarter of the size. They also come in a non-standard colour of Blue Salmon that is very hard to source as it’s not as popular as the Salmon. If ever we got tired of breeding chickens, then we would find it very difficult to stop keeping the Faverolles.

The Faverolles name is always prone to confusion. It is pronounced Fav-er-ol, but always spelled Faverolles. We do find that many people use the following spellings for this wonderful chicken. Favorell, Faverell, Favourel, Faverels and many other variations of the name. All of which are incorrect. If you visit a breeder who misspells the name, then they are unlikely to know a good breed standard from a bad one. We recommend you avoid these as there are unfortunately a lot of poor quality birds around.

Salmon Faverolles Breed Description

The Faverolles is originally a French chicken from the vicinity of the towns of Houdan and Faverolles in north-central France. This is how the breed got its name. A Faverolles chicken is always written in the plural – never singular – and pronounced Fav-er-ol as it’s French you know!! Cochins, Houdans and Dorkings were used in its chicken breeding ancestry. The Faverolles became one of the most important egg-producing utility fowl in the north-central region of France.

Faverolles reached the UK in 1886, but then the British developed it further to meet British hen breeder tastes. British breeders developed a slightly different type with tail feathers that were longer and raised higher than their German and French Cousins. This new type Faverolles chicken therefore went on to become the accepted exhibition standard in the UK. German and French poultry fanciers work to a slightly different standard as per their own tastes.

They are a dual purpose breed because they are good for both meat and eggs.

One of the things that makes a Faverolles stand out is the muff and beard and the fact that they have a fifth toe that curiously points up in the air, whereas most chickens have four toes. This breed has feathery legs and feet so therefore is not suitable for living on continually squishy muddy ground.

Other Colour Variations

We have Faverolles in Salmon, Blue Salmon and some in mottled black and white. There are a number of dedicated UK breeders who are trying to breed the Faverolles in different colours. Apparently it used to have a few colour variations in its history but they have been lost over time as they became less popular. A number of project colours in the pipeline with these breeders, is Ermine, Blue and Black. Ermine is a similar colour to a Light Sussex which is also known as a columbian pattern. This translates to black around the neck hackles and a black tip to the tail. The rest of the body being white.

Male Salmon Faverolles are ideally a dark mahogany colour over the back of the wings. The front is black. Their beard and muff should be as dark as possible or black. The male Blue Salmon Faverolles has a dark back and blue front. Both Salmon and blue Salmon have the straw coloured neck hackles with a very small thumbprint by the ear or preferably none at all. It is easy to determine the sex at 2-4 weeks of age because the boys start to show dark feathers early on. The Blue Salmon is not yet recognised as an official colour by the breed club as its still quite new.

Faverolles hens love to over preen the beards and saddle of cockerels so the males are often seen with missing or broken feathers in these areas.

Breed Temperament

They are a very inquisitive and chatty bird and always on the lookout for when the treats are handed out. Despite being a large bird, they have quite a timid nature so consequently, can get bullied if they are in with chickens that have more attitude. Males are beautiful and calm so consequently shredded wellies are a very rare hazard.