Keeping Chickens

Looking After Chickens Whilst On Holiday

We faced and passed our first, ‘who’s going to look after the chickens whilst we’re away?’ dilemma…

We wanted to go away for a few days to Worth Matravers (see below) before our eldest started school on the 9th September; our veggie keeping neigbours stepped up to the scratch perfectly!

We gave them a brief walk-through of our chicken keeping procedures, showed them the chicken feed, where we keep the straw etc and asked them to open the chicken coop door as early as possible in the morning, and close it just after dusk.

With just the promise of being able to keep any of the eggs that our chickens laid whilst we went away, our neighbours did superbly. It turns out that they ‘grew up’ with chickens and so rather liked the idea.

We came back to four eggs on the side of the kitchen work surface and found that our chickens had even been cleaned out (their nest was lined with ‘The Times’ instead of the ‘Daily Mail’, so it was defintely not our doing!) over the four nights and five days we galavanted around the Dorset countryside.

Our neighbours told us that on some days they’d ‘had’ three eggs. Two in the morning and one in the afternoon – so it looks like all our chickens are now ‘laying’.

We stayed in a cottage in Worth Matravers, which is a lovely village on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. Worth Matravers is a idyllic spot. A place to unwind and relax. A sleeply hamlet, tiny roads, picture postcard cottages, pub, tea room, post office and a village pond… that was perfect for testing Toby’s hovercraft on!

Square And Compass Worth Matravers

The local pub – The Square & Compass was a joy if you like your real ale and seeing a pub ‘how they used to be’.

The beer was served through a serving hatch that led directly onto the ‘tap room’.

I’ve been a CAMRA member for years, so the pub was my idea of heaven! It’s well worth visiting if you’re ever in the area. 

The Square And Compass have a fine selection of beers, ales, ciders, meads and other ‘liquid’ refreshments. But don’t go expecting culinary delights at the Square And Compass though. A pastie / pickled egg, or bag of crisps is about all that’s on offer food wise.

They even keep chickens and various other poultry in their pub garden. We counted eight hens and two cockerels. One of the cockerels was a little ‘ropey’, we wondered who he’d been fighting with until we went to the pub’s rear garden… My goodness there was a monster of a cockerel in there with his brood!

Our kids unfortunately got a telling off from a rather zealous member of the bar staff – she was firmly put in place by my wife’s mother who gave her ‘both barrels’.

“Yes they are being gentle, they’ve got chickens of their own. But could I ask you why you keep chickens in a pub garden, if you don’t ‘want’ the children who are visiting the pub to stroke them…?’

Square And Compass Chickens

Which I suppose does make you wonder.

The kids weren’t actually doing anything to the chickens, the chickens kept coming up to them and stealing their crisps…

It must be hard work if you have to go out and tell every parent off for ‘letting’ the pub’s chickens play with the kids.

My eldest then told her that they weren’t as nice as ‘his chickens’… So that told her! Perhaps she was having a ‘bad day’ in sleepy Worth Matravers and couldn’t tell that our kids were ‘expert’ chicken keepers… Ahemm!

I think the Square & Compass’ staff would be better off calming down, keeping the chickens in their run or moving the chickens out of the public gardens. Finally get rid of them altogether if it causes the bar staff that much stress – it is after all supposed to be a ‘public’ beer garden, it shouldn’t be a surprise that people bring their kids with them to visit a pub!

In the above picture you can hopefully just make out (on the right) the side of their chicken run, which was a home made affair, from a old shed and what looks like to be 2 x 2 banged together to give them a chicken run attached.

Not that they kept the chickens in their chicken run – as mentioned above, the chickens had free range all over the pub and could accost any unsuspecting child they liked for crisps and other treats!

I thought we’d managed to snap a few photos of the pub garden chickens, but unfortunately all are a bit blurred.

Also in the picture you can see the ‘drive’ that led to our cottage, so we really had a ‘long’ 50 metre walk to the pub – oh my calves ached I can tell you!

So it’s good to be back, the chickens look like they’re all laying eggs now and our eldest is getting ready to start school on Tuesday.

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