The chicken and the eggs
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 clubs 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’.
He also favours the Scots Dumpy—‘a great little chicken, not flighty, but, of course, they’ve got such short legs they can’t get off the ground’—and would love to see renewed interest in the handsome North Holland Blue, which was a popular dual-purpose fowl in the post-war days of necessity. ‘Natives tend to be more trouble to
