The Kitchen Garden

September 2004

If you've hatched chicks this season, you've probably spent the last few months agonising - will they be fine productive hens or equally fine, but surplus, cockerels?

Early diagnosis is rarely spot-on. In front of a course full of people, Hugh Barton and I confidently proclaimed a couple of young Orpingtons to be 'classic examples of pullet and cockerel'. Whoops, they were both males - absolutely charming - but in this context, useless.

Male chicks are usually larger, tailless, have vestigial wattles and bigger feet - and are cockier. But larger than whom? Larger than their peers, than their sisters? Fine if you are a breeder with a large pool of comparisons, but if you've got five chicks of different breeds ...

At twelve weeks of age, the males have pointy ends to their neck plumes and the pullets' feathers are rounded, and from then on the boys have redder crests. Folklore abounds on the most beneficial time of the year for hen-rich hatchings, the best weather and best feed; there's even a crystal on the market that one breeder I know swears by (though she had no experience of its efficaciousness over eggs). But it doesn't work for me.

So, this remains the henkeeper's thorniest problem. Do let us know if you've solved it. The Kitchen Garden is open till the end of September, but you can always e-mail: francine@jfraymond.demon.co.uk