Our Gorgeous Girls

We have a lovely array of hens, we have some Bluebells, Copper Marans, Silver Blacks as well as a selection of different bantams in the field.

We do like to hatch chicks from our own eggs too as you never quite know exactly what you are going to get which is always quite exciting! We have in the past helped to re-home some of the ex-battery hens who otherwise would have faced slaughter.

The Guinea Fowl

We currently have 9 guinea fowl who patrol the field keeping an eye out for intruders.

They certainly let you know when an intruder enters the field!

The Ducks

We have a selection of Saxony, Cayuga, Aylesbury, Muscovy, Khaki Campbell, Indian Runner, Call Ducks and Silver Appleyard ducks.

The Call Ducks are funny little things, they are much smaller than all of the other ducks we have here and just a fraction smaller than a Mallard duck.

The ducks are great fun to watch as they certainly are characters. They do have some beautiful colours in their feathers when the sun catches them at different angles.

The Indian Runners are also rather interesting to see if you have never seen them before.

In fact it is great fun to see them all waddle up the field to get to the pond in a straight line – it is rather amusing to watch.

Sadly no-one or nothing lives forever and over time, the animals in our field change. We lost Donald, who you can read about below, in September 2022 which was a sad event. However, we do now have two other Mallard Drakes who happily resides here along with all the other ducks. One of the Mallard Drakes is another rescue story as he only has one full wing and a partial wing. We do not know what happened to him to become like that but he is called “One Wing” – which is logical (as Spock would say)!

The Rheas

The Rheas came to live with us back in February 2018. We have two females. They came to live with us to help with our Fox prevention scheme.

They are great characters, very inquisitive and they do lay extremely large eggs.

The Geese

We have one female goose, called Goosey and one gander, known as Gozzy, who are also friendly with Mr Muscovy and the female Swan who is known as Baby.

Mr Muscovy & his Family

Mr Muscovy is probably the craziest duck I have ever owned!

He really is a character. I can call him and he will waddle up to me from across the field.

He likes to have his head rubbed and his tail wags backwards and forwards just like a dog!

He is very strange – as he can often be found with the two geese and the swan!

Muscovy’s are a silent duck in the sense that they do not quack but they do make plenty of other funny noises I can assure you!

We started off with just Mr Muscovy but we felt sorry for him and so we got him a lady companion and now, as a result of this, we have about 21 Muscovy ducks in our field!

The lovely thing is – they all live in the field together and they all get along just brilliantly which is ideal.

And lastly – but not least – we are going to introduce you to the story of Donald!

Donald was a wild Mallard Drake and his amazing story is as follows.

He was brought to us as a tiny little duckling back in April 2011. He was being viciously attacked by a swan and was rescued by some passers-by who brought the tiny duckling to us to see if we could possibly help him. We took him in and to begin with he was in a cardboard box under a heat lamp in the house until one of our hens hatched 5 chicks of her own.

We waited for a couple of days and then he was put underneath the hen with the 5 chicks at night and she successfully adopted him. He really was a very special little duck and was a great character to have in the field.

Very, very sadly, as we all know, no-one lives forever and we lost this amazing little character on Sunday, 25th September 2022. We very much wanted to share these amazing pictures and the incredible story of this lovely little wild mallard drake who was given a second chance at life and he lived to make 11 years and 5 months old.