Chicken Coop Sign

This summer my chicken coop has undergone a well needed revamp. 

Our new hens are a flighty breed and were flying out of our make-shift, chicken wire and a few bamboo sticks run, which was in desperate need of attention.

Instead of the obligatory chicken wire we have gone for tall wooden posts to keep them at the back of the garden and a gate!!! (which I am particularly pleased about as now the children can collect eggs and I dont need to clamber over the old wire that was there.)
Inspired by there new abode I decided to make a little sign and threaded it with wire and added a few beads.

Print Block Eggs.......Gardeners Friend

Indian Print block cane toppers, its been a bit of time in the making, but I've finally finished them and got some photographs to show you how they turned out after two firings.


I thought as they were the same size as regular eggs it made sense to package them in egg boxes.



Here is how they look fitted onto the canes, they are pictured supporting three tomato plants.



Here is a close up view of the Indian print marks. I made them initially from handmoulding an egg form then printing onto the clay with the Indian print blocks.(see my original post back at Easter) I then created a plaster slip mould with these eggs and created more of them through casting them with clay slip.





This is what they looked like a little while after releasing from the slip mould.
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For more information and to see these in my shop, please go to my Folksy shop



Chickens and eggs and more chickens.................

Back in March 2011 I approached a local battery hen farmer and managed to talk him into letting me buy a few of his barn hens. I've been keeping hens now for about eight years and have been converted from the lovely large pure breed chickens to well,..... the scrawny, balding and anaemic varieties also known as the ex-battery hens. I bought three about four years ago and only have one left now and she has been a lovely little red hen and has laid lots of eggs for us over that time, but now she is pretty much in retirement and only lays a few eggs a year.
So here are the new hens straight from the barn and re-homed with me in March 2011......



And here is the OAP.






And again.

Our old Seven year old Light Sussex also an OAP now nesting in the hen house.

This is how they look now.
Two of the battery hens from March 2011 looking alot brighter and stronger and laying lovely eggs every day!