Wealden Times | WT216 | February 2020 | Interiors supplement inside

Jane Howard’s
Fables from
the Farm
Missing her feathered friends, Jane
restocks her flock with rare breeds
With the evenings beginning
to draw out and the first
crocuses poking through
it’s just about possible to imagine
that spring is round the corner. And
at Coopers Farm that means only
one thing: the arrival of abundant
and assorted new life. And after all
these years that still fills me with
excitement and anticipation.
Malcolm the sheep scan man will be
here any day. The rams went in with the
ewes in late October and now it’s time to
find out how successful those romantic
liaisons were. To scan them, the sheep
pass along a corridor similar to a Heath
Robinson contraption that looks a bit
like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. With
Malcolm at the controls, perched on
an old Toyota car seat, the ewes file
alongside him and are scanned to see if
they’re carrying one, two or three lambs.
As each is recorded we spray them
with marker paint on the shoulder
for singles, on their tail for twins
Phil the cockerel and
his very rare Brown
Sussex hens
and across the rump for triplets. And
then finally – ta-da! – Malcolm gives
us the total score for the number of
lambs we can expect. Hopefully about
150 with not too many ‘empties’.
And at last the hens have decided
to get in on the act, too. I’ve had hens
ever since we came to the farm and
love to see them wandering around the
farmyard. Sadly, however, a few months
ago they wandered just a bit too far
from said farmyard and the inevitable
happened. I swore I wouldn’t get any
more, but then after a few egg-free
months I succumbed.
Not for me cheap
brown hybrid hens that
happily lay an egg every
day – hell no – I have a
real weakness for the rare
and the beautiful when it
comes to feathers. So, back
in the summer, I acquired
a cockerel and five young
pullets (the term used
for hens before they produce an egg)
of the old-fashioned Sussex breed.
These come in many shades, all with
black neck and tail feathers and most
commonly available in Light (think
white), Buff (heavenly caramel) or
Speckled (dark brown with what looks
like a smattering of snow) variations,
but we’ve gone really off-piste and opted
for the extremely rare Brown Sussex.
But here’s an interesting aside, there
is apparently an even rarer, possibly
even extinct, one. The Coronation
Sussex chicken (I’m not making this
up) was created for the coronation of
Edward VIII – an event which as we
know thanks to Mrs Simpson never
took place. It had the same white body
“These posh hens
found the late
autumn and early
winter of 2019
far too wet and
cold to lay eggs”
as the Light, but with lavender instead
of black neck and tail feathers and a
red comb it was supposed to resemble
the Union Jack. They haven’t been
seen for many years now but wouldn’t
it be wonderful to discover there
still were some scratching around.
Anyway, back to my quite but not
completely rare Brown ones. Purchased
at about 10 weeks old, they were not
expected to ‘come into lay’ until about
20 weeks which would have taken us to
November. Trouble is, these posh hens,
unlike the far more obliging brown
hybrid ones, found the
late autumn and early
winter of 2019 far too
wet and cold to lay
eggs – which might go
some way to explaining
their rarity. But bang on
the button, as soon as
we got past the winter
solstice in late December
and the evenings began
to draw out – bingo we had an egg!
Like buses they’re now coming fast
and furious and will continue to do
so until – unlike those reliable hybrids
who’ve have it bred out of them – they
go broody and stop laying. But then
again a few chicks around the place
at Easter is always a welcome sight.
Jane will be teaching a half-day
course on an introduction to bee
keeping at the wonderful Curious
House in Stonegate on Thursday
7 February, curioushouse.net.
Follow Jane Howard – and the farm – on
Instagram @coopersfarm
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