Monthly Archives: November 2005

As a doctor I am often asked, “do smallholders ever suffer from an inferiority complex?” Generally the answer is no. I have found during my long medical career that statistically, smallholders are less likely than most other groups to suffer from the feelings of inferiority or inadequacy. However, there are of course “the exceptions which…

“Dear Doctor, is a smallholding contagious?” writes a worried reader. I am often asked this question and the answer is “no”, however recent medical research suggests that the condition could be genetic. The symptoms often manifest themselves in later rather than earlier life and can cause considerable stress to the sufferers family even though the…

As I’ve mentioned in previous Biddy stories we’ve never kept a cockerel, in order to keep the Biddies happy we buy in fertile eggs for them to hatch. One very late spring “Ami” went broody, so we hunted around and bought her a mixed setting of Silkie eggs, hoping this would result in a brood…

We’ve never kept a cockerel, but almost all of our Biddies are Silkies (a breed notorious for going broody) and therefore we regularly buy-in eggs to hatch. One summer we bought white Silkie eggs resulting in a brood of chicks in January the following year; and as is usual with Silkies, continue laying until they…

Do any of you ever wonder how on earth you came to keep the type of stock you do? Most of us grew up in an era when everyone’s family had at the very least a few hens in the back garden, or even a pig. Now I imagine those of you who have smallholdings…