One of the depressing things that happened last year (and frankly there were quite a few) was that most of our hens went on strike and didn’t lay any eggs all year. The only one who did was Dusty, who managed to lay about one egg a fortnight and so we were forced to buy our eggs all year.

There could have been several reasons for the dearth, one of which is that we simply didn’t find eggs that were being laid but although there may have been a few stray eggs laid under bushes I doubt we lost many that way. I think we suffered from the fact that elderly hens are just a bit hit-and-miss in terms of their willingness or ability to lay. So, when we got back from our holiday last summer, we bought two new girls, who are known as Tina (after Turner) and Irma (after Thomas). This follows on from a long tradition of naming our girls after great soul singers. (Hence Dusty (Springfield) and Martha (Reeves).)

Tina and Irma are spectacular and will find their way into this gallery at some point because they are just so utterly gorgeous it’s hard to imagine why we didn’t find our way into their breed before. In fact, we bought them not for their own great looks but for the stunning look of their eggs. They are cream legbars and have mad feather “wigs” as well as bright yellow legs. Boy are they beautiful.

It occurred to me some time ago that “growing our own” eggs gives us the freedom to choose what colour eggs we get and, I now understand more importantly, what breeds we get. You see even though I’d been keeping hens for many years, I’d always steered clear of rare breeds on the basis that we’d be vilified by farmers breeding them for taking laying hens out of breeding stock. I discovered quite by accident that breeders are actually happy to sell pullets to people like us because it maintains demand for breeds that are not truly commercially viable. The rare breeds became rare when egg manufacture became a business and these breeds simply don’t lay enough eggs in their lifetime to warrant places on egg farms. Not only that but here in the UK for some strange reason we decided that the only eggs that were suitable for sale in our supermarkets were brown ones – I think they originally started to appear as “premium” eggs and eventually the great British public decided they didn’t like white eggs at all.

So, now we have Dusty, a stunningly beautiful Blue Anderlusian, whose breed is so rare that there are fewer than 100 breeding females in the UK and are considered “critical” on the rare breeds watch list. She’s our layer of white eggs (top and bottom left hand side of image). Martha is a Maran, the classic old speckled hen, so she’s not rare and her eggs are dark brown and spotty. The two babes are the Cream Legbars, these are classified as vulnerable because there are fewer than 300 breeding females. They both lay these glorious blue eggs and the best bit is that we know which eggs come from which of the two. You’ll notice that the one in the centre of the image is a shorter, more rounded and fatter than the one bottom right. The little fat squatty ones are laid by Tina and the longer, slimmer ones by Irma. It’s a weird thing but they do all lay uniquely shaped and marked eggs.

What puzzles us is this. Neither Dusty nor Martha laid any eggs to speak of last year yet now we’ve got the chicken “pups” they seem to have encouraged the old birds to go back into lay. Honestly, I don’t really care what the reason for their revived success is, all I care about is that the balance of my world is restored because we get our home-laid, beautiful fresh eggs back.

My girls deliver the goods and, in times of abundance I can start laying some down for the frugal period next autumn when they stop laying while they moult. Yes – I discovered that it’s very easy to freeze eggs and although they can only be used for things like omelettes, scrambled eggs, quiches etc, in the bleak off period it’s wonderful to be able to bring some sunshine back onto our plates.