Chicken Keeping Courses in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire

Chicken Keeping Training Courses

Courses Run By: Alison Sidaway
Contact by Email:
Telephone: 07904 640562
Location: Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire
Please visit our chicken keeping course page for the latest information.

Experience with chickens:

We have been keeping poultry for just over 8 years. This started initially as a backgarden hobby with a few quails and four chickens in a medium sized town garden and then over the last 4 years has expanded greatly on our beautiful 5 acre smallholding.

We still keep quail along with various pure bred chickens that we breed and sell including the rare Ixworths, Buff Orpingtons, Light Sussex and Gold Partridge Wyandottes plus a whole mixture of laying hens some of which are pure bred and some are hybrids. This offers you the chance to see a whole selection of chickens, large fowl and bantams and help you to understand their differences. We also have some ducks, turkeys and geese at certain times of the year.

I have gained so much experience over the years from starting small and then building up our much larger flock that I can relate to a complete newcomer who may just want a trio of bantams in their garden as pets but can also offer advise and guidance to someone who may want to have a larger collection of various poultry or waterfowl or indeed breed their own stock as we do.

Chicken Keeping Courses Information

I run two courses STARTING WITH POULTRY and COMPREHENSIVE POULTRY COURSE which are both outlined below.

STARTING WITH POULTRY:

Our aim is to arm you with just enough information to help you decide if hens are right for you whether you aim to just keep a trio of bantams in your back garden or want to embark on a much larger venture!

We hope you will enjoy a friendly, relaxed and informal course which covers the following topics:

Types of poultry - hybrids & pure breds, bantams & large fowl
What to look for when buying birds
How to hold a chicken
Housing - we look at the various types of housing on our small holding and discuss the pros and cons
Feeding - how much to feed and different types of food
Pests and diseases
Predators
Vets
Question and Answer session

The course runs from 10am - 12:30pm and is just £25 per adult (accompanying child £5 each). Refreshments provided. Meeting our chickens along with any chicks (depending on season) is all part of the experience after the main topics are all covered.

Starting with Poultry Course Dates for 2011

Friday 8th April
Saturday 30th April
Friday 20th May
Saturday 18th June
Sunday 3rd July

COMPREHENSIVE POULTRY COURSE:

This is for people who have started with poultry and would perhaps like to gain a bit more understanding but can also follow on from the 'Starting with Poultry' course. We aim to provide a relaxed, informal venue where we can briefly cover some of the basics of poultry keeping and then move on to many new topics including broodiness, reproduction and hatching your own chicks and all that it entails! We will mainly concentrate on chickens but will also briefly cover turkeys, quails, geese and ducks. Meeting our chickens along with any chicks (depending on the season) is all part of the experience. If the incubator is on the go you may even see some hatching!

This course covers:

Types of poultry - hybrids & pure breds, bantams & large fowl
What to look for when buying birds
Different types of birds for different situations, egg laying, meat etc
How to hold a chicken
Introducing new birds to the flock
Mixing different types of poultry and fowl
Broodiness and how to handle it
Reproduction and hatching your own eggs
Housing - we look at the various types of housing on our small holding and discuss the pros and cons
Feeding - how much to feed and different types of food
Pests, diseases & Predators
Vets
Benefits of registering with DEFRA
Question and Answer session

The course runs from 10am - 3pm and is just £65 per adult (accompanying child £15 each). Refreshments and lunch are provided. Meeting our chickens along with any chicks (depending on season) is all part of the experience after the main topics are covered.

Poultry Course dates for 2011

Friday 15th April
Saturday 21st May
Sunday 17th July

Please look on our website for further information and please book early as we only have small numbers on each course.

If you would like to buy a course as a present for a member of your family or a friend please just state that on your email and we will send out the course details and booking in the form of a gift voucher.

Chicken Keeping Courses