If you are familiar with showing and breeding then you will almost certainly recognise the reference to a 'line' or a 'strain' and this becomes immediately obvious when you start to look at show winners - a particular exhibitor will have a row of birds all appearing exactly the same, and in fact the average member of the public visiting the show would be hard pressed to spot even the smallest difference.

This range of related birds will all have been bred in a specific way to maximize the preferred features and minimise or even eradicate those physical traits which fall 'foul' of the breed standards. The line is fixed to such an extent that a judge will recognise instantly a specific breeder's stock, and would even be able to tell which line a new exhibitor's bird originates from.

Worming is one of those healthcare routines that, unless you are very organised, can sometimes be tackled in a bit of an ad hoc way. But not only can this open the door to disease, it's also an inefficient way to worm poultry. Now Janssen Animal Health, manufacturer of Flubenvet®, has come up with a simple way for small scale chicken keepers to keep to a regular routine: simply remember that if you have 20 chickens each time 12 bags of feed are purchased, one 60 gram pot of Flubenvet will be needed.

We read and reviewed the excellent Haynes Chicken Manual, back in April and we were very impressed.

I'm very pleased to announce that for our summer competition, Haynes have kindly given us 10 copies to give away to you!

The first 10 lucky people drawn at random will win a copy.

How to enter:

Around this time of year, many hens that are kept in a flock with a cockerel start to look bare on their backs having lost feathers from his constant attention. Small flocks suffer the most but even in a large flock, a cock will have his favourites who will are no doubt the birds who have lost the most feathers!

To protect hens backs and give feathers a chance to re-grow, poultry saddles can be used which are usually made out of a tough material that protect the back but still allow the cock bird to tread the hen successfully.

Black Rock hybrid chickens are hardy, productive hens that lay up to 280 eggs a year and have been a very popular choice for both smallholders and backyard poultry keepers. Black Rock hens are bred by crossing two very unique strains of Rhode Island Red cockerels with Barred Plymouth Rock hens which have until now come from the Muirfield hatchery in Scotland. For 40 years, Peter and Margaret Siddons have looked after and improved these strains and have distributed day old chicks all over the UK to distributors who have grown and sold them from this age to point of lay.

Many years ago, a group of scientists in Cambridge discovered that certain characteristics are passed down from parent birds to their sons and not their daughters and vice versa. Some of these characteristics are down colours and markings that can be used to identify male and female chicks when they are hatched. This is a very useful characteristic for commercial or hobby producers of hybrid laying hens, it effectively halves the rearing costs since unwanted cockerels need not be grown on un-necessarily.