We let our chickens out every day, usually after lunch so they lay their eggs where they should as they have been known to lay elsewhere occasionally. We have discovered the best way to get them home is to bribe them. They love porridge oats, cooked up with a bit of bran thrown in.
The trick, we have discovered, is to always put them in the same pot so they can recognise the container from the end of the garden. I feel like the pied piper with four chickens and a duck running after me.
I also give them the veg peelings, although I understand there is some question about this practise being legal after the foot and mouth problems. All this is topped up with a premixed corn feed and layers pellets.
I have recently read an article about selling eggs in the smallholder magazine http://www.smallholder.co.uk/ and I am thinking of trying to sell a few eggs using an honesty box and a table outside the house.
