Flocks of Avian Dinosaurs
An adventure in keeping analogue animals in meat space
Starting in 2019
(Page last updated on 28th September 2025)
This is a catalogue of me and my husband's journey into keeping poultry at our allotment.
Initial starter flock came from some lovely fellow allotmenteers
M & C who could no longer look after their hens due to a change in family circumstances.
To the left shows the original guard chicken flock in their original plot, looked after by M & C.
These three barnvelders in their original home with M & C.
Later we borrowed an incubator from the same couple, and raised several batches of chicks and ducklings at our home.
Often alongside our old retired cat Logan or our young dogs!
Photos from left to right:
1) exit for the chickens from inside our main chicken shed, the Maxi Pad.
2) Diddy and the Pekings (Kira & Rachel)
3) Ethylene and the Pekings
4) Poppy Snowflake, a white Wyandotte
5) some of our eggs
| Red Jungle Fowl (Chickens) (Gallus gallus domesticus) | ||||||||||
| Species | Home | Breed | Group | Sex | Hatched | Name | Reared by | Source | Status | |
| Chicken | Maxi Pad | Light Sussex | Female | 2010 | Princess Layer | ? | M&C | deceased (old age) | ||
| Barnvelder | Female | 2015 | Spirulina | ? | rehomed (died later) | |||||
| Nuggets | Female | Oakleaf | ? | live | ||||||
| Female | Thumbelina | ? | deceased | |||||||
| Female | Sawtooth | ? | deceased | |||||||
| Wyandotte | Male | 2017 | Commodore 64 | ? | deceased (old age) | |||||
| Female | Atari | ? | live | |||||||
| Female | Jenny Anydots | ? | deceased | |||||||
| Female | Ploppy Snowball | ? | deceased | |||||||
| Female | 2019 | Clarabella | ? | Heysham Allotment | rehomed | |||||
| Male | 2020 | Falcor | Atari | rehomed | ||||||
| Female | Poppy Flowflake | Atari | rehomed | |||||||
| Wyandotte x Copper Maran | Scamps | Male | Copperknobbs | Clarabella | PhilT | rehomed | ||||
| Female | Screwball | Clarabella | rehomed | |||||||
| Mini House | Serama | Male | 2021 | Diddybird | by hand | ebay | deceased | |||
| Bearded Belgian | Female | Ethylene "Ethel" | Atari | deceased | ||||||
| Peking | Piggins | Female | Kiera | by hand | live | |||||
| Female | Rachel | live | ||||||||
| Peking x Serama | Male | June 2022 | Louis | Rachel | Diddy x Kiera & Rachel | deceased (TWK) | ||||
| Male | Charles Chickens | Rachel | deceased (TWK) | |||||||
| Male | Huey | Rachel | deceased | |||||||
| Maxi Pad | New Hampshire | Female | July 2023 | Sega | Charnock Richard | live | ||||
| Female | Ginger | live | ||||||||
| Male | Klaatu | live | ||||||||
| Female | Scarlet | live | ||||||||
| Female | - unnamed - | deceased (young) | ||||||||
| Male | - unnamed - | deceased (TWK) | ||||||||
| Chicks | New Hampshire or New Hampshire X Peking /Wyandotte /Barnvelder | August 2025 | - unnamed - | Atari | ||||||
| - unnamed - | ||||||||||
| - unnamed - | Ginger | |||||||||
| - unnamed - | Rachel | |||||||||
| - unnamed - | ||||||||||
| - unnamed - | ||||||||||
| September 2025 | - unnamed - | Kiera | ||||||||
| - unnamed - | ||||||||||
| - unnamed - | by hand | |||||||||
| - unnamed - | ||||||||||
| - unnamed - | ||||||||||
| - unnamed - | ||||||||||
| Mallard Ducks (Anas platyrhynchos) | ||||||||||
| Duck | Viking | Shetland | Female | Wrigglyduck | by hand | ebay | rehomed | |||
| Male | Lenny | St Leonards | LisaR | rehomed | ||||||
| Female | Mavis | rehomed | ||||||||
| Female | Merrida | rehomed | ||||||||
| Female | Morag | rehomed | ||||||||
| Triple | Call Duck | Male | Dave | Catterall | deceased (fox) | |||||
| Female | Daisy | deceased (fox) | ||||||||
| Female | Dora | deceased (fox) | ||||||||
Our original flock, with rooster Commodore 64, and matriarch hen Atari, and the Barnvelders Oakleaf, Sawtooth & Thumbelina
Commodore was our rooster for the first 3 years, he was sturdy and self-reliant.
We keep our bantam chucks mostly for their eggs,
(they are not big enough to be worth eating!)
and the joy of hearing them cluck and crow, as they wander around eating pests for us,
and dropped leaves from our perennial brasicca or fruit from our little orchard.
Atari is a Wyandotte and is our matriarchal hen, and has raised several broods of chicks, including Falcor & Poppy Snowflake
Copperknobbs was a cockerel Atari raised, but eventually rehomed with a flock that had lost it's rooster.
Diddy Bird was a Serama we hand reared, he was initially very friendly, then became overly protective of his hen's eggs!
This is Ethylene, she was a bearded belgian, raised by Atari, she never became high ranking, despite this due to the tiny size of her breed.
We invested in some metal hopper feeders, to protect our chicken's feed from rats.
here we have Commodore, Clarabella and a barnvelder
Here is me cradling our hand reared duckling Wriggly, and Lenny a duckling was was reared at St Leonard's school.
Here is my lovely husband with the two peking sisters we raised by and at home.
This photo shows Wriggly duck, named as she had a twisted foot as a duckling, and she wriggled a lot as we bound her foot to a plectrum to straighten it out.
These are our Call Ducks, a rare shetland breed, Dora, Dave, and Daisy.
They were taken by a fox in springtime due to an unnoticed hole in their protective fence.
The dark ducks we referred to as our "Viking" ducks, a rare Shetland breed, we named them Morag, Mavis & Merrida.
Also Lenny, Wriggly and the Call ducks can be seen here.
We realised that the ducks, although wonderful creatures, made a lot of mess with their flat feet and constant wet poo! So we made the difficult decision to rehome them, they were adopted by a mother and daughter who have a large pond on their land.
2025 our 12 new chicks are going to have mostly space-themed names,
names in the running are: Moon Base Alpha, Star Base One, Phaser Burn, Laser Blast, Hestia, Electra, Xena, Elara, Juno, Dax