Burford Browns

A lovely birthday present of hens!

Today I’ve got 3 new hens which for me is the nicest present to get on the eve of my 32nd birthday. Visually, they are young quite ghost faced ones because they are only 11 weeks old so they have yet to gain their mature rose cheeks, wattles and combs. They’ll gain such a complexion as they reach the age of point of lay, when their laying hormones will begin to kick in.

They have been delivered with incredible style. Style is quite unique within the world of buying chickens unfortunately. I hate to see hens stuffed into those horrid red and white or yellow plastic poultry crates quite undignified. The hens instead arrive in sturdy boxes lined with wood shavings.

These 3 young pullets have been hatched and reared by poultryman royalty. Philip Lee- Woolf bought both chocolate brown and blue eggs to the nations attention at large back in the 90’s at first selling them to the likes of Fortnum and Mason before setting up the hugely successful Clarence Court egg business that bought both the Burford Brown and the Old Cotswold Legbar to supermarket shelves across the country. Packed in complimentary sky blue and buff orange egg boxes, the feel and indeed the taste of these eggs fulfilled what was back then a new and emerging flare of luxury eggs.

Burford Brown hens from Philip

For Philip, poultry breeding has long been a family affair with the Burford Browns having originally been bred by his grandmother, Mabel Pearman, who lived at Manor Farm, Westhall Hill, Burford hence their name. The burfords no doubt have some french Marans ancestry laying a large and beautiful dark brown, almost orange at times shelled egg. Philip has though over the years carefully bred the Burford Browns to lay a much more generous number of these eggs than the Marans and the Burford eggs are of a good uniformed size with yolks that many agree are of generous yolk to white ratio.

A Burford hen will lay up to 240 of her acclaimed eggs in her first year provided that she is content. But what will ensure contentment. Space above all seems to be the thing, plenty of green grass too and the shelter of a shrubbery, the fruiting bushes of a fruit cage of currants and raspberries will please ones hens very much indeed!

Philip sold out his commercial Clarence Court Burford Brown egg laying business to Stonegate eggs quite some time ago now but luckily he kept the breeding rights to continue rearing his Burford Browns so that he could still sell them to domestic keepers. He rears a batch of chicks up each season so you need to make sure you are on his waiting list to avoid disappointment! An order of hens placed now will see that you have your own Burford Browns arrive for Easter 2025 I would imagine as Philip won’t have even started to incubate them yet!

They are a wonderful breed of hen, I am going to enjoy watching my 3 young girls grow up and gain their personalities. They have beautiful golden necks and black iridescent green wings standing on slate blue legs that sport a few tufts of feathers. For their first fortnight they have the luxury of being in a completely raised pent house suite of a hen house. It is vital to not rush hens, they need time to settle down and realise where home is before being allowed out to free range and meet the older hens which is a brutal pecky business, they need to be strong and confident! It has been a lovely proper autumnal afternoon with the sun and so wonderful to see the sunlight hit their feathers as they figure out what’s what in their new accommodation. Their eyes are blue as they are only chicks really, they are still cheeping rather than clucking but I’ll keep you updated with their progress. Luckily I have two older Burford Brown hens and one of them is laying an egg every other day they are absolutely beautiful.