At South Yeo Farm East we have a wide range of poultry breeds chosen for their character, looks and importantly to help preserve rare and traditional varieties. Our birds are kept on grass and are guarded devotedly by our border collies who first learned to round up chicken rather than sheep... We sell hatching eggs, young birds, and free range coloured eating eggs.
For a number of years now we have run beginners ‘Introduction to Poultry Keeping’ courses at the farm to enable those just starting out to have hands-on experience of handling birds and to learn of their housing, feed and daily care requirements. For further details of dates, agenda, prices etc, please see our training pages
Ixworth
Watch list; Category 3, Vulnerable.
(200-300 registered breeding females)
The Ixworth is one of Britain’s rarer breeds; they are not particularly special to look at, being all white, but they mature quickly and are surprisingly good layers of slightly tinted white eggs. They were developed as a table bird around the time of WWII but were surpassed by American breeds as Britain had other things on its mind than promoting chickens. Their mature weight 7-9lbs means that excess cockerels are our table bird of choice – whenever we cannot sell them to help preserve the breed that is…
Cream Legbar
Watch list; Category 3, Vulnerable.
(200-300 registered breeding females)
There are various colours of Legbars but we keep the Cream variety; all are based originally on the Leghorn and have araucana in their history too. The Cream Legbar is an attractive bird with a head crest, and salmon coloured breast in the female and she lays a greeny-blue egg. They are best known for being auto-sexing, ie. male and female chicks are different colours when hatched making it easy to see what you have straight away; the male chicks are paler with a yellow head spot while the females are darker and striped.
