‘Tell it to the locked up treesCuckoo bring your song here!Warrant, Act and Summons, pleaseFor spring to pass along here!So said Rudyard Kipling in the first lines of his ‘Cuckoo Song’ poem…Spring is here, but perhaps the weather is still a little too cold for the cuckoo to arrive in Ireland. These birds will be echoing their enchanting song in woodlands soon. Despite the lyrical vocals, they aren’t very nice creatures really. They often lay their eggs in other birds nests and when the chick hatches, it can throw out the other young or un-hatched eggs in order to survive. Ireland’s friendly hens would never do such a thing! For those free range hen keepers who have cockerels in the flock, spring is the time for lots of new chicks.  Of course you have to let the hens incubate the eggs in order to get chicks. So if you keep a few free range hens at home in the garden and you want to increase your flock, be sure to confine the hens that are hatching their broods so you have lots of healthy new babies in a few weeks. If you aren’t lucky enough to have your own eggs, there’s always a great supply of fresh local free range eggs in our GFI Farm shops. Not much beats the taste of a new laid egg for brekkie. They make the best cakes and baking too.