Hello, I'm Francine. Welcome to Lesson One of our Handkeeping course. I've been keeping hands in my garden for about 20 years. It's not a lifetime I know, I'm probably not long enough to be considered an expert, but unlike most writers of Bucks on Pouchy, I'm not a breeder with a huge flock. Nor do I show my birds I just keep a few hens in my garden like you want to, for fun, for their delicious eggs and their charm. Their presence cheers me up and their manure enriches the soil, without them I find my life the poorer, not to mention my cooking and my compost. What I find particularly satisfying is the link between kitchen, garden and hens. In an ideal world, plants and birds would have the chance to produce to their full potential, the flock feasting on kitchen and garden produce and the plants thriving on chicken manure. In return your hens fresh eggs, the only truly fresh eggs around, will feed you and your family a wide range of dishes. You'll all learn a lot from raising hens naturally and they'll help improve your garden's ecosystem to monitoring weed seeds and pests with gusto. Starting out can be bewildering. Neighbours advice, old wives tales and books full of anatomical detail and diseases will put you off. Most publications assume you have a degree in agriculture and ambitions to supply eggs to supermarkets, but the recent upsurging backyard poetry keeping has meant that poetry keepers are not the rarity they used to be and a new industry has sprung up to provide you with everything you need from feed to housing to health products. Keeping hens doesn't have to be complicated. Most foul problems are caused by stress and overcrowded conditions, by ill-informed choice of birds and lack of tender loving care, but we're here to help. I suggest a simple system that you buy two or three hens to start with and keep them in a henhouse within a room with as much access to your garden as your lifestyle and gardening ambitions can bear. I guarantee fun for all the family and if you're prepared to put aside 10 minutes a day and as much space as you can spare, your rich rewards in baskets of eggs, happy hens and low vet spills. The Bredu Pick is one of the most important decisions you'll make. We have a whole section devoted to the subject later, but it's this choice that will decide how and where you keep your flock and should be governed by your reasons for wanting to keep hens in the first place. You should ask yourself the following questions. Do you want lots of eggs? Are you looking for pets? Are you a very keen gardener? If the answer to question one is yes, then a good layer is what you need. It's worth remembering though that a hens that lay a lot eat a lot and if what's on offer is your garden. So those with precious small gardens will have to think again. Also hens with an unnaturally heavy laying burden tend to live shorter lives, suffer more illnesses and will need to be replaced more frequently.