Elizabeth Skelton

We had a children's petting farm pre foot and mouth and during that time we used to have a lot of young children and school children to view the animals. One of the things that we did was to collect the eggs and I have to say, if there were lots and lots of children there we cheated because one lot would collect the eggs and then we'd have to put them all back. Then the next lot would collect them so some of these eggs went round and round for days.

We used to have a selection of eggs in a tray and ask the children if they could identify them and guess which birds they came from... we'd have trick questions like 'who do you think laid this?' 'oh it was the peacock' 'no no definitely not because peacocks are all male, and peahens are girls'.

We'd explain how incubators work and how to bring them up to the right temperature and about automatic incubators that turn them, or manual ones that you turn yourself and have to mark noughts and crosses on the shells - every day you turn them over. Anyway, one lady was there and I explained that one of the reasons we turn them is so that the developing hen moves in the shell, so you don't get one arm big, one leg growing behind it's back, that sort of thing. And this woman said 'do you know love, I've been turning eggs for 50 years and I never knew why!' She was told to go and do it and she went and did it, no question!