Salisbury Livestock Market holds an auction every Tuesday whereby anyone can come along and bid on sheep, cattle and poultry. As we’ve been after chickens for a while now I ventured down with a friend to try and bag us some chickens.

Basically the name of the game is to view all the cages and pick out the ones you like the look of, make a note of the lot number and wait for the bidding to start. All the chickens that were in the cages were in quantities of five which I thought might be a bit too much for us amateurs but luckily I met a very nice lady and her kids there who were only after three. So what we did was pick out what cages we both liked and I would bid for them.

When the bidding started I found it really exciting as they started selling off the many breed of chicken and duck (quite a few went to a couple of guys who run restaurants in town, I kid you not!) but luckily they weren’t interested in our girls and I managed to get five chickens for £14. It was a real buzz bidding away like that, before this the closest thing I’ve come to an auction is eBay.

Got them home without too much mess on the back seat of the car and they soon settled in to their new home which had been hanging around the garden for a while now without any problems at all.

Two hours after being settled into their new home the first egg appeared!