As you know by now, we at Château Argadens love to engage with our farming roots and put nature and ecosystems first whenever we can. Hens have been a part of our everyday life since 2013, when we built our first hen run. For the past four years, one of our goals has been to help conserve the Gascon and Landais breeds of hen.

However, several misadventures due mainly to a fox who paid our residents a couple of unwanted visits have meant that we’ve had trouble maintaining numbers for any length of time. Consequently, early this year we decided to reinforce the protection of our hen run for the well-being (and survival!) of our feathered friends. We also built two additional runs, each enclosure being reserved for one breed. Our friend Sylvia (a passionate and passionately interesting breeder of pure-breed hens) selected for us 2 hens and 1 cock of the Gascon and Landais breeds which for the past 4 months have been gambolling, pecking, crowing and laying and, we hope, will soon start brooding to produce our first chicks.