THE vice-chairman of the Craven Poultry Keepers Club says he has created the first new breed of hen in England for 90 years.

Edward Dickinson showed off a clutch of his dark-brown egg-laying 'super-hens' at Keighley Show along with their eggs and chickens.

Children visiting the poultry tent wanted to hold the chicks while adults asked Edward how he had developed the so-called ‘Oakworth Hen'.

Mr Dickinson, who has been keeping poultry for 20 years, has a smallholding in Oakworth, where he carries out his breeding programme.

He said the Oakworth Hen started life “in between the pages of musty old books from a bygone age of poultry and theories scribbled down on paper”.

He said this developed to practical experiments in a breeding pen, years of crossing breeds and selecting a bird that ticked all the boxes.

Mr Dickinson added: “I then began the process of breeding the bird true.”

Mr Dickinson began by taking Leghorns, which are very productive but lay white eggs, combining them over several generations with breeds that had other attributes he wanted, including laying the more popular brown eggs.

He said: “The Oakworth Hen has taken eight years to produce – about 16 generations. It’s the first British native pure breed for 90 years.

“The sole purpose of the Oakworth Hen is to lay eggs. It is hardy, fast maturing and economical on feed, especially if allowed to forage. It’s ideal for smallholders and small-scale egg producers.

“A lot of the older breeds were dual-purpose, both laying and for meat. They were quite heavy, they didn’t lay many eggs and they took longer to grow old enough to lay.”

Mr Dickinson now has about 40 breeding females. He sells some of their eggs for eating and others for hatching.

He added: “Some of the Oakworth Hens have gone down south to Hertfordshire. I’ve got other people starting to breed them, and eventually I’d like to get them standardised.

“Although the Oakworth is strictly speaking a sole-purpose egg-layer, spare males fatten well and are at their best killed about 20 weeks to make good eating.”

Mr Dickinson, who runs Oakworth Dark Brown Layers, is now developing a new colour of Oakworth – brown rather than dark brown.

He is also working on a super lightweight bird as a substitute for the famous Rhode Island Red. He expects both new types to take about four years to develop.

Visit facebook.com/dickinsonsdarkegglayers for more details about the Oakworth Hen.