Chook update

In 2016 we added 2 black Araucana bantams to our flock. At least they are both supposed to Araucanas, but only one lays green eggs and has the rose comb of the breed. The other lays white eggs and has a pointy comb, so she must be a mutt. The one with the pointy crown is (Queen) Elsa, and her sister is Anna (naturally)).

On Cup Day 2016 (1 November, or the first Tues in November, our first hatched chicken joined the flock. We got some fertile eggs so our broody Wyandotte Caramel and Anna could hatch them. Fortunately the one Red Ancona that made it turned out to be a girl. Her name is Bing Bunny chicken.

Farewell Henny and Penny

Lost 2 of our Light Sussex friends this week. Not sure why :( but possibly egg-bound in Henny's case. 

F is for Flock Block

There are lots of recipes for these around the web - the Flock Block, otherwise known as a bird seed cone.  I decided to adapt recipes I found online to suit what I had to hand. You can use anything really, the only required ingredients being some eggs and an oil of some sort to act as a binder.  This is a baked flock block, hence the inclusion of eggs.  I did see quite a few recipes that used an animal fat (such as lard or other fat that's solid at room temperature) but whilst these might suit a climate with cold winters below zero, that would just fall apart in our much milder Australian weather, particularly when it gets over 40C here in summer!

So here is what I used, mainly as this is what I had to hand:

• 2 cups mixed grain
• 1 cup crushed egg shells (I like to recycle, but shell grit would do just as well)
• 1 cup pellets
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup barley
• 5-6 bantam eggs (or 4 standard eggs), lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup treacle (or molasses, honey or similar)
• 1/2 - 1 cup vegetable oil

Mix together all the the dry ingredients in a bowl.  Mix together all the wet ingredients except for the vegetable oil.  Add wet ingredients to dry, mixing well, and then gradually add in the vegetable oil until you get a mix that's wet enough to stick together well when a handful in squeezed into a ball.  The amount of vegetable oil you need will obviously depend on the dryness of your mix ingredients.

Put into a lined tin - I used two loaf tins, and this produced blocks about 2-3 cm deep.  Use a chopstick or similar to poke a hole in the mix to use for hanging it later. Bake at 200C for about 20 minutes until starting to brown.  Cool, attach string, and hang for your chickens to enjoy! 

Other suggestions to add:

• Meal worms
• Peanut butter
• Wheat germ
• Any other seeds you have

Our chooks took a day or two to figure out what to do with it, but once they got the idea, the entire thing was demolished within about 2 days!

B is for Broody hens

Of our 5 chooks, we have two culprits that seem to recurrently go broody - Henny (Light Sussex) and Caramel (Wyandotte).  It's only those two usually, but when they hog the nesting boxes, no-one else seems to feel like laying either and egg production goes right down!  This may have something to do with the fact that Caramel in particular gets rather nasty and pecks and fluffs up her feathers when anyone comes near.  After all, she's just protecting her eggs, and she's not to know that they'll never hatch! Henny is much more complacent, but then the Light Sussexes seem calmer all round anyway.

Henny and Caramel share the chicken prison under the coop.
Jenny is in the main run area.

There's a plethora of advice and cures for broodiness out there, but the only one that works for me is to put them into "chicken prison".  The basic idea is that by getting them off the nest and putting somewhere they can (literally) cool down, they hormonal drive to nest eventually settles down. This takes anywhere from a few days (for Caramel) to up to a week (for Henny).  I've tried cooling them using the oft talked about cures like putting ice cubes in the nesting boxes, but all that seems to happen is that I get wet shredded paper in the boxes.  Similarly, returning them to the run just results in a temporary break (when they might have a bit of a forage for some food and a drink) and then a rapid return to the nesting boxes.

So I invested in the "chicken prison" which is just a dog crate (bought off ebay for $26) which conveniently sits underneath the coop in the run, and has two doors on the front and side for easy access.  Although the crate came with a solid, removable plastic tray for the bottom, I took it out and just put in some finer aviary wire for a base (the crate wires are too far apart for the chooks to stand comfortably), so the droppings go through into the run.  I prop it up on a few big blocks of wood to help with this, and also to aid the cooling effect.  I put water and a little feeder inside, plus 1-2 broody chickens and leave them to it.  They stay in there, day and night.  As the prison is undercover, being underneath our elevated coop, they're protected from the direct sun and rain.

After a few days, the chickens have usually been "punished" enough and I'll let them out.  Usually, they go straight back to the flock, relieved to not have to watch the others enjoy the kitchen scraps while they miss out.  Occasionally, Henny in particular will go back on the nest, in which case it's back in prison for another few days!  More often than not though, they seem to be "cured".  At least for a few weeks, when the cycle starts all over again.....

Van Gogh sunflowers

Our first sunflowers are flowering!  They're about 1.1m tall, which is a bit shorter than I was expecting as the packets said 1.5m but they're in a spot with pretty poor soil, right next to the chicken coop.  I'm growing these partly to bring some bright colour to the garden (with a bit of fun for Rose) and also for seeds for the chooks to eat.  I've just bought some exclusion bags from Green Harvest to hopefully stop the possums and mice getting all the seeds.

Chocolate and Caramel

Meet the newest members of the family:

Chocolate and Carmel are gold laced Wyandotte bantams - so pretty!  About 7 months old.

Had to reinstate the old coop and fence off half the new run as a quarantine area. Lots of concerned clucking from Henny, Penny and Jenny.  I'm sure they'll all get used to one another eventually.

Chicken palace update

Here are some shots of the palace,  now with nice big back door for easy cleaning,  private nesting box (no more dirty eggs, yay!), and berry garden in the western side.

 

Chicken palace

The chickens have outgrown their old coop,  or rather it is starting to disintegrate so is time to find Henny, Penny and Jenny a new home.  Here's the before shot:

The new coop is modeled after a commercial design I spotted on the web but modified to fit our site and relatively cheap materials and easy building.

After moving the chooks temporarily to another part of the garden, first we did some site leveling:

Here's dad's new toy.  All fingers and limbs still intact!

At the end of day one the basic frame was done:

The rain was not helpful.  Uncle Chris supplied wire and plywood and much needed assistance.  But at the end of day two,  although not finished by any means,  the chickens were moved in!  This followed a bit of late night temporary works to get things habitable:

So here we are at the end of a very long weekend:

After their first night the chickens were very nervous and wouldn't come down the ladder, but eventually made it out on their own. And then of course the didn't know how to get back up again... The slippery ramp seems to scare the but I'm sure they'll get used to it eventually.

Chickens earning their keep once more

The chickens got their barley crop yesterday and promptly completely ignored it. Today they decided they liked it enough to demolish most of it.... Just as well really,  they were in danger of being thought ungrateful. But they're laying again,  so all is forgiven.

Spoilt chickens

Growing barley for the chickens, day 2 after "planting"

Green 

shoots starting to appear on day 5

Well and truly sprouted by day 7

The chickens are molting

There goes the egg supply til next spring

Onion harvest 2013

Onion cream gold

New members of the family

After a bit of a sad day when Ruby got too well acquainted with the previous inhabitants of the chicken coop, 3 new family members joined us:  Henny, Penny and Jenny (in order of descending size).  They're 14 weeks - apparently they'll start to lay around 20-22 weeks.

Henny, Penny and Jenny

Doug looking innocent