New Chickens

I love how the keeping of poultry often comes hand in hand with opportunities to help other people. This has been the case this past week when I had the opportunity to buy some new chickens for my flock, whilst at the same time, helping out a couple of other poultry keepers. The first, was the person who owned the chickens I have bought. This man has been struggling with a serious illness for some time and has not been able to keep up with caring for his large flock of poultry. The time had come for him to downsize.

I bought five beautiful little bantam wyandottes from him.

The second opportunity to help someone came when I decided to sell my Australorp rooster and pullet to another poultry keeper who had recently lost most of his flock to thieves!

Selling the australorps helps me, because I now don't have to worry about trying to handle birds which are too big for me, and it helps the buyer to replace some of his stolen flock.

That's the way things seems to work in the 'poultry world' and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Our young chicks are continuing to grow at an incredible rate. They're eating everything in sight at present, and love their greens, unlike many other youngsters I have known.

A few weeks ago I went to the Reject Shop and picked up a couple of Bra Savers. Not that I have any lingerie that really needs any special care, but when I saw these on the shelf, I had an immediate idea for another way to use them!

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Chicken Nail Trimming FAIL

So today I decided I would try to trim my Gold Laced Wyandotte's toenails. I decided to use her for my first attempt at this job because she is my quietest hen when it comes to handling, and because I happened to catch her more easily than any of the others...

A word of caution to anyone who is going to attempt to trim a chicken's nails. Don't!

No, seriously, what I mean is, don't undertake this lightly if you've never done it before. There is some basic equipment you should have on hand before you start and which I foolishly neglected to have and this is my cautionary tale.

So, before you even think of touching a sharp pair of nail trimmers to a chicken's claw, please gather the following.

Sharp Nail Clippers
Cotton swabs
Kwik Stop powder or Corn Flour
A prepared isolation pen
Bandages
A stiff drink! (medicinal)

The reason for the Kwik Stop powder and corn flour is to stop any bleeding should you do what I did, and take off too much of the nail.

I really only nipped off the very tip of the claw, but obviously nicked the quick and this bled. It bled a LOT. This photo was taken after I had been applying pressure on the end of the nail for about 10 minutes and it was only just beginning to clot.

I don't have any Kwik Stop powder, so we had to resort to using corn flour which will help to stop bleeding from this kind of injury, but it doesn't work as well.

We buried the injured toe in corn flour and it stuck to the injured nail quite nicely.

The poor victim was then put into isolation where she will stay for 24 hours to ensure she doesn't reopen the wound by scratching in the dirt.

I will try clipping nails again, but will be much more cautious next time and make sure I am fully prepared, including having Kwik Stop powder on hand for emergencies!

A Grand Day Out!

On Sunday, we had a nice little outing when we travelled up the Blackall range to the township of Maleny. There was a poultry show on up there, which I had entered my little black pullet into, but then I had to withdraw her when she prolapsed. We still stopped in to view the other birds in the show as well, and that was well worth the trip to see some beautiful poultry. I didn't think to take any photos of the poultry while I was there even though I had my iPhone with me and could easily have done so. It was quite crowded in the sheds and I didn't want to be in anyone's way. You can see pictures of some of the winners at the Poultry Matters Forum.

After looking around at the poultry show, we went into the township of Maleny to take a look at the Sunday Markets and to have some lunch. I got my camera out at the markets to snap photos of the beautiful cupcakes one of the stallholders had on offer.

Maleny township is a very pretty place and has some unique sculptures in the main street. The town is in the middle of a thriving dairy district, so these sculptures are quite appropriate.

I don't know what the sculpture is called, but I called it Metallicows.

We ended our trip with a delicious seafood lunch at Captain Merv's Seafood Cafe 

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My Gentle Giant

Everyone who meets my beautiful Australorp Rooster, Chop-Chop comments on how big he is. Some people tend to find his size intimidating, but he is such a tame, gentle baby despite his size.

I introduced him to my daughter, Hannah yesterday. The last time she saw him, Choppy and his hatch mates were only about 8 weeks old and quite a lot smaller than they are now.

Choppy, always being interested in something nice to eat, came running down to greet us when he heard our voices in the yard.

Tearing up to us at full pelt, I guess he was a bit of a formidable sight! Hannah squeaked in alarm and stepped backwards, holding out her hands to ward him off, and Chop Chop stopped in his tracks clucking his confusion at this strange reaction.

I encouraged Hannah (who is 23) not to be afraid and that Choppy is just a big sook.

After a few nervous moments observing him and being reassured that he would not attack her, Hannah fed him some wild corn, which he picked, delicately from the palm of her hand, amazing her with his gentleness.

He is a sweet natured boy and has never shown the slightest hint of aggression towards anyone.

Despite his formidable size, he truly is just a big old baby and I adore my gentle giant.

Updates

Well, it has been more than a week since I posted about the rooster box that we set up for my beautiful big Australorp Cockerel, ChopChop. He's getting used to the routine of being put into his box each evening, and let out again in the morning. As far as crowing goes, I only hear him if I happen to be awake, so that means I have not heard him crowing before 8am since we put him into his box. He does crow while he is in there, but the sound is somewhat muffled. I have not heard from the neighbours about whether he is still waking them at 2am, so if I don't hear from them in the next few days, I will pay a visit and ask if all is well now. I'm hoping we've solved the problem.

Last Wednesday, I went broody and set 8 eggs to incubate in the el cheapo incubator I bought last year. I candled them at day 3 but the results were pretty inconclusive. I'm hoping that perhaps Boomer managed to fertilise some of the eggs before we sold him, and decided to set some to see if that's the case. It costs next to nothing to run the incubator and the eggs are a lot less precious and expensive than the previous batch I hatched. I'll keep the blog up to date. I think I might have just a couple that are viable. I will candle them again at day 7 and see how it looks.

Yesterday, I realised with horror that I have not wormed my flock since August last year! This could explain the unthriftiness in a couple of the birds and since the youngsters are now 6 months old, I decided I needed to get onto that asap. I gave the most unthrifty of the hens a dose of Moxidectin immediately, and this morning I put Piperazine into the drinking water for the rest of the flock, and wormed ChopChop with a couple of wormout pills. I am usually very careful to adhere to a three monthly worming system, but for some reason, time has slipped by while I was not paying attention. I will need to redo the whole flock in a fortnight to make sure that I have killed off all the possible worm burden from the birds.

We are once more up to our ankles in mud and water in the back yard, with three solid days of rain that has barely let up. I've given up trying to keep the chickens in out of the wet and have been letting them out to forage in the rain. They seem to have enough sense to get under cover if it really pelts down, and they spend a lot of time under the denser foliage of the mulberry trees when it's only light rain. They're getting a bit wet, but I have been locking them up early and feeding them oats to help them warm up so they are dry by the time they go up on the roost for the night.

There's not a lot going on other than these things. Life at Hensington Palace ticks by and everyone is relaxed and happy. After the 'interesting times' we had for the past few weeks, this is quite a refreshing break!

Showing Poultry

I've been thinking about putting my Australorp pullet, "Chica" up on the show bench to get some feedback from a qualified judge about her type and form. It's a little daunting to think of this, but she is a very nice looking pullet and I feel she is quite close to the standard for Australorp hens.

Here is a photograph of "Chica" that I took yesterday. It is a little bit grainy as it was snapped through the livingroom window, which just goes to show how long it has been since I cleaned the windows! *blush* Please ignore my housekeeping and look at the fowl. :)

Of course, given that I hatched and raised this little girl by hand, I am possibly biased about her looks, although I am trying to look with clear eyes and put the rose coloured glasses aside.

The only real way to be sure, is to show her and find out.

Chica is 22 weeks old, not quite fully grown as yet, and still needs to feather out a bit more, but she has the shape of an Australorp to her and the lovely compact tail of her breed.

I've been doing some reading this morning on what it takes to prepare and train a young bird for show and I think I might begin prepping her at least. Getting her used to handling, and being penned in a small show box would be one way to start. I can also begin to condition her legs and comb and groom her feathers with a silk cloth. All of that will at least start to tame her down and get her used to being examined and judged.

The local "Agricultural Show" (similar to a county fair) is in June and I think I could have Chica tamed and trained in plenty of time for it.

Australorp Fowl Standards
Preparing Fowls for the Show Bench.

Rooster Ruckus

Those who follow this blog regularly will know that I hatched three chicks back in October of 2011 and that I then spent the past 5 months or so raising them to maturity.

My hope in hatching them had been that I would get replacement hens for my laying flock, and also some breeding stock towards my dream of breeding Australorps for fun and possibly for show. Well, I got one pullet from the hatch, and two roosters. Out of a dozen eggs, three chickens. Not a huge return on my investment, but the enrichment that these youngsters brought to our lives was worth more than money. In my opinion, anyway!

We had three darling little walking pompoms which we dubbed "Chick 1, Chick 2, and Chick 3" initially. Not the most creative of names, I know, but when you don't know what gender is hiding under all that soft, downy fluff, what can you do.

Being complete novices at the hatching business, we still had no clue, even at four weeks of age, what gender birds we had, but expert opinion from more experienced poultry fanciers put odds on that Chick 1 was a girl whilst Chick 2 and Chick 3 were both boys. The reasoning behind this is because chick number 1 (left of photogaraph) has a smaller comb and no wattles, and her feathers are more developed over the wing and back. the other two chicks, have larger, redder combs and the beginnings of wattles under their chins. Indeed, that's exactly how it did pan out in the end.

We had one blue cockerel, one black cockerel and a black pullet. Yes, I knew, even back then, that Cockerels grow up to become roosters and that roosters like to crow first thing in the morning, and second thing, and third and...so on.

What I didn't know, was that Roosters would crow loudly at all those things of the day. Still, I had at least 6 months before the crowwing would start, didn't I? So I could just ignore the problem until I couldn't ignore it anymore, right?

As it happened, our two cockerels, whom we named Boom and ChopChop hadn't read the Handbook for Young Cockerels in the Field, and they thought that it was entirely appropriate for a young rooster to start testing his vocal chords somewhere around 8 weeks of age! At first, it was cute... sweet, soft little, wobbly arrrrreeeeeaaaarooo! noises greeted the dawn, and they soon ran out of breath and didn't try again for hours. Not so bad, I thought. We can live with that!

Practice makes perfect, though and pretty soon, Boomer (renamed because of his voice!) was starting up at 4am with an increasingly loud and strident AAARRRRRRR-OOOOO-AH-OOOOOH! He discovered he could crow and he decided he liked to crow! There was one day in particular when his new, brassy trumpet of a voice split the air at least five times every two minutes! I was going nuts, my neighbour was going nuts, and I think, even the hens, and ChopChop were going nuts, listening to him!

I really loved Boomer, but I knew that his luck would have to run out sooner or later with the neighbours. Tolerant as they are, even I could tell that the noise would eventually get on their very last nerve.

I made up my mind to give him away, then I made up my mind to keep him, and then I made it up to give him away and that time I got as far as posting an advertisement online about him. I was still hesitant, but that evening I had an email from a lady who was very interested in having Boomer for her breeding program. I decided to sleep on it. The following morning, after inspecting the hens, and having a last little chat with Boomer, cuddled on my lap, I made up my mind that he should be given the opportunity to go and live in the country, before someone decided to demand his carcass on a platter!

I felt at peace after talking on the phone with the person who had inquired about him, and I made one last video of my beautiful Boomer-ang and then boxed him up and put him into the car for the drive to a town halfway between our home and Boomer's new address.

When I met Boomer’s new owner, and she met Boomer, I knew it was a perfect match! She fell in love with our boy at first sight, and he seemed pretty happy with her as well. We chatted for a while about our shared love of all things chook and then I told Boomeroo to be a good boy in his new home and we waved him off on his way to the big farm in the country where he has a harem of ladies all his own just waiting until he is out of quarantine.

We still have Boomer’s brother, Chop Chop here, and he is a sweet, gentle little boy who is quite a bit quieter, so far, than his bigmouthed brother was.

And today, my neighbour came over with a suggestion for a rooster box for Choppie to go into at nighttime.

More on that in my next post!

Interesting Times

Python approx 1.5m captured in our chicken coop

"May you live in interesting times."

The above is purported to be an ancient Chinese curse or proverb, and it has long been a favourite of mine, but recently, what with the soft-shell eggs problem, and the constant rain which is turning my garden into a mosquito and toad infested quagmire, I am beginning to understand why this simple phrase might be interpreted as a curse, regardless of where it originated.

According to the weather man a few nights ago, it is now officially Autumn in Australia. We should be seeing cooler weather (which we are) and the wet season should be coming to an end (which it's not!). We should be having cool, dry days but it has now been raining for three days without letting up and there are reports of road closures around our district due to flooding.

Added to that, last night when I put the chickens into their coops (they'd been out for forage while the rain was a little lighter), I noticed that the laying hens didn't go up to roost immediately. They spent a lot of time pecking and scratching around in their covered run, keeping to the front end of it. I didn't think too much of it, deciding they must simply feel like a bit extra to eat as the rain would have driven bugs and worms deeper into the ground.

I finished topping up feed hoppers and came down to the house, thoughts of my own dinner dancing around in my mind. I was getting ready to put dinner on when Sandra asked: 

"What on earth is going on with your chickens?"

Cocking my head to one side, I listened (I don't generally hear the chooks because I have come to tune them out as background noise). Sure enough, there was a ruckus coming from the direction of the coops. That is abnormal for chickens at nighttime so I knew something must be wrong. I took the torch (flashlight) Sandra had already grabbed and waded back out through the puddles and rain to the hen house.

All of the layer hens were in the front of their run, cackling, hooting and hollering at the top of their airsacs while their rooster was huddled in a wheezing heap in the corner. Nextdoor in the POL pen, the blue Australorp cockerel was hollering, hooting and swearing up a storm, too while his hens huddled in their roost making small, distressed cooing noises. Something was definitely amiss.

The blue cockerel was in danger of injuring himself trying to get through the wire to the laying pen, so I went to him first. I managed to herd him into the roost with his ladies after checking that all was well with them, and settled him down. 

Then I returned to the laying pen, with the blue cockerel calling out warnings to me from his hiding place all the while.

I went into the coop with the layers who immediately quieted down once I was on the scene. Shining my torch around, I slowly edged my way into the coop and shone the torch onto the roost...

And bolted with a shout that had every chicken on the property all hollering and flapping madly as well. I think I made it from the hen house, halfway to the patio before what I'd seen in the brief flash of the torch registered properly. I slowed my pace, took a breath and chided myself.

"That's just a carpet snake, dufus!"

Well, of course this creature would need to be evicted, and as far as I was concerned that was not a job for one person. I continued on my way down to the house and asked Sandra to come and assist with the removal.

We went back to the hen house, herded the laying hens and their wheezing guardian into another run and shut them in. Within seconds, hens and rooster had all piled onto the smaller, more cramped roost in the spare run, clucking and squawking like elderly tour bus patrons who were served cold tea on a rest stop and were determined to let 'management' know of their displeasure! "Just as soon as we've had a good lie down!"

 

Then commenced operation snake eviction!

I don't know if any of my readers have ever tried to catch a snake in a chicken coop before, but let me tell you, it's no easy feat! Those things are ​slippery!​ Not slimy, though, just really good at avoiding being hooked up with a garden fork. No matter how Sandra tried to get him off the roost and into a feed sack we'd brought up there for the purpose, the snake managed to slip, slide and slither away.

In the end, I grabbed him by his -- surprisngly muscular -- tail and hung on, trying to tug him out of the roost. The snake had other ideas. He got his head in behind a wooden beam and hooked himself up there and we got into a real tug-o-war! boy he was strong! I was worried about hurting him if I tugged too much, and Sandra suggested we might need to kill him to get him out of there.

Killing him was the last thing I wanted to do. Carpet Pythons are non-venomous and are handy for killing mice and rats around the sheds. Besides which, they are beautiful creatures and all this fellow wanted was a dry, dark place to coil up and sleep the rain away.

Deciding on a path of least resistance, I stepped forward, letting the tension off his body and the snake lost his grip on the beam and fell onto the soft straw bedding under the roost. I lost my grip on his tail at the same time and the chase was on again!

We managed with much shuffling, squealing (from me) and nervous sniping at each other, to get him from the coop into the run and finally, out of all patience with the ordeal I seized him by his tail again and hauled his scaly butt out into the rain!

Sandra brought the sack out of the chicken coop and we managed to finally bundle our captive into it. Now what to do with him?

It was decided that the best place for a rather war-weary python on such a rainy Sunday evening was a lovely heated reptilarium at Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo. The Zoo is, fortunately only a few kilometers from home, so we carted our sinuous visitor up to the Wildlife Hospital.

I must have presented quite a sight! Hair on end, dressed in a singlet and shorts (It was quite muggy yesterday) a pair of thongs (flip flops) on my feet and *blush* no bra! I made the best of the situation though, hugging myself against the aircon in the foyer of the hospital and explaining to the somewhat amused volunteer how we'd "arrested" the python in our chicken coop.

We left the python safely in their care and came home where I spent the rest of the evening cringing in embarrassment, not helped at all by Sandra pointing out my mode of dress!

I called the wildlife hospital to ask after our erstwhile house guest this morning and was told that he is fine, and soon to be released back into the wild.

At least life is never dull around here!

Of First Eggs and Soft Shells

 As you can see from the image, this shell is very thin and brittle. I was able to make an indent in it by gently pressing my thumb against it. If I'd pressed any harder, the shell would have ruptured.

It has been an interesting and exciting week at Hensington Palace. First the good news. Our little purebred Australorp pullet laid her first egg on Friday morning! I was so happy and proud to see it. I've raised this little girl from egg to egg layer and was so pleased to find her little gift under the roosting perch. She has laid each day since then, one smallish, perfectly formed brown shelled egg each day like clockwork.

In other, not so great news, our problem crossbred layer hen is having laying issues once again. She had been doing so well, and I was beginning to hope that all her troubles were behind her. For those who haven't been longtime followers of this blog, I will recap.
We got this hen as one of our two original laying hens back in 2011 as a gift for mother's day from my children. Neither of them was laying yet when they first arrived. They were little, cute POL hens and we eagerly awaited our first eggs from them.
It seemed to take forever for them to finally lay, because we got them in winter and they didn't start laying until the spring.

Anyway, eventually they did both start to lay, but before too long, "Bossie" as we had named the black hen, began to have trouble. It started off with a nasty prolapse. I was horrified the morning I went to the coop and found the poor girl with her bottom all red, and seemingly turned inside out. I put her in isolation and sent out an urgent message to a chook owning friend, asking what I ought to do. I was told that if the situation didn't revert by itself, the alternatives were vet treatment, or culling. My heart was heavy. I didn't want to have to destroy my lovely little hen so soon after getting her! Fortunately, with a little time alone to rest and be quiet, the prolapse reverted of its own accord. Bossie had one more prolapse after that, a few days later, but it was less severe and reverted as soon as I picked her up.

She seemed well after that, but a couple of months later, I started to find broken eggs in the nesting box each morning. At first, I thought the hens must have developed a habit of egg eating. (A big no no in laying coops!) but then I realised that these eggs had very thin, brittle shells. Again, it was Bossie that produced these flimsy shells.

The advice for this situation was to insure that the hens were getting enough shell grit (for calcium) and sunshine (vitamin D) both of which they were getting plenty of, being free range hens, and also having a dish of shell grit available free choice in the coop.

Another piece of advice was to try and get boss to stop laying, to give her system a break and reset everything. I tried everything I could, but Bossie is a commercial hybrid and is programmed to lay, lay, lay... She did not go off lay even for one day, despite my best efforts. She did, however start laying hard shelled eggs again and I finally thought her troubles were behind her.

Alas, this morning, I found another soft shelled egg under the roost. She usually always lays in the nest, so I think this egg may have 'slipped' out while she was sleeping last night.

That is the biggest problem with such eggs. The shell of an egg is subjected to a lot of pressure as it passes through a hen's body to emerge from the cloacca.

Should the shell break before the hen is able to pass the egg, this will lead to a painful and fatal infection called Egg-Yolk Peritonitis. It is dangerous for a hen to be afflicted by soft shell problems as she can get into dire straits!

My decision now, is whether I try to fix this, whilst running the very real risk that she will wind up with peritonitis, or do I write her off as high risk and cull her. It's not an easy decision to make, but I need to consider the hen's welfare as well as my own feelings about this. I already think I've made the decision.

It's just not going to be easy.

Meal Worm Rescue and a "Beakicure"

I have to say that my life has taken on some unusal practices since getting chickens. With the current wet weather, I have been adding new and unusual activities to my repertoire more often.
Last week, I set up a meal worm breeding box to have a ready source of good quality protein available for the chooks as a treat, and also for when I have a sick chicken whose appetite needs tempting. The worms have been happily breeding away in their box since I put them in there, and I've been giving them a diet of raw carrot, stale bread and the occasional piece of sweet potato. I'm surprised how easy it is to breed them. I just tossed them into a box of bran and left them to it, really. They're doing the rest!

Anyway, upon going to check on the worms this morning, I found that the nest was under serious attack from invading forces. ANTS!!

The little blighters were swarming through the box, running off with bits of bran, shed meal worm skins and a team of them was even carrying off one of the worms! This, I could not have. Sandra and I spent about 45 minutes sifting the bran meal and picking out the worms to transfer them into an ant-free container while the curious, and ever hopeful chickens cooed and clucked around us, looking for a handout. We got all of the ants out of the bran and replaced the worms in their box sans ants and then I turned my attention to one of the hens that was hanging about.

Worms in our rescued meal worm farm

We bought two new Bond Brown POL hens a few weeks ago, and when we got them home, noticed that the poor little things had had their beaks trimmed rather messily. Beak trimming and debeaking is a practice I don't hold with, but it is done with chicks which are likely to be sold into battery farming systems so these girls had probably been done by the farm that bred them prior to being sold to our local feed barn. Anyway both of them have uneven beaks as a result of this, and the bottom beaks tend to grow out past the top beak, which looks odd and probably makes eating a bit of a challenge. I filed back the beak on one of the girls a few days ago, so I had no qualms in grabbing this one (after a merry chase!) and applying my emery board to her beak too.

This hen has had her beak trimmed

The hen in the picture above is not mine, but is an example of a hen with the top beak trimmed back as my hens' have been. Again, this is not something I would have chosen to have done to my chickens, but it is done for battery hens to prevent them from pecking each other to death in the laying pens. It only took a few minutes with the emery board to file her beak back so it matched the length of the top one. The entire operation was watched carefully by a nervously pacing rooster who demanded to know what I was doing to his favourite hen!

Her 'beakicure' all done, I released Rhonda who scampered off up the yard to join her flockmates, none the worse for wear.

Next adventure--Nail trimming! *ulp* That one really makes me nervous. I've never done it before so it will be an entirely new experience for me and the chooks!

Panicking chooks and a smelly corpse!

I had noticed the chooks panicking the past couple of days whenever they crossed a certain area in the yard, but it was not until I went up there myself today that I noticed this! Almost had a heart attack until I realized it's dead. Not sure what type of snake it is.

The only snakes I have seen around here before are tree snakes and carpet snakes. This one doesn't look the right colour for a tree snake, though.


Closer shot. Given the injuries to the poor creature I would presume he/she was a victim of the lawn mower a couple of days ago. I think it's a good job our mowing man uses a ride on mower!



Poor Joe Blake (Australian slang for snake), he didn't come off too well in that argument and man, did he pong (stink)! I scooped him up with a stick and carried him away from the chooks' free range area. I was sneaky though, and put the corpse somewhere that I don't want the Hensingtons to be. ;) Maybe they will stay away from there for a while, at least!

Edited to add: An online friend of mine says it looks a lot like an Eastern Brown snake.

Eastern Brown Snake:

This makes me triply glad that I didn't encounter it when it was alive!

 

Chicken Medicine Cabinet

I have just added a new page to the site called Chicken Medicine Cabinet. On it I will/have list/ed some of the remedies I use in caring for my chickens. There are also recipes for special diets to feed to sick chickens. Where the information is not mine, I have tried to refer to the websites I have gleaned it from with links included to the original source.

Please be aware that these are just some things I have tried over time with varying success rates. You should not presume that these remedies are a replacement for the expert opinion of a qualified vet or specialist. I am not a vet, nor do I have any training in animal medicine. Please take these hints and tips in the spirit they are offered in, and consult a veterinarian if your animal does not improve within a reasonable timeframe.

You can view the page by clicking on the tab above.

Diary of a sick cockerel

One of our young Australorp cockerels has been sick for the past couple of weeks. I first noticed that he was making a strange noise on inhalation every so often, about two weeks ago. It didn't seem to be distressing him, so I just decided that as long as his color was good, he was eating and active as usual, I'd just keep an eye on him and see how things progressed.

He was much the same for about a week, and I was glad to think the condition wasn't getting any worse. I posted on a couple of forums and facebook groups about him, and was advised that what I was doing  (or not doing) was okay as long as the bird seemed well otherwise.

At the beginning of the second week, I noticed that his wheeze was more pronounced and more frequent, so I was a little bit more concerned at that point. I took a video of him making the noise and posted it on my usual poultry haunts.

As you can hear in this video, the sound was now happening on both inspiral (breathing in) and expiral (breathing out). The bird still seemed well otherwise. No nasal discharge, no bad smell, no watery or bubbly eyes and his appetite was still good. Apart from this wheeze there was nothing amiss with him.

A couple of people suggested dosing him with vitamins in the water (which I had already commenced the week before) and trying some garlic oil or getting him an antibiotic or trying to nebulise him with a product called F10 SC.

Not having a nebuliser, that option was impractical, and I couldn't find any local feed barn that carried the antibiotics I'd need.

By now, I had tried vitamins in his water, and had given him some naturopathic tissue salts (Combination 12) to help him fight off the infection on his own.

Finally, lacking any ideas for what else I could do, I mixed up a wet mash of vegetables with oatmeal, molasses, garlic and oregano and fed that to him. He wolfed it down with great gusto and his wheezing stopped almost immediately! Apart from a small raspy wheeze if he gets stressed now, he hardly wheezes at all anymore.

I am putting it down to one of three possibilities.

1. The illness had run its course and he was going to get well anyway
2. He had something lodged in his trachea and the wet mash helped to dislodge it
3. My naturopathic and organic methods gave him the support he needed to fight off the infection

I think it could possibly be a combination of all the above. I'm just glad that he seems better now.

Holidays

Well, things are finally settling down a little bit here after the Christmas break. We had a very quiet and relaxing Christmas here at the palace. On Christmas Eve, we decided to follow the Germanic tradition of having dinner and opening gifts.  We spent the evening with Sandra's mother and ordered Indian Take Away for dinner.

The food was delicious! We had a selection of spring rolls and Samosas for entree, and for main course, we ordered Mumbai Fish (mild), Navaratan Vegetable Korma (Medium) and a Traditional Goat Curry (Hot) accompanied by Naan Bread and Brown rice. Everything was very flavoursome and not too hard on the tastebuds for spice. We added some Ginger and Mango Chutney and drank Blood Orange Soda to wash it down with. All in all, it was a very nice dinner, topped off with ice cream to cool the palate for dessert.

Christmas day, Sandra and I spent at home together and ate lightly, just made ourselves some Vietnamese style rice paper rolls and had them with sweet chilli dipping sauce. Christmas Night we had fresh bread rolls with Seafood mix on them and Sandra tried her hand at making a Thousand Island dressing which worked out very well!

The Hensington Palace Hens were not forgotten on Christmas and enjoyed a special treat for their dinner. We thawed some Kangaroo Meat ( a favourite with the girls!) and doled it out to everyone, from the youngest chicks right up to the guest hens we have staying with us over the Christmas holidays. It was a hit with one and all, and gave them all plenty to cluck about as they retired to their roosts for the night.

The kangaroo meat was particularly enjoyed by the hen we had in Hensington Hospital. Her reaction made me wish I had brought the video camera with me. It's hard to describe the sound she made on tasting her first mouthful of Kangaroo, but if a hen was capable of squealing in delight, that is what that sound would be. She did it after the second mouthful too, and I swear it is the nearest approximation to "OOOH! Yummy!" A chicken could possibly make!

As thanks, the girls all delivered an egg each on Boxing Day, which was lovely of them, but meant I needed to find a means to deal with the eggs we already had! In keeping with the holiday, though, I didn't do anything about it that day. Instead, I took myself to the movies to see War Horse, whilst Sandra settled happily in front of the TV to watch the beginning of the Boxing Day Cricket Test.

War Horse is a beautiful film. There are some sad/painful moments in it, but you'd expect that with a film that is dealing with war. World War I is a particular interest for me, so I was keen to see this film. I thought the cinematography was amazing as one would expect from Stephen Spielberg and the storyline was moving. There is a goose in the early parts of the film, too who steals the show and adds some wonderful comedic relief. I recommend this film, but be sure to take a few tissues with you. There was not a dry eye in the house at the end of the film! Well, except for mine...I was moved by it, but I think I used up all my tears on Christmas night, Watching Judy Dench and Maggie Smith in Ladies in Lavender.

The day after Boxing Day, and I still had the dilemma of what to do with excess eggs. I had been thinking of trying my hand at pickling some for a while now, so decided this would be as good a time as any! I found a recipe online and decided I'd give it a go since I had all of the ingredients, particularly the 12 eggs the recipe called for. So I set out to make "Garlic-Curry Pickled Eggs"

The pickling juice I made for this smelled delicious and I had fun with it. Peeling a dozen hard boiled eggs is not easy! Some of my hens lay eggs with particularly hard shells and strong membranes! I got it done, though, and here is the end result.

It looks, and smells wonderful, but we won't know how it tastes until two weeks from now as they need to mature before eating. I will keep you posted!

Well, that about sums up the Christmas break here at Hensington Palace! I hope all of my readers have had a happy, healthy and safe holiday and I wish you all the best for 2012.

Rainy Days and Reading Materials

It is a rainy day today, so all the Hensington Hens are inside for the day. They've had some roasted pumpkin this morning though, so that helps to compensate them for being cooped up all day. They do love it and I have found some cheap pumpkin for sale locally again recently so they're getting a roasted breakfast twice this week, much to their delight!

For my own entertainment, well, there's studies to catch up on, of course, and I am getting on with that, but I also went shopping online for some books. Naturally, these won't arrive in time to be enjoyed today, but I am hoping to have them when I am on a couple of weeks break from College in January.

Chook Wisdom

This is the first book I ordered. I've had my eye on this for a little while, and finally decided to bite the bullet and order it, today when I was doing some online Christmas shopping.  

Back cover: Is there anything to match the quiet sense of satisfaction you get from watching your healthy hens pecking and scratching in their yard or tun?[sic] The sheer joy of peeking into the nesting box and discovering your first chook egg is something everyone should experience. If you already have chooks, we know you will delight in the colourful images of backyard chooks. If you're new to chooks, enjoy, but please don't acquire any chooks till you've built a secure, fox-proof hen house!


The second one is a companion to the first.

More Chook Wisdom

Back Cover: Have you ever idly daydreamed about keeping a few chooks in the back yard? Maybe you remember from your childhood how delightful it is to watch their antics, collect their eggs, and have them as part of the your lifestyle? You're holding the perfect guide to keeping chooks. This is the companion volume to the phenomenally-successful 'Chook Wisdom' which brought colourful, accessible, chook-wrangling information to tens of thousands of back yard chook fanciers. In 'More Chook Wisdom' you can expand on your knowledge, inspiration and ideas for keeping chooks. There's natural health care, tips on chook pens to build or buy, and best of all, loads of 'user experiences' from from[sic] people living the chook lifestyle right here and now. Whether you're new to chooks or already enjoy their delights this book will be a treasure on your bookshelf and vital in the chook pen. You don't need a massive back yard to keep chooks - a few Silkie bantams will live happily in a modest run. But if you have the space for a flock of Light Sussex or other large breeds - that's all here too. Now is the perfect time to bring chooks into your days. The rewards are great. Chooks are cheap and simple to keep, and they'll enrich your back yard soil, your recipes, and your back yard entertainment for years to come.

I'm looking forward to getting these, and reading them and as usual, will post my thoughts about them when I have finished.

Hensington Hospital

I've had a Light Sussex hen in the Hensington Hospital for a few days here. She is one of the 'guest hens' that is staying with us while her family are overseas for the Christmas Holidays and the poor thing has caught a cold. (Colds/respiratory infections) are fairly common amongst chicken flocks and this is nothing serious. However, because she has been a little bit off colour, she has also become the victim of some bullying from her coopmates. She wound up with an injury to her head near her comb which was quite inflamed and sore so I decided to separate her out from the flock and put her into sickbay.

Photo showing (black, crusty)  nasal discharge and the sore, red area next to her
comb where another hen has pecked her.

 

Closeup of peck injury near comb on the lefthand side of the hen's head.
Swollen, sore and hot to the touch.

I isolated her, and put some avian multi-vitamins in her drinking water and then cleaned the injury with diluted hydrogen peroxide in water. I also used a Q Tip to clean some of the gunk out of her nostrils and then applied Savlon cream to the injured place on her head.

Today, the hen seems a little brighter and she laid an egg this morning which is generally a good sign. Her appetite is still good and she seems to enjoy the taste of the water with vitamins added. I will clean her wound again this afternoon, and see how she goes over the next few days. She is still coughing, so not completely out of the woods, yet. I am confident she will make a full recovery though.

Photo taken this afternoon showing reduction of swelling around the peck
injury and cleaner nostrils.

Time Flies

It seems like only yesterday that I was sitting in my study listening to soft little peeps coming from inside the eggs I had rescued from our broody hen, Bertha, and wondering how many of the seven rescued eggs would actually hatch. Can you believe that it is four weeks ago today since the three chicks chipped their way into the world from those eggs? It has just gone by so quickly and our little fluff balls now resemble something approaching small vultures! They're so adorably scruffy with feathers sprouting out all over, down falling off in clumps and little patches of bare, pink skin showing through underneath.

They think they are the big chicks on campus, too! They're swiftly outgrowing the brooder box, and we have had to set up an aviary in the back yard as a day run for them. This will also become their growing out pen once they've got enough feathers and can withstand the cooler, humid night air. Until then, they're playing in the aviary by day, and sleeping in the brooder by night.

Last night was their first full night without the brooder light turned on, and each time I went in to anxiously check on them, they would peer up at me, blinking drowsily and asking what was the problem. "Can't you see we're growed ups now? We don't need the light on at night anymore!"

They had no light on today either, and as I mentioned, spent a couple of hours out in the aviary enjoying the extra space and the warm sunshine on their little bodies.

Ah how soon they grow!

We shot some video of them romping and play fighting in the aviary as they tried out their wings and claws.

Enjoy!

Music in the video:

Caspar Babypants
"Free Like a Bird" (mp3)
from "Here I Am!"
(Aurora Elephant Music)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
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More On This Album

A big "Day" Out

The chicks had a big "day" out, today. I took them outside in the late afternoon sunshine to have some sun on their little bodies while I cleaned out waterers and other stuff. They loved it, but are very tired after their big adventure!

Cane Mulch a hit at Hensington Palace!

We have had a little bit of rain since I put the chooks into their summer coops and I find that the roofed run is getting slightly damp around the edges because it's got open sides, even though there's an iron roof over it. I felt the need to do something about it, and went to my local produce store with the aim of buying some straw to scatter as I had finished my old bale when I set up the broody box for Bertha.

Alas, the guys at the feed barn didn't have any straw, so I asked for a bale of lucerne. I told the guy it was for my chook run, and he said "Well, you're going to find lucerne a bit expensive for that, what we use with the chooks we're selling here, is Cane Mulch. It's a good bedding and they like to dig around in it, and it won't cost as much as hay.

I had already gone over to their pens when I arrived, to admire the lovely little POL pullets they had. Very nice little ISA Browns and Australorp Commercials. Healthy, calm, happy and mildly curious about us, which is what I look for when I am buying chooks, but I don't need any POLs atm as I am hoping to get some nice ones from Bertha's clutch.

Anyway, the cane mulch was in use in those pens, and the little chookies were indeed having a lovely dig and scratch and dust bathe in it, so I accepted the guy's advice. (It was cheap, too only $9.90AUD for enough to cover 7m². That is more than enough to do my little run a few times and I have read that this type of mulch doesn't go soggy, so that will be a plus.


I went up and tossed some into the run this morning and then was going to get my rake to spread it out with, but I changed my mind when I noticed the petticoat gang's reaction to it. Oh! The digging, the kicking, the scratching and wing flaps of excitement! This was the newest sensation since Kangaroo meat as far as they were concerned!

My dismal, rainy day depressed chooks turned into jolly scratching machines as they cooed and clucked and raked through the sweet smelling mulch for anything of interest. I'm sold! I will continue to buy this mulch when necessary to supplement the leaf mulch I use from the gardens and keep the hens entertained with something to scratch and roll around in.

I also was lucky enough to be near the nesting box with my camera today when Rosie was making her "Egg laying purr" sound. I recorded it to share.

Still waiting....

Today marks the 11th day of Bertha's long incubation of her eggs. It seems so much longer since we set the eggs under her, but I have checked and double checked the date we set her, and it is definitely day 11. I am tempted to candle the eggs, but as I wouldn't even know what I am looking at, I have refrained from doing so. What will be, will be. I just hope they're progressing and we will end up with chicks out of all this.

I went up to the coops today with some kangaroo mince which I fed to the other three girls, and when Bertha smelled it and heard the special "Ohhhh we have goodies!" call of the other hens, she decided to get off her nest. I gave her some of the mince, which she gobbled down happily, along with some grains and then she proceeded to have a drink, and a leisurely dustbath. She is looking quite scruffy because she has pulled out a lot of her feathers to line her nest. I was going to snap a photo to show everyone, but by the time I went back up there with the camera she was just settling back on her eggs and I didn't want to disturb her again. She looks well and happy otherwise, so I think she is going to see this through.

In the meantime, we have been busy in our garden again and spent yesterday planting seeds and seedlings. We finally got our seed potatoes into the ground, along with planting out the pumpkin seedlings I have been nurturing. We also planted rockmelons, watermelon, beans, zucchini and button squash.

Seed Potatoes.

Yes, there really are little pumpkin plants here!

The chooks were busy, too! (A couple of these were from the day before)

They really enjoy their summer coop!

A well deserved lunch after the hard work.

And this is what Solly, my cat, thinks of hard work!

 It was good to get the planting done, and relax in front of the telly with our special "Grand Finals" cheese and vege platters for lunch!