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!

Chick Protective Services

This afternoon I had to step in and rescue the unhatched eggs from the broody box. When we checked on mother hen and her eggs the night before last, one of the eggs had either gotten trodden on by mum, or had pipped, I couldn't be sure, but left that egg in the nest anyway and left her to it until today when we went up to have another check of the eggs which are due to hatch from tomorrow onwards. The one that was broken/pipped the other night was gone, and there was no trace of a chick, or of the egg, apart from some blood on the shells of the other eggs. Another egg appeared to be cracked and was leaking yolk and white all over the nest (and it ponged!) another egg was pipping and chirping! My goodness! I had forgotten that eggs chirp when the chick inside is getting ready to hatch.

I took the decision (on advice from some more experienced friends) to remove the eggs from under my broody hen and bring them inside to continue hatching in our incubator (which arrived in the mail last week, thank heavens!) Since bringing them inside, another egg has pipped and is chirping! I candled the 7 remaining eggs and of the seven, I think definitely three and possibly four will hatch. I am happy with that, although it would have been nice if more of the 12 I initially bought had survived. Sadly, they had a rough ride getting here with two already broken when they arrived, two lost during the incubation to breakage and whatever carnage went on yesterday/last night.

Poor Bertha is now sitting on one fake egg and I am looking at what I will need to do to brood these chicks myself when/if they hatch! Talk about being tossed in at the deep end! I'm not really complaining though. I am excited to see what we get from the eggs and who knows, I might get a surprise and more will hatch than I think!


And on the subject of protecting chicks, here is an interesting video about a dog tending to a little chick!

23 September 2011

We have had a busy week in our garden again this week. Spring break for Sandra, means she has wanted to get a few things done, both indoors and outdoors while she has some time off from attending classes. She has tidied her study and now it puts mine to shame! *blush*
In the garden, Sandra dug a new garden bed, but sadly, the place where it is located has very poor soil, so that has been a bit of a wasted effort. I don't know if we will just let it grow over with grass again, or try and build up the soil. We used the chickens to help with the work of digging, by setting up a temporary tractor for them using garden stakes and some netting we bought cheap from the reject shop. We draped an old piece of shadecloth over it. The end result was makeshift, but was sufficient just to keep them pnned there for the day while they scratched over the ground.

Maybe the lack of digging and scratching by the hens should have alerted us that this soil was pretty lacklustre. Oh well, live and learn.

So, now we need to find an alternate location to plant some more veges and try to build up this area's soil as our ultimate aim is to have the vege garden close to the house so that it is easy to get fresh produce for the kitchen.

Sandra also created a compost bin from one of the plastic garbage cans we bought from Bunnings with the gift vouchers I received for my birthday in August. She cut the bottom out of the bin so we could then turn it upside down to use as a compost bin. and the lid now sits nicely on the 'top' (what used to be the bottom) of the inverted bin. There are some grass clippings in here already and next time the Bokashi is full, I will put the contents into this bin with some soil so that it can break down into compost.

The chair standing behind the compost bin is to protect newly planted choko vines which we have put in here to train them over the chicken coops for shade for the hens in summer.

Of course, this compost bin may end up being a smelly, slimy failure so we have a backup plan in case that happens.

This is your common, garden variety compost heap just grass clippings at the moment, but I will soon be adding deep litter from our chicken coops to this as I am about to clean out the roost and run and replace the litter with fresh litter for the warmer months. I use a deep litter system as it only requires cleaning about twice yearly. In between clean outs I just add new litter on the top whenever the pens start to get a bit smelly. The chickens keep it turned over with their scratching around in the run. They can be encouraged to scratch more by tossing some grain down on the floor once a week.

On Wednesday afternoon, a courier delivered a dozen fertile eggs which I had ordered for our broody hen, Bertha. I had been anxiously awaiting their arrival and keeping close to the house whilst Sandra worked on compost bins, heaps, and garden beds. We eagerly opened to package to find that, sadly, two of the eggs got broken in transit. They were quite crushed, but the other ten were in good condition. We placed them in the bathroom on the counter to rest for twenty-four hours before putting them under our hen.

I put the fertile eggs under her about 6:30 last night. She is such a patient hen and didn't fuss about me slipping 10 eggs under her. She just soflty clucked: "buk-book-buk buk-book-buk?" as though gently welcoming each new egg. She's such a good chookie, I really hope these eggs hatch for her.

Bokashi, Books and Broody hens

 It was time to bury another bucket full of Bokashi today so I took it up to where I buried the last lot on August 29, almost a month ago! My how time flies! I was curious to know how well the last lot I buried had broken down and I remembered saying on my blog that I would let you all know how it went. If you recall I said in THIS POST That I gathered up windfall citrus to bury with the bucket full of citrus peels, vege scraps, eggshells, and other waste from the kitchen mixed with Effective Microoganisms to help it break down. 

I started to dig where I had buried the last lot and was very surprised at how soft the ground here was. I turned over a spadeful of the most delicious smelling compost! It's kind of fruity and sweet smelling and very moist.

 For the most part, the scraps and peels had broken down completely, although there were still some little bits of citrus mixed through.

Citrus in the compost

I think that the bits of citrus that had not broken down yet might actually be from the whole ones I put in that I picked up around the yard. Anything that had been cut into small pieces and processed in the bucket prior to burying was gone!

I am really very pleased with this.

The vege patch continues to thrive, despite the potting mix we planted it in being quite hydrophobic and not holding moisture very well.

We have Roma Tomatoes coming on nicely!

 We actually put some soil on some of the veges, from the bokashi compost pit, to see if it helps at all with moisture retention. We won't be doing the 'no dig' gardening method again, though. It hasn't really saved us any work because of the time involved in trying to keep the roots moist.

I am reading a good book at the moment called Frugavore: How to grow your own, buy local, waste nothing, and eat well by Arabella Forge. I'm really enjoying it and will post a review once I have finished it. Sandra is reading Changing Habits, Changing Lives by Cindy O'Meara and I want to read that after she is done with it.

Broody Update: Bertha sat all day again, today. I think she may have been up for some food and water early in the morning, but hadn't stirred again all day. It was a very warm day and I was concerned about her, so I went and tried to put some water on her beak to tempt her to drink from a little bowl I had with me, she told me where to get off! I left her alone after that, but when I took a wet mash up for the other girls this afternoon, I offered some to her in her own little bowl and she ate about 1/4 cupful. That is food and water mixed together with some egg added so I am content that she won't starve or dehydrate. I've left a small bowl of water and a little bit of mash next to her nest for her as well. She must think this is the life. No egg laying, a comfy secure box all to herself and room service laid on!

Bombproof Broody!

so, today we went to the local council recycling center and picked up an old dog crate for $15! When we got it home, I cleaned it thoroughly with water and disinfectant (note: I have since found out it is not advisable to use disinfectant to clean equipment for backyard poultry. Warm soapy water will suffice) and let it dry in the sun for an hour or so.

The crate has "Pepsi + Diego" written on the top of it. It makes me wonder what animals used to use this before it came to us. We have set this up in the coop for our broody Sussex, Bertha. She seemed to tolerate the disturbance okay. We went up and did this just after sunset and I got her off the nest she had been using and put her near her water bucket. She was a bit stiff from sitting and kind of fell face first into the bucket. Note to self, put her further away from the bucket next time! She then proceeded to have a big drink of water. The other chooks in the pen next door were on the roost, but when they heard/saw her drinking, two of them came down and had a drink in their pen, too. It was rather cute!

We put fresh straw into the dog crate, and put her fake egg into it, then when she had eaten some food and had another drink, I tried putting her inside the crate. She fussed and clucked and then came out, acting frantic as though her egg was missing. I put her back in. Same deal.

Then my partner suggested we should get the straw from the old nest she had been using and put that into the crate. We did that, put her egg in there, put HER in there and waited.

There was some more clucking and fussing, and then a little noise that sounded like a cry of joy when she spotted her fake egg. She immediately settled on the egg, and that's how we left her.

She seems very determined to set, so I am going to organise some eggs for her early next week.

Oh, and while she was off the nest, she did a poop right at my feet, which was huge and omg!! The smell!!! I'd heard about these 'broody poos' but they seriously have to be smelled to be believed.

I suppose that was my just desserts for dropping her headfirst into her water bucket!

Tis the season...

to be broody, it seems! My light sussex hen, Bertha is all grim determination to have chicks even with being flogged off the nest three times by her coopmates who wanted to lay their eggs, today. She would just wait by the nest hopping from one foot to the other, making her little bok-buk-bok-buk noises until the hen laying was finished, then back in she would go.


I've been chatting online with some of my chicken breeding friends and they're encouraging me to try setting her with some eggs as Sussex are usually reliable brooders which, once they're settled don't break until the eggs hatch. One suggestion is to let her sit for a week or two on fake eggs and then go in at night and swap the 'eggs' out for day old chicks, which she should happily mother without too much fuss as she will think they are her own. This is tempting as I really would love to get some Australorp chicks to raise for next season and gradaully switch to breeding just Australorps and maybe having Wyandottes for color and variety in the coops.

  so tempted am I, indeed that I have emailed a breeder of Australorps already about getting some fertile eggs.