Posted on 8th May 2010 by admin in Chickens | Susan's posts
australorps, Chickens, isa browns
We’ve been thinking about getting a couple of extra chickens for a while. Our chicken hatching plans came to nothing a few months ago so we’ve been trying to get hens at the point of lay stage from Alice Springs.
I’ve just had some unexpected time in Alice so I got serious about a hen hunt. On my first night in Alice Trevor had rung with the news that our bantam hen was missing. She wasn’t in any of her normal hidey holes, and between us we said that she had to be dead – once she was out of the run the dogs would make short work of her. But I was still holding out hope that she had found a new secret space where she was sitting out one of her broody states.
The next morning Trevor rang to say that he had found Miss B in the front yard – dead but not eaten. I was unexpectedly teary – she was a weird bird but a character who had endeared herself to us. She was right down at the bottom of the pecking order and hung out by herself all the time waiting for scraps left over by the other two chickens. We would feed her on the side with titbits to make sure she wasn’t too left out, but it was a lonely life I would think. She slept separately to the other two but on the night before she went missing Trevor said that he saw her cuddled up to the other two on the roost. I think she was planning her escape and this was her goodbye to the other two. In tracking how she got out Trevor found scratch marks under the run gate. There is a little gap there and she must have squeezed herself under it to get out. It must have been quite a chase that went on when the dogs discovered her. She didn’t have a mark on her and I suspect that she either died of fright and stress or that one of the dogs shook her to death. A total surprise though that two part dingo dogs didn’t proceed to eat her.
So back to the hen hunt which now took on another dimension. Our supplier of fertile eggs (and consequently the hens that lay them) was out of town, the pet shop had had some but had sold out, Laucke Mills (the source of many wonderful things for farmers and homesteaders) had had hundreds of chicks but had sold out really quickly.
It’s true that chickens are the new “hot” pet.
Isa Browns in moult
Anyway I saw a sign at Laucke’s from a person selling Sussex Whites, Barnvelders and Australorps all at point of lay. A phone call and I’m on my way to check out the chickens. To cut a long story short I headed back to Yuendumu with two beautiful Australorps.
They are big birds, even for 16 weeks old, which is just as well as the Isa Browns are none too pleased. There isn’t anything really seriously aggro, and the Isas did allow the Australorps to roost with them last night, but there are clear demarcation lines being set of what they can do and where they can do it. We are keeping an eye on it all to make sure that the Australorps do get some fun time as well. Plus putting out separate water feeders and feed trays to make sure there isn’t a hogging of the food and water by the Isas.
Daphne and Orphelia trying to work out how they got to Yuendumu
The Australorps seem rather befuddled by it all and of course are still trying to work out how they ended up in Yuendumu with two cranky brown hens as compared to be surrounded by other Australorps, Sussex Whites and Barnvelders. The Isas are just coming out of moult and are still looking very tatty. Against the Australorps, now named Daphne and Orphelia, they look very dowdy. But they are still cheery with us, and flit around us and between our legs and supervise us when we are working in the run.They are quite charming, even though they have a nasty reputation when it comes to their being mixed with other breeds.
The Australorps seem quite surprised to have people around in the run not realising of course that they have entered into an arid permaculture setup where they will have a range of jobs helping us to garden. We’ll break it to them slowly.
Isas doing compost work
Posted on 9th February 2010 by admin in Chickens | Susan's posts
Chickens
I reckon nature has it totally worked out. There’s hens and there’s a rooster, nature takes it course, 3 weeks later or thereabouts there are baby chickens. Problem of course being the rooster crowing.
We’ve got this problem (as far as noise is concerned) that we live next to the Yuendumu Old People’s Place who provide a range of services including palliative care. We don’t want to have a rooster waking up the neighbours when the people staying there need rest and quiet.
So we’ve got this bantam hen that goes broody at the drop of a hat and having read all the chicken books and web articles we could find, we decided to get fertilised eggs from an Alice Springs person Trevor knows.
It’s not that easy – for one thing our trips to Alice are infrequent and generally unplanned so we didn’t have a nesting box ready for the eggs and the bantam. The hen house where the normal nesting boxes are gets really really hot in our area and having the bantam in there all day has already put her at risk a few times before when she has been in her broody state.
So Trevor made up a makeshift box after work with his usual care and bits and peices he has found at the tip and it looked really great. We put it in the run on a couple of pieces of steel to keep it off the ground a bit and under the bit of the roof to make it relatively cool.
Next get the bantam out of the hen house where she was coincidentally in her broody mode on a nest and trying to hatch 2 unfertilised eggs. Fortunately chickens are really easy to manage at night so she didn’t protest too much. We stuck her on the nest and put the fertilised eggs in around her as best we could.
She sort of looked OK for a few minutes and then emboldened by the beam of light from Trevor’s head lamp she leaped out. I grabbed her and stuck her back in and Trevor got some fence grating and put it up against the entrance.
I dreamed that night of little chickens. But next morning she was no longer broody and the eggs were abandoned.
Consultations with the local chicken expert revealed that we should have put her in the nesting box with the eggs she had already warmed up. And then gradually introduce the new eggs.
So next time that’s what we are going to try. But I can’t help but think a rooster might be a better bet. Or failing that I’m on eBay bidding for an egg incubator.
A bit later the same night ….
Trevor’s got his old yoghurt maker out and set up an incubator. This is a great site for all sorts of information about artificial hatching - http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/resources/egg_to_chick/procedures.html
POSTSCRIPT – The yoghurt maker overheated and the eggs are now history. Back to the drawing board.
Posted on 5th February 2010 by admin in Chickens | Susan's posts
Chickens
We are still trying to get a big run built for the chickens. Their current run and hen house are quite big enough for 3 chickens, but we want to be able to use the chickens to help us with working the soil. Its going to be quite a big job as we want the run to actually be in the form of 4 enclosed garden beds that we can open individually when the planting in a bed is finished. So its taking us a while.
We planted green manure in the beds an
yway and we are building the fencing around the beds. The chickens find it quite interesting to hear the work going on, but can’t see much because we’ve got iron sheets around the base of the chook yard to reduce the temptations for the dogs.
We put a piece of wood into the current chicken pen a while ago so we could hang greens off it. Occasionally the biggest of the chickens will fly up onto the beam and have a bit of a look out and tease the dogs. Yesterday I went out to collect eggs and found all three of the chooks sitting on the beam checking out the green manure.
I don’t know what it is about chickens, but I find them very funny. It just broke me up when I saw them and even more so when one of them turned around with its back to us and waggled its tail like a duck.
Posted on 2nd February 2010 by admin in Chickens | Susan's posts
Chickens
Once upon a time someone found a small featherless bird and gave it to kind hearted people who as it turned out had chickens.
Was it a wedgetail eagle, a hawk? Experts were consulted and agreed it was a raptor of some kind but what kind?
A week or so passed and feathers grew and it dawned on everyone that it was a chicken. A rooster though of course with that history.
The chickens passed to other people as domestic circumstances changed. They looked forward to to the sound of the pitter patter of little chicken feet. But days and weeks passed and no cock a doodle a doodle was to be heard.
A google search was carried out on the sexing of chickens. Conclusion it’s a hen. That explains the mystery of the four eggs a day when there were only three hens.
From eagle to rooster to hen – what a shape shifter. Time for a new name for the chicken from the Wati that he/she has been carrying till now.
