Why keep chooks?

Someone asked me the other day, "Why do you keep chooks?"


A picture is worth a thousand words and this one speaks for itself.

The children feed the chooks last night's left overs for breakfast and in return the chooks provide the children with breakfast!

These eggs are an hour old.

We know what has gone into them. They are loaded with Omega3.

They have zero food miles.

My question is: Why wouldn't you keep chooks?



Bringing pullets into lay

I've had some feedback this week that some pullets I rehomed that are about 22 weeks old have not come into lay yet!



Here's Salt & Pepper settled down to lay (sorry about the photo quality but it's lovely and dark in the laying boxes).



Today's haul!

Despite a serious flood and minus temperatures overnight every single one of the girls at my place who is old enough to be laying is laying. 


If your Designer Backyarders have not come into lay and you're buying eggs at the supermarket this is an issue with a simple solution...

1. Up their protein intake.

Cat biscuits have 30% protein compared with premium laying pellets with 16% so soak a handful of cat biscuits in hot water or milk for their breakfast. 

Ask you local butcher to put the band saw dust aside for you at the end of each day then collect it once of twice a week. Feed each girl a walnut sized peice every day for a week then every second day for a week then twice a day -- when they begin to lay use it for treats only.

Meal worms are great and contain a massive 67% protein -- get freeze dried ones if you're squeemish.

2. Warm them up on the inside by increasing the oil content of their diet.

Black sunflower seeds (no matter how many you have left don't feed them these after they start laying and definitely NEVER feed them these when it's not winter).

Treat them to a few tins of sardines -- Aldi sell them for 60cents.

Together these two strategies should bring your girls into lay. And we're only 7 days away from the shortest day of the year so the sun will be on your side soon too.  Longer days will also encourage your girls to do what they do best -- provide you with breakfast!

One brown, one toffee and one green.

If you have a Designer Backyarder that is laying pretty green eggs I'd love to hear from you.

Nice weather for ducks!

You would expect the chooks to be a little excited at the prospect of a new raw straw house but it appears they are not alone.

These 3 little monkeys seem kind of thrilled too!

But then the rains came and didn't stop so work will be delayed for a week or so.



This is our road in flood.



You would think that would mean the chooks are pretty wet and miserable but soneone had other plans. Unable to get to school becasue of the water Miss P spent the day taking turned to warm and hand feed each one in front of the heater.

 

New pens

So before I can start the trial to find the best commercial layer feed on the market I need to divide the flock up into 4 separate pens.

That way I can accurately record how much they eat and how many eggs they covert that food into.

They will have to take turns free ranging -- but they do have 11m X5m in each pen.

At the end of the season I will know which feed to recommend to new mini-flock families.



This is the first of 4 new pens (I'm going to have to start holding my camera sideways to outsmart Blogger).



And this is the second pen.

Next will come the coops. 

I'm planning to build a raw straw house.  The bales will be stacked like bricks to stay strong and stable without the need for any other infrastructure.

The bales will be easy to disassemble when the floor needs cleaning.  This will also air the straw regularly so mould and parasites don't start thinking it's a cosy place to move into.

The raw straw house will provide a nice warm place for the hens to lay and brood -- although some may need to be reolcated when they are broody if the other hens in the pen insist on adding to their clutch of eggs each day.

A pitched iron roof will keep the rain out but will be light enough to move during the cleaning.

In a year or two when the raw straw bales begin to break down they will become mulch for the comfrey, tansy and lavender garden.

With the shortest day of the year fast approaching I am looking forward to having some hens go broody. 

Food for thought -- literally!

While re-homing my mini-flocks this season a common theme emerged and it has given me some food for thought.

Families were surprised that the chook food would need to be prepared and cooked each morning. But rather than seeing that as a negative I'm look on the bright side...



Lovely rainbow if you turn your head (becasue Blogger won't!)

I grew up in suburban Melbourne in the 1980s and we always had chooks – no-one else I ever knew did. We also had ducks and pheasants at different times.  My mum, depending on which way you look at it, was either a trailblazer or stuck in the 1940s.

Every morning our kitchen was filled with the lovely aroma of pollard simmering away with last night’s leftovers.  Mine still does now -- although these days it's also loaded with spiralena powder, fish oil, milk powder and other nutritious goodies. 

It seems many people’s lives are too busy for this additional morning task and so not wanting the chooks to seem like a chore, I am committed to spending this season finding a simpler feed solution.

I’ve decided to test four commercial chook feeds (I haven't chosen them just yet but have started some research). Whichever feed generates the best input by weight : egg output ratio will be declared the “best” at the end of the season.

Usually I’d also be interested in fertility rates, but as designer backyarder families have chooks for eggs so that’s what I’m measuring.

The first step will be to put four roosters into separate pens and see how much food each of them consumes.

That way then the girls are added to the pens I will be able to subtract the roosters’ food from the calculations. 

This way I know I’m making a fair comparison.

So here are the boys that will father the next generation of designer backyarders...

Mr Mister - I know two girls who like him already.

Simon -- hey isn't that the same girls?

Can-Go (great photo it's a real shame Blogger insists of placing it sideways!)

And Lilapple (rhymes with 'pineapple' in the same way his brother pictured above rhymes with 'mango' -- that's what happens when 5 year olds get to name the pets).

Now all I need is four new pens to keep them all separate...

Best ever chook feeder

I was looking for a chook feeder that wasn’t fiddly and time consuming to refill so Dine-A-Chook seemed like a good option for me.

To refill the Dine-A-Chook I don’t even have to bend over; the parts don’t warp and wear in such a way that it’s a battle to get it back together; and it sits in the sun without becoming brittle.

What I didn’t realise was that I was also getting a feeder that would simultaneously solve a heap of other problems I had come to accept as being part and parcel of feeding chooks – like the wild birds which come to eat then leave behind mites;  the vermin which carry disease; and the waste that comes from food going mouldy.

The first reaction people have when they see my Dine-A-Chook is “I reckon I can make one”—but I always explain that there’s much more to it than meets the eye.

You wouldn’t bother going through all the time, effort, cost and heartache of trial and error to get it right when you can just fast forward to the perfect set-up.

So refilling the feeder is now easy plus I don’t need to do it nearly as often as I used to because I’m going through so much less grain. My only regret is that Dine-A-Chook didn’t come along sooner!

I would hate to think back over the last decade and add up the money I’ve wasted in chook feed lost to mice, birds and mould. It has paid for itself many times over.

Dine-A-Chook is a healthy, easy way to feed gain and pellets that keeps both me and my chooks happy.

If you have chooks, you should get one!

If you have lots of chooks, you should get a few.

Dine-A-Chook

Housing problems, err, solutions.

We have moved into a gorgeous old house on a farm.

The plan is that by expanding how many girls we can house and care for broody at once, we can meet your demands for more Designer Backyarders more quickly.

But while where the humans live is great, we have to pretty much start from scratch for the chooks.

To keep these little girls happy and healthy I'm on the hunt for a solution with the following features:

• Quick and easy to install (winter is upon us!)
• Simple to clean out
• Able to accomodate a mother from laying right through to raising
• Good ventilation
• Attractive
• Non-permanent

And...

Have simple, child-proof access for egg collecting.

I'll keep you posted on my progress towards finding the best solution in Australia on the market today.

Any product reviews you wish to share will be received with tremendous thanks.

Also on my list of things to tackle before the next season takes-off is fencing solutions; feed for layers; and recipes for using up all those wonderful eggs. Over the coming weeks I'll cover the best, the worst & everything in between.