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...
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| 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...
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| Mr Mister - I know two girls who like him already. |
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| Simon -- hey isn't that the same girls? |
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| Can-Go (great photo it's a real shame Blogger insists of placing it sideways!) |
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| 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...
