Chicks meet pigs

Here are the chicks at Earth Fest 2012.

Due to the weather we were inside... sharing a room with a farmer who breeds Wessex Saddle Back Pig!

It was nice to share the space with someone who shares my philosophy of allowing animals to live naturally, raise their young naturally & is not driven by economics when it is not in the best interests of animals.

His pigs free range, no nose rings but they do have teeth, tusks & tails! Can you believe piglets usually have their teeth pulled out so they don’t damage their mother’s teats – if that was a real danger pigs would have died out within a year of coming out of the arc.

The mother pigs are not kept in stalls or other cruel contraptions either.

It was nice to meet thousands of people – many of them already have hens at home but now they will view them in a whole different way and reconsider some of their living conditions.

I know there was a rush on comfrey & tansy at local nurseries later in the day & from all the interest in the Dine-A-Chook feeder I imagine they will be busy with orders too.

People noticed how calm and friendly the chooks were despite the hectic crowds and noise. I think they enjoyed the constant company and attention.

All the children coming through loved them!

We have quite a few deliveries over the next few weeks... handing over our lovely girls just before they begin to lay (always a sad and a happy day).

Little blue red joins the flock

Here is one of the chicks waiting his turn at the Dine-A-Chook.

We have had some really wild weather but the grain and pellets have remained utterly dry.

Salt & Pepper and her 3 chicks are off to Earth Fest this weekend.

Last weekend we went to a poultry auction to sell some of our young roosters.  We came home with this gorgeous little girl (see left).

I bought her and her sister because no-one was bidding on them and I desperately didn't want them to go home with the breeder.

It's a bit hard to see in this image but she is a dubbing victim. 

That's when breeders slice the combs off tiny chicks! Yes, they take a chick and literally cut off their comb -- in Australia in 2012.  Difficult to believe this can happen with supposedly civilised people but she and her sister have the scars to prove that it still happens.

They do it so their pretty face isn't obsecured or to prevent the chook from being injured (none of my chooks have EVER had an injury to its comb!) -- they defend this with other equally weak excuses too. 

It is cruel and should be outlawed. 

So anyway... for now she lives with us and loves sitting on my childrens' knees watching TV in the evenings. After a season or two with our lovely mother hens she may learn enough to eventually be allowed to become a mother too.

I don't keep bantams and blue/red isn't in our colour scheme.

Maybe someone at Earth Fest wanting little bantams may decide to give her a home.

Settling in

These are the rapidly growing chicks.

Those early woggles have me thinking 'boy'.

Same with this little guy.

And this one is very rooster-ish now too!

So I've gone from thinking we'd managed the impossible dream of 3 girls to wondering if they are 3 roosters. The one at the bottom has the same shaped comb at their father, the top 2 have the single comb like their mother.



They have settled in to our new home wonderfully and make the old house picture perfect strolling across the lawns.

And they are part of the gardening team. (You'll have to turn sideways for this one -- for some strange reason Blogger insists on twisting it sideways!).

 We are in the process of building new lodgings for the chooks.  Pulling down the old ones means lots of earwigs and slaters to gorge themselves on.  It slows down the job considerably because with every peice of timber that's moved I have to wait for the chooks to clean up the bugs before I can move on to the next peice.

Yesterday they were in danger of being squashed with the roof threatening to fall but there was no moving them on until every wriggling insert had been devourered.

They really are great pest control.

The chicks chased each other for an hour taking turns to peck at a huge huntsman spider.

One sad thing to report: during that massive storm and flood event last week I didn't go out one night to move Alice in when she had gone clucky in a nest she had built outside the run.

The thought of having to climb through 2 wire fences in torrents of rain then carry a pecking chook back and try to settle it elsewhere seemed like a big hassle when the chances of any predators being out in such weather seemed remote but I learnt a hard lesson.  It seems foxes and/or feral cats come out whatever the weather because the next morning all that remained in the nest was a pile of feathers.

Fox proofing is top of our list with the new enclosure design.

Fuel economy and cost of servicing

No pics today just some hard facts...

Fuel ecomony
 When you are looking to buy a car you don’t just look at the purchase price -- You factor in the fuel economy of different models; you find out the cost of servicing and parts; and you think about the brand’s reputation for longevity -- then factor in all these things before making a decision based on what the car will cost you over the long run.


The same is true when choosing chooks.


A $30 Light Sussex pullet may seem very reasonable. But when you consider that it has to be fed everyday for the next 8 or 10 years and realise it will eat more than twice what my designer backyarders eat, that $30 initial investment turns out to be a VERY costly one.


Pure breeds have been developed for showing.

Breeders don’t mind if they stand at the feeder for 8 hours a day guzzling grain as long as their plumage matches what the “standard” requires & it’s likely win lots of lovely ribbons.


These same breeders don’t mind if their chooks only lay an egg every few days because every egg is going into an incubator – and everything that doesn’t measure up to the ‘standard’ is either sold to unsuspecting first timers for $30 or culled (that's a nice word they use for 'killed').


These are chicks that were hatched and raised by machines.

They might be friendly but they don’t exhibit normal chook behaviours. I liken it to monkeys riding horses in circuses – in the 1960s it was cute, but now we know better and should not make excuses for this kind of cruel treatment of animals.

Chooks raised by good mothers have a preference for foraging rather than the lazy habit of standing at a feeder gorging themselves.


The cheap chicks sold by breeders are a way of supplementing their hobby in search of perfection to put on the show bench. They don’t care that it’s not much suited to living in someone’s garden for the next 10 years.


The other option is to go for a commercial layer such as Isa Browns.

These have been bred to lay every day for a year (then the egg producers sell them for $17) but beware: They lay at any cost, even leaching calcium from their skeleton. The result is a chook that is past is “useful life”, not very hardy and not very healthy. In their second year they lay much less – and have a very short life span.


You’ve probably seen ads like “We have 3 lovely Isa Browns to give away because we’re moving” or “We’re downsizing and need to find homes for 4 Isa hens, they’re only 3 years old” – these are the people who brought the already exhausted commercial layers and are sick of feeding them for little egg return. When you buy their 3 year olds you relieve their guilt at not having to 'cull' them – then they happily head off to buy younger ones.


Service and parts


As with all animals, pure breeds have a small gene pool so when there is something wrong all examples of that breed are susceptible to either having it or carrying it.


When breeds are crossed the result is what is known as “hybrid vigour”.


This means new genes are introduced and the result is often stronger animals, better resistance to disease and longer lifespan.


In my designer backyarders it also means laying longer.

Worst offenders


When comparing the calorie intake to egg output here is a list of the 3 worst offenders:


• Sussex


• Cochin


• Pekin

Wet, wet, wet

These are the 26 day old chicks.

After the hottest weekend this summer with days hovering around 37degrees, it has now rained for 3 days and nights.

I think they're over it.

Chooks do like the rain and it usually puts them into a preening frenzy.

Rain means lots of insects on the move -- to the chicks' delight.

Rain usually also means wasted, wet feed -- and in summer wasted, wet and mouldy feed.







So far Dine-A-Chook has lived up to all its promises and the grain has stayed completely dry.


Readers of Green Magazine might recognise this fellow.  He's in the large photo sitting on the little girl's knee.


Just to give you can idea of how radpidly they grow and change, those photos were taken about 5 weeks ago.

And here is one of the Christmas hatch pullets -- only 9 weeks old and comfortably able to use the Dine-A-Chook.

Dietary requirements of healthy chooks

These are the 23 day old chicks.





The girls are having some watermelon to stay cool. It seems the boy is too cool for watermelon!

But he was up to his ankles in breakfast. This is boiled up veggie peelings with Swisse Wild Krill oil capsules, organic linseed (flax), egg, lavender leaves and spiralena powder (which explains the green tinge their food always has).

These chicks will grow up with glossy feathers, strong bones, good health and when the girls begin laying their eggs will be loaded with Omega 3.

These chooks will also know to seek out medicinal plants in their garden because they were introduced to them when they were only 4 days old and are used to eating them  even though they have strong scents and flavours. 

Key plants to make available to your chooks include tansy, lavender, wormwood and comfrey.

Ready for rehoming -- are you ready?

These are the 3 week old chicks.

This is how they start their day. Not quite tall enough for the Dine-A-Chook feeder just yet...

Most of the bigger chicks head straight towards it in the morning when they are let out from their fox-proof henhouse.

Today they spent most of the day pecking at watermelon to stay cool.



 So with Green Magazine now on the shelves in newsagents and available to subscribers on-line there has been a burst of interest in who is available for rehoming right now.

To make things fair for you and easy me, below are some photos.

To have them at your place you must commit to the following:

• The chooks will be provided with a suitable area where scratching and digging is allowed and encouraged.
• They will have permanent access to areas of dappled light and deep shade.
• Fresh tansy, lavender, comfrey and wormwood will be grown and made available for the chooks to eat.

Regulars to this blog may recognise her... yes, it's the adorable NQR.

Very few of our "not staying" chicks get names but she is especially special -- possibly the most special chick we've ever had, and certainly the most asked after by readers!

There are two groups of sisters available for rehoming right now.

I don't break up sisters who were hatched and raised together. This is how their family structure would operate in the wild, think how lion prides work and it's pretty much the same deal with chickens -- girls stay together and all the boys other than the alpha male move on once they near maturity.

One group hatched on Christmas Day

The other group is 2 weeks younger.

1 group is 3 sisters, 1 group is 4 sisters.

OK it was 38 degrees today and both the chicks and I weren't really managing the photos very well so I've cheated and given you this group shot!  This will give you an idea of what your flock will look like!  Pretty huh?

And then just to confuse everyone here is one of Miss Lilly's lovely chicks.

She is turning out to be stunning and has a sister who is identical.

There are only 2 girls in that hatch so they will probably stay here with their mother and aunties... or sometimes groups of 2 go to very small gardens (but it's not ideal as they can become anxious when there's only a pair of them).

The alternative is that Salt and Pepper also only has 2 girls in her hatch so perhaps we'll team the cousins up into a gorgeous group of 4.