Interesting chooky facts

I picked up a copy of the current pip, Australian Permaculture (issue #7), magazine and it's chock full of chooky goodness, but, what I found interesting was the Editoral by Robyn Rosenfeldt, full of interesting chooky facts.

facts like

• The earliest evidence of domestication is believed to date back to 5400BCE in China.
• Evidence of domestication has also been found dating back thousands of years in Iran, Pakistan, India, Africa, and North and South America.
• All chickens have descended from the red jungle fowl of South-East Asia.
• Around 800 BCE ancient Egyptians were artificially incubating eggs and at the same time, Romans were experimenting with dishes such as omelettes and stuffed chickens ans using farming practices to fatten birds for eating.

Chickens were oftenheld in religious esteem where they were worshipped and often they were used as oracles and omens in times of war.

There you go, I'm going to grab a nice cuppa and sit down and read all about chooks plus a myriad of other useful and interesting articles.

Cheers.

Yours in chookyness.

Better late than never or should've been years ago.

 I say, 'Better late than never,' wife says, 'Should've been years ago.'

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree but she may have a point.

Fixing the gate to the chook enclosure that has been broken for the last ten years or maybe more.

And, done! Hanging and swinging like a good gate should.

Mid Week Blues

It seems I've got the mid week gardening withdrawal blues.

I've started a new roster for driving the Taxi that will give me every weekend to myself instead of having a split week.

But last Saturday I felt unwell and had to work on Sunday so it's been nearly two weeks since I've managed anything productive in the garden.

So that leaves me Thursday and Friday to battle through and then I've got two glorious golden days to garden my little heart away with.

I've got to clean the chook pen and spread new straw for them, organise a bin and two piles of compost. There's a gazillion seeds and seedlings to plant. And I've managed to borrow some of the neighbours backyard for planting pumpkin in so that's got to have horse manure, compost and coffee grounds added to it.

And mentioning coffee grounds, I've got buckets of the stuff to spread and add to garden beds, throw it over the lawn and in compost. It's everywhere.

I am currently enjoying some of the best broccoli I've ever grown, along with heaps of peas, lettuce, rocket and coriander. Just enough strawberries to keep me interested and the broad beans are flowering like mad but no beans yet.

Onions, garlic and beetroot are making good growth as well as radish, lettuce, purple climbing beans, Chinese cabbage and pokchoi.

 I can't get any leek seeds to sprout so I'm guessing the seed is old. It's a fresh packet but just no go. Not even one out of two sowings.

How fast does water cress grow? I think my seed has shot but it's very slow to get growing. My first time growing water cress so I've nothing to compare it with.

Not having much luck with capsicum and eggplant seed as well but that might just be from the coldish weather. I'll sow a few more this weekend and see if I have more luck.

Well that's about it for now, chomping at the bit for the weekend to get here.

Cheers

Stewart

Keeping Backyard Chooks

 Claire Bickle Gardening

Plants galore, gardening info, organic growing, chooks + all things horticultural & bits and pieces relating to nature, sustainability & science. Enjoy!

Fresh Eggs Daily blog

Still no eggs

I found this great post on Fresh Eggs Daily blog yesterday about adding fresh and dried herbs to your chooks feed, via Pinterest, and found it interesting and informative so I'm posting it here to share the tips they have.

I have herbs growing wild here and there is always an abundance so it only seems fair to share them with my chooks.

Although the weather is very Spring like here at the moment they still haven't started to lay. With a bit of luck this might get them going.

Cheers and hope you enjoy,

Stewart.

Built like a brick chookhouse.

Rhonda Hamilton and the chook house

I couldn't go past this story from ABC Rural without passing the link to all of you.

Built like a brick chook house. Swing by and have a read.

A 'myriad' of problems

A 'myriad' of problems were need to be solved in the chook pen.


Myriad definition, a very great or indefinitely great number of persons or things. 

Damn I really wanted to use myriad but as it was I only had two pressing problems that needed to be solved in the chook pen so scratch (pun intended) myriad. Both problems, though,  were solved with the purchase of a chook feeder thingy which (as you can see in the photo) cost me the princely sum of twenty three dollars and eighty cents and should pay for itself in no time flat.


The first problem was the wastage of food. This occured when I would put their food in the piece of guttering you can see in the photo. The problem was that their feed contained molassis soaked sunflower seeds that they went absolutley mad for and in the ensuing rush to get as many sunny seeds as possible they managed to spread the rest of their food all over the place. This was making it easy for regular birds to help themselvs to a feast and costing me a bucket of extra food a week in the process. Since using the feeder I have reduced my feed usage by about half.


My second problem was that now that I am driving day shift in the cab I don't have the spare time to just wander up and feed them any ol' time I like so I needed a semi automatic way of feeding them and now all I need to do is load up the chook feeder with food and there good for three or four days. (Note to self. Must fill chook feeder tomorrow)


So there you have it. Not quite a myriad but a good result none the less.


Cheers


Stewart

Tucker time

Tucker time for the girls. The layer mash I buy is coated in molasses and there is black sunflower seeds (chicken lollies) in the mix which they go mad for.
A little fresh straw and away we go.

Popcorn anyone?

Riveting stuff hey? You can hear the traffic in the backgroung because we live a few houses from one of the busiest corners in Toowoomba.




The pecking order isn't hard to work out. The Isa browns, Bill(ie) and Ben(ita) seem to have control of the place even though they were introduced after the White Sussex, Shirlie and Anne Boleyn, who are second in order.
Then there is the random in-between supposed to be some kind of a bantam is third and then the, Andrews Sisters, three bantam Australthorps are last.

And this is what I get for all my trouble.
Two bantams are laying and it looks like the Isa Browns are laying.
I knew the White Sussex would be lazy layers which is why I got the others to pick up there slack, but I like the look of them.

Cheers 'till next time,

Stewart

4 eggs

Up around these parts we have a beer called XXXX, but when I went to feed the chooks this morning I had something even better than XXXX and that was '4 eggs'. (ha ha ha, do ya get it, XXXX, 4 eggs, it's early, it's the best I can do)

Way to go girls, thank-you very much. The scrambled eggs for brekky are much appreciated ;-] though I don't think they'll be reading this anytime soon.

While I'm here I'd also like to say today is the most splendiferous day ever, well, that is until the next one.

Cheers and I hope your day is as splendiferious as mine,

Stewart

It's a girl

My Bantam laid her first egg today. Happy about that.

Now I have two Isa browns (Bill and Ben) and a Bantam (Shirley) laying eggs. Now if I can just get these lazy Light Sussex to lay!

Easy as 1,2,3.

Well we finally have eggs.

And if you had your money on my Light Sussex laying first then I'm afraid you've done your dosh.

That's right, the scummy Isa Browns (at least one of them did) won the race to be the first to lay eggs.

Oh well at least some of the money I'm outlaying on food is getting turned into something other than Chicken energy and manure.







Cheers for now and happy Chickening and eggening,
Stewart

The Chook Report

Remember these guys?
I got them back in Feb 24 2009.

It seems like I've had them forever.

Anyhow this is basically a photo report on their progress.




The next three photos are of the two new chooks my wife purchased the other day.




























These two photos are of my favorite chook/bantam, she is at the bottom of the pecking order but it only means she has to wait before the others will let her eat.

I like her poise and colouring. I think she is a proud chook.















The rest are the Light Sussex hens. I lost the rooster a while ago but the hens are fat as fools and I'm still waiting on the eggs to arrive.







The cost so far is $50.00 for the chooks and 4 bags of feed @ $18.00 which = $112.00. And if you divide that by $4.00 for a doz of eggs then these guys owe me 28 doz eggs.

I wonder if I lent an axe outside the gate to their pen if they would get the message or should I be a little more patient?





Click on the photos and you'll get a bigger picture.












Cheers for now and happy chickening
Stewart

Magic Monday

Hi all, well after two weeks of sinus problems and 97mls of rain I made it down to the Toowoomba community organic gardens today.

The main job I wanted to complete was to plant the broad bean seeds that I collected from last years crop to use for a green manure crop.

Job done.

The peas I planted a few weeks ago have come up and are well on their way so the next job will be to provide them some support.

Even though they are a bush pea they still grow up to one meter high and will need supporting.

Next when I got home was some new laying boxes for the chook a books.

They are about 6/7 months old so they should start laying soon, but I'm guessing they might not start until the day length starts to get longer.




The Rolls Royce of laying boxes or am I just kidding myself.














My dear wife has been getting frustrated waiting for my chooks to start laying eggs and went out to the local produce store and got herself two point of lay chooks.

So now it's a race to see who lays eggs first.

That's it for Monday,
Cheers and happy gardening,
Stewart

Here, Chook, chook, chook, chook.

Remember these guys I bought on the Monday, January 19, 2009














I went out to get 5 chooks and came back with 1 rooster 4 chooks and a bantam.















The bantam came about because the lady I bought them from didn't want to charge $10.00 for this girl.

She didn't like the markings on her so offered her to me for $5.00 which was OK with me, but I only had a $50.00 note and she had no change so she offered me the bantam for the remaining $5.00, which, again, was OK with me.









Two cute.

















You talking to me? So far no noise from the Rooster, but he is giving the Bantam a hard time.

Naughty Rooster and bloody ugly too.

Maybe it's an inferior complex because the Bantam is a pretty looking chook.








Beautiful plumage the Norweigen Blue er I mean the Light Sussex.

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Beer battered Fish and chips and some new arrivals

This recipe makes enough batter for the fish and the chips.

Dinner I cooked last night for me and my daughter. Yummo. Two hrs. later and I writing this post and I'm still satisfied.


Q. Why is this here on my Veggie blog?
A. Because the chips were made with my King Edward potato's. And a fine tasting beer battered chip they make too.

I lifted the last of my potato's yesterday and scored another bucket full. Won't last me through winter but it'll keep me going for a while.





At last I have chooks. We've had them before but had some trouble with them having their heads ripped off. It is now a lot harder to get into our back yard now and we are hopeful of not having a repeat experience.

About two mounths old.
4 Light Sussex Hens
1 Light Sussex Rooster
and one bantam that I knew I forget what it is and I have, but thrown in by a very generous seller.







I have the Bushland project blog to thank for putting me onto the Farmstock website where I was able to eventually find these little guys.
A great resource for finding all sorts of farmstock.

I'll be showing and talking a lot more about these guys as time goes on.

Cheers
Stewart