Friday, January 16, 2009

And now to the Chooks!!!


Everyone who has the space and has kids should have chooks....or chickens as most of the world calls them!!

We have five, some people would think we are completely looney to have chooks in our suburban garden, and I must admit they do stay in their run most of the time because our garden is only young but they have quite a good life.

Other chook owners use theirs for eggs, chook poo, and when the time comes they also have free range poultry, me I love them way too much to serve them up for dinner. I'm told it was a fatal mistake giving them names: Rosie, Grace, Dot, Ruby and Sooty!

They arent pure bred chooks but Rosie and Dot are Leghorn Welsummer crosses, Rosie is Queen of the roost that's her to the right with the beautiful red breast.

Sooty, Grace and Ruby are Araucana /Frizzle crosses. The Araucana part of them means their eggs are blue and very pretty.

We have arranged our chook shed with a permaculture design in mind, our back yard is on a relatively steep incline. So the chookies are right up the back at the top of the hill. When it rains, although this a rarity at the moment all the goodness from the chook run flows down the hill and into the swale, where we have planted a couple of fruit trees. So they get the benefit .

At present we do get about 5 eggs a day, on a good day, but when the're molting they tend to go off the lay which is probably just as well, because if how they look is anything to go by they need all their energy to get new feathers as soon as possible.

My son Sam wants me to borrow a rooster so we can have chicks,I have yet to decide whether i will or not we shall see! We love our choockies and their eggs are well worth the trouble.

This is Bruce, guardian of the chooks.(He's a Border Collie)

3 comments:

  1. For me, the sound of chickens is the sound of the country.

    My sister keeps chickens back in the UK and has grown completely attached to them. She,s no friend of the foxes though!

    ReplyDelete
  2. pretty chickens. How many minutes/hours a week does it take to tend them? I'm on the brink of getting some for our huge shared back garden, but wondering about three things:
    1 How to delegate when I go overseas
    2 How the 2 Hunting cats will deal with chickens
    3 Who to get to build their hutch.

    Advice warmly welcome!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cecelia, if you are talking about house cat type cats then I wouldn't worry about full grown chickens. Where we live a lot of people just let their cats roam everywhere and we have never had a problem with cats. In fact, I once watched my chickens fully surround a cat that was eyeballing them and the cat quickly decided to move on to another yard.

    Racoons and dogs, on the other hand, can be a huge problem.

    ReplyDelete

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