Chooks and chickens

Having grown up with chickens roaming round the yard and the boisterous crowing of the roosters as part of the soundtrack of my childhood, it seemed only natural that we should have some of the feathery fowl.

Getting started was easy enough as my mother still keeps a motley crew of hens. Working through the technicalities has been a little more challenging.  Chickens are generally low maintenance, forage for a good portion of their food and offer a variety of valuable by-products including eggs, meat, earth moving, feathers, manure and body heat.

Assuming you have a rooster, their tendency to hatch out large numbers of babies means, for better or worse, the size of your flock can grow very quickly.

Chooks are laying again!

Chooks are laying again!

We were beginning to question the commitment of our chooks (and the manhood of our rooster) as the winter egg famine failed to break.

I spent numerous evenings digging the ground to expose worms, collecting sea shells for grit and finally they are away.
August 29, 2010
  Laying  eggs  spring  chooks 
olmec
The little fellas

The little fellas

In an attempt to diversify our gene pool and add a touch more variety to our flock we acquired 6 new chooks.

The 3 little english game hens, as seen in the foreground, are cute little midgets and the rooster has a hilarious crow...

Also in the mix, 2 bantams and a lavender arikana.
June 29, 2010
  English Game Hens  Small Chooks   
Chooks for weeding and soil enhancement

Chooks for weeding and soil enhancement

I have been developing a process that directs the energy (and manure) of the chicken into a specific piece of soil.
Rather than unleash the chickens in the garden I decided to take the garden (at least bits of it) to them.
January 31, 2010
  chooks  chickens  gardening  weeding  manure 
olmec
Learn More
Eating Meat

Eating Meat

We decided to cook our young rooster since he was eating plenty and not making any eggs.
He was about 6 months old, one of our first set of baby chickens.
Follow my easy steps for killing, plucking, gutting and cooking.
April 06, 2010
  Chooks  meat  butchering 
olmec
Instructions
Chopping the clucky chook for dinner

Chopping the clucky chook for dinner

So, our chooks have started going clucky (broody) on us again. That means fewer eggs and the usual dramas of trying to get them 'unclucked'. Since we have been considering downscaling our operation due to the excess of eggs and the damage caused in the garden by the aggressively scratching fowls it seemed like an opportunity to have a chicken dinner.
January 24, 2011
  cook  eat  kill  clucky  broody  hen  chook 
olmec
Full Story
Quooks!

Quooks!

Today the baby quails have hatched and the big clucky chook has become a mother! There are six babies altogether. There were 7 this morning, but that's a sad and rather funny story.....basically the little quail was sitting up in the nest box and was chirping away. It then got excited and jumped giddily out of the nest box, bounced off the ramp, landed on the floor and was promptly picked up in the beak of hungry chook who thought it was a scrap of food. We tried to rescue it, but it was too tiny to survive such a trama. But at least it got to have a near flight experience in it's short little life.
December 05, 2009
  chooks  chickens  quail 
Melisa Sinclair
Read More