Sour crop chook

Our restful Sunday afternoon suddenly went in to first aid mode when Ads noticed one of our chooks was acting weird. She was bustin' some pretty funky dance moves - something like a cross between a snake and a youthful Young Talent Time hopeful. But she didn't look happy. Her eyes were blinky and her tail was droopy. After an extensive 10 minute Google lit review I diagnosed sour crop. This is when the crop gets full of sour, fermenting, smelly, acidy liquid possibly caused by some kind of fungal infection. You can feel her crop and its enlarged and soft like a balloon - so the computer told me.

The cure was unnerving. We had to make her vomit. The idea of sticking my finger down my chooks throat to release the stinking mess in her crop did not appeal to me. But as luck has it, my sister walked through the door just at this moment. Adam and Sarah are the crisis A-team. While I go all flakey and start dry reaching at the thought of leaky animals, Adam and Sarah hold their nerve. 

The strategy was to maker the chook spew then give her yogurt. Sarah also suggested adding garlic to the yogurt, Tzatziki style. Quin wanted in on the action and made mix under his aunty's watchful eye. 

Now, the vomit bit was pretty gross but not difficult to achieve. In fact Ads just picked her up and she started dripping liquid from her beak. Then he just tipped her like a teapot and more came out. You have to only do it for a few seconds at a time so they can breath. Good to know. Sarah gently pressed her crop to get the last of the liquid out. It didn't seem to distress her at all - I imagine it would have been a relief. Poor spew girl. We let her have a little run then spoon fed her the yogurt/garlic mix. We probably only got about a a teaspoon down her.

I put her in the broody box overnight with a small amount of grain mixed in with her yogurt and clean water. Poor spew girl.

This morning she seems fine, so I've let her out and will keep a close eye on her. Fingers crossed she pulls through!

The chook pooped on a book

I had to take my chook to work the other day. She is a beautiful girl and was needed for a photo shoot in the Grove Community Centre to promote the Less is More Festival. She was very well behaved and smiled when asked by the photographer.

However, she did poop. On a book. But we cleaned it up and the lovely staff at the library didn't seem to mind so much. And it resulted in a fantastic article on page 5 of the local paper - my chook and Lindsay Miles posing for the festival!

I absolutely love my job because I get to hang out with some amazing people and learn so much about living more sustainably. I spent all of Saturday at the Less is More Festival which was coordinated by Lindsay (an Earth Carers volunteer). With help from us in the office she gathered around 22 volunteer presenters and around 17 support volunteers to hold a day of rolling workshops and activities designed to help people live more sustainably and consciously. The festival is in its third year and 2014 was the best yet! I'm not sure if it was because we had some extra funding from Lotterywest for advertising or if people are just into it more, but there were hundreds and hundreds of people there. The nice thing about this year was that there were a lot of ordinary looking western suburbs folks who might not have been exposed to DIY toothpaste or composting much before. Lindsay specifically marketed the festival at everyone, not just our beloved hippies. I feel we really struck a chord with lots of people and we have been able to get the 'Full lives, empty bins' message out there.

I didn't take any photos on the day - I missed the chance to get one of Adam doing his fruit tree talk. He gave away a banana tree to a very happy chappy. And I did my usual on composting.

The festival was a lot of work, but its such a buzz to be able to share our passions with others and to get such a positive response from the community! My friend (and sometimes parallel blogger) Lindsay has popped some pics on her blog, so rather than duplicate here is the link to Treading My Own Path.

Eight acres chook interview

We've just been interviewed about chooks by the Eight Acres blog, if you'd like to make any comments or have any questions, fire away. We're not really chook experts, but we'll do our best!

Sneaky chooks

Over the Christmas New Year break we had a heat wave in Perth. The girls went well off the lay, fair enough. But we have also had some lovely weather... But still not heaps of eggs. We'd been wondering if our little faithful brown girls were at the end of their productive lives. But then today we discovered their little secret nest in under the wormwood. There were heaps of eggs! And now we feel bad for ever doubting our wonderful girls. Ads will have to make some serious spreadsheet adjustments.

2012 eggs

We ended the year with 1,386 eggs laid. This was a great result, our best to date. Of course we couldn't eat this many eggs, but it's great to give them away, barter them or sell a few every now and again.

We now have seven chooks, four Hi-line browns and three Australorps. The Hi-lines are about a year old and in their prime, whereas the Australorps are about 4 years old now. In year one the Australorps laid well but since then their production has dropped off and they're often broody. They still lay the odd egg, but I'd say that they lay about 1 a day between them whereas the Hi-lines lay 3 a day between them on average. It's early days for the hi-lines but if they keep their laying up for a few years I'd have to say that they're the best backyard layers for the burbs. Since we can't keep roosters and breed chooks there doesn't seem much point in having heritage chooks, except for their beauty and interesting looks. I love Australorps but their broodiness is a big issue. Auracanas are great for their blue eggs but they don't live that long from our experience.

The new chooks arrived at the end of January and started laying almost immediately. They laid well through autumn and there was the usual dip in production in winter, although this was much less marked than in previous years. Then they cranked up in spring and have been laying a bit less in summer. We'll keep an eye on the production from the Australorps, Lacey, Snowy and Splash. Hopefully they'll keep going a while longer so we don't have to make the tough decision over whether to keep them or not...

Hi-line = high production

It's been 4 months since we got four new Hi-line brown chooks. These hybrid hens have been bred for the sole purpose of pumping out eggs regularly and by heck do they do a good job of it. It took them a few weeks to get going but since then this has been the result most days. 

We have seven chooks now (we off loaded our two Wyandottes to a breeder a while ago), but our older girls (Australorps) are not laying at all now. This means our new girls lay an egg a day almost every day! You can see from the chart below that production is picking up markedly.

This has meant our cumulative total is running well above all previous years and should easily surpass our best ever year.

Now we're wondering what to do with our old girls. They're almost four years old now and they're not laying. They may come back into lay in the spring but we are paying a fair bit for food with no gain in eggs right now. We obviously have an emotional attachment to them, but they do need to pay their way a bit.

On another note, today is a joyous day. After searching the web far and wide with no success I have now found an easy, quick way to put Excel charts in the blog. Up until now I have been printing charts, then scanning them and saving them as jpegs before importing to blogger (what a pain in the arse). Now I've found a much better way. A brilliant geek by the name of Jon Peltier has developed an Excel add-in to export a chart as a png file. All I have to do now is highlight a chart, click on the add-in and it exports it to wherever you want to put it. Then you go to blogger and import the png image. It's so easy, I love it. The best bit is that it's free, download the export chart zip here and install the add-in.Thank you Jon, geek c'est chic! 

Chook house reno's

Isn't it funny how things work out. Just a few weeks ago I was talking here about how the chook's egg production dips in winter and the need for insulation in chook houses. Then I got some coolroom panels on Freecycle, which we have been looking for for the roof of the Hilton Harvest Chookship. The panels turned out to be no good for the job, so a light bulb went off in my head. Why don't I use the panels to insulate our drafty old tin chook house. So I got up early last Sunday and got to work (a nice cool day for a change). Amy strolled up after a nice long sleep in to view the progress. She casually remarked on how good it would be if we made the house taller so we could walk in to it. At first I thought that's a great idea, but then it dawned on me that a small project would turn into a 3 day mission. We debated this for a while until consensus was reached that we didn't really need to do the extra work (Phew!).

This is how it looked before the reno.

I did the roof first, with nice thick 150mm panels (the R rating of these is over 4). The panels are just aluminium on the outside with polystyrene on the inside. I cut the panels to length (with a grinder and saw). Then I ripped off the old roof and put some jarrah boards in to attach the panels to more easily.

The tricky part was lining up the holes in the panels with the wood. I had to drill one side of the panel, then flip it and drill the other side (didn't have a long enough drill bit). Then I pushed out the polystyrene between the two holes and put the panel in place. The next step was to put an 8" bolt through the hole and push on it to mark the wood, take the panel off and drill the wood, put the panel back on and put the bolt through, attaching it with a washer and nut the other side. I did this for all 6 holes, maybe I'll buy a long drill bit when I do it for Hilton Harvest! Anyway, it worked out well with only one hole needing to be drilled twice. The roof has a western pitch, so it won't radiate heat in summer and will keep the chooks warm in the winter nights.

I installed one 100mm and one 70mm thick panel on the western side too. Unfortunately I had to leave a piece of tin on one end because there wasn't room between the big adjacent tree trunk and the shed. This panel should deflect the hot afternoon sun in summer and keep the cold out in winter.

I also put in a panel on the southern side and one on the eastern side (thinner 70mm panels). These were easier since I just needed 90mm tek screws to attach them.

Lastly I put flashing on to clean it up a bit and I've allowed for the vents in the upper parts of the side walls to be boarded up in winter to keep the wind out and the heat in. I had some bits of zincalume left over from the solar pergola which worked well to cover exposed polystyrene and shed water. The shed is not solar passive unfortunately (that would have involved tearing it down and moving it and starting all over again), which means that the sun will not be able to heat up the place in winter. Still, I think it's a great improvement. The total cost for the project was about $100, mainly for the flashing and screws and nuts and bolts.

We had another disastrous egg sitting experience, so we've said "Bugger it" and got 4 hybrid Hi-lines from City Farmers. Here is one of them checking out the new accomodation.

We can't wait for the eggs to start flowing on a more regular basis.

Chooks year 3

 By now you know I like collecting data, but I bet you'll think I am totally obsessive compulsive when you hear that we've been counting our eggs for the last 3 years. But aren't the results fascinating?! My spreadsheet 'Eggsactly' has shown us that: older hens lay less; hens lay less eggs in winter in Perth and; heirloom chooks suck when it comes to egg production! Below is Holly, one of our Golden Laced Wyandottes and our Australorps Snowy, Martha, Splash and Lacey.

In year 1 we averaged 2.7 eggs a day, in year 2 this dropped to 2.1 and last year it dropped to 1.5 eggs a day. Our flock numbers have declined a bit over the years, but age is an obvious factor in the drop in egg production. Most of the hens were around 6 months when we started taking stats, which means they are now around three and a half. This year has been disappointing and we've come to the conclusion that we need new blood in our flock to re-invigorate it and increase our production. As vegetarians we rely on eggs a lot for protein and of course you just can't beat a fresh, free range, home laid egg. We've have had some problems getting our broodies to sit on fertile eggs, but we just put batch number 3 under Lacey and we're hoping it will be third time lucky. The breeds we now have are Australorp (3) and Wyandottes (2), which are heirloom breeds. They are beautiful hens and I'd still like to keep a few for interest, but our new chooks will be hybrid Hi-line crosses which will hopefully lay loads of eggs for us.

Seasonality is another big factor in our egg production. The averages by season for all three years are 2.5 eggs/day for summer (December-February), 1.7 for autumn (March to May), 1.1 for winter (June to August) and 2.7 for spring (September to November). So despite extremely hot summers and relatively mild winters hens struggle in winter and do well in summer. This highlights the need to give your chooks really good insulation (which we haven't done yet) and good solar access. I'd like to add an extra layer of tin above the roof of our hen house and put in aircell insulation and some insulation batts at some stage. Ideally we'd make a solar passive chook yard, but we don't have room for that unfortunately. Check out this cool 'Chookship' Hilton Harvest are building for their chooks. It's made with used tyres rammed with adobe for high thermal mass. This will be rendered and enclosed with North facing windows to catch and store warmth in winter:

We're hoping for some very happy, productive chooks at HH. This might be a bit OTT for the backyard though, unless you happen to have a gang of keen, fit Woofers to give you a hand...

No chicks

21 days came and went with no "cheep cheep" sounds. We weren't too optimistic since the episode when Lacey got off the nest for a night. Today was day 22 and there were only two eggs left. The rest had either been smashed or eaten. So I took Lacey out and she seemed quite happy to get her freedom back. I took the eggs out and smashed them to see what was going on. They both popped with a loud bang and smelled awful. I was very sad to see two perfectly formed little chicks in there. I'm pretty sure they were both dead, they had a lot of yolk in with them and were pretty small. It looked like they had been going along nicely until she got off the eggs and didn't develop after that.

Where to now? We're tossing up whether to give it one more go or buy day old chicks. I'm tempted to give the eggs another go and put a roof over the broody area so the mother can't get out if startled. I just love the idea of the chicks having a Mum in there with them teaching them life skills and protecting them from the rest of the hens.

Summer is here I'm afraid. This is our least favourite season due to the extreme heat and lack of rainfall. It gets very hard to keep the garden productive in Perth over summer. We just had three days over 35C and the rains seem to have gone. Despite an 'average' winter of rainfall the dams are at 35%, which means if they drop 17% as they did last summer it won't be possible to take any more water from them. A cool change just came in thankfully and we'll get a week of cooler days.

On a lighter note the bananas are going well. We have about 8 hands with around 15 fruit each. They are still very small, but I'm hoping they'll get bigger soon. Even if they don't I'm sure they will taste infinitely better than  
the supermarket variety. 

Blooming bananas

It doesn't seem so long ago that we posted on the flower spike's emergence, but things are happening fast with our bananas. The flower stork shot up in the air and then promptly dived down towards the ground, at which I ran around panicking that the tree would fall over and we'd lose our babies. After some emailing and discussions we decided that we didn't need to prop the bunch yet since the trunk of our plant is so sturdy. Here is the latest shot.

The bunch is pretty big and smells beautiful and sweet. I had a peek today and here is the best bit.

I guess they are about 10cm long, with around 20 fruit in each bunch. I don't know how many hands we'll get, but I'm hoping we get at least 200 fingers (fruit) in all. I'm surprised that they're yellow, not green. Anyway, we'll let you know the ongoing progress.

Lacey seems to be doing a fairly good job of sitting on her eggs. One disappeared (I'm pretty sure she ate it), but apparently that's not too unusual. One day Amy found her off the nest, she had flown over the small fence and gone back into the laying boxes. We think she must have got a fright (rat?) and freaked out a bit. Amy put her straight back and we're hoping she wasn't off for too long and that the eggs are still viable. 8 days to go...

Motherhood

A few weeks ago we bought some fertile eggs to put under one of our broodies, Polly. Motherhood didn't seem to suit her unfortunately and it all turned out badly in the end. She broke a few eggs and pooed in the nest, then she broke a few more eggs, we cleaned up the mess but I think it was too late by then. In the end we went away for the weekend and when we came back she was off the nest and all the eggs were broken. We think maybe she's just too highly strung for the job, so she won't get another chance.

Oh well. We've selected a new broody and we think she'll be a great mum. It's Lacey, one of our Australorps. She is the most placid, beautiful little girl and she often gets broody. We put her in the separate chick nest before we bought the eggs and after a while she settled in. Then we bought another dozen eggs and she is happily sitting on them now. As soon as we put them under her she nuzzled them up close to her and she seems like a natural. Fingers crossed, we'll know in about 20 days.

Motherly Instincts

Tonight we put a dozen fertile eggs under Polly. She is our broodiest girl, viciously broody. She doesn't just peck you when you collect the eggs, she pecks and twists and has drawn blood more than once. I think she will be a very good and dedicated mum.

This is the first time we have tried to hatch our own chooks and its all very exciting! Adam made a little enclosure for Polly with a big dog kennel (off the verge) and a lawn mower grass catcher (also off the verge) for a nest. We made her little nest and dusted it with derris dust to keep off any mites. We went off to Oakford to collect the fertile eggs this afternoon - they are Isa Brown cross. When we got home we moved Polly from her normal nesting box to her new family home nesting box but she became a little unsettled and came off the nest. The lady we got the eggs off suggested we put a grate over the nesting box so she stays put, so we did that and she stayed (of course!) and tonight we put the eggs under her. She gave Ads a good peck so we think this is a good sign.

We want to increase and diversify our flock with Isa Brown type chooks, you know the boring looking little brown girls that just lay and lay even through winter. Our beautiful Australorps and Winedotts are indeed beautiful and lay well in spring through autumn but go off the lay in winter. I think we will all get a kick out of seeing chicks hatch under Polly and we think Polly will be in seventh heaven with her own little brood to love and protect. Keep your fingers crossed that Polly will prove us right about her character!

Cruel to be kind

After having said how good the chooks are going we have the first broody chook of spring. Lacy, one of our Australorps, has just gone broody. For those who don't know, broodiness is when a chook wants to sit on eggs and raise chicks. They have an urge to be a mum in other words. This is not good if you just want eggs, because broodies don't lay eggs they just sit on them. Usually they lay one and the other chooks quite happily add to the pile. If you have a rooster and want to raise more chooks then you can turn this to your advantage, but we don't have a rooster so all our eggs are infertile. So how do you debroodify a hen? There are a few ways to do it. Some say to dunk the chook under water for a few seconds, but that hasn't worked for us. The only way we have found to work is the broody box.

Here is Lacy in our broody box. The Broody box is a cage we got off the verge. It has a small door just big enough to squeeze our biggest girl Snowy in. It is raised up on bricks to get the wind up the broody's clacker, the opposite of what she wants (a warm, dark, secluded spot). The other features are water and food, which we wire in so the chook won't tip them over. A shady spot is good for summer, sunny for winter. Some people see this as a cruel way to treat a chook, but they're wrong. If you leave a broody chook to itself it will stay there for weeks and will lose weight, get dehydrated and will be vulnerable to disease and heat/cold stress. The first thing a broody will do when you put it in the box is take a big drink of water because it's parched.

The broody will stay in there for 3-5 days. Most of the time a chook will come straight out and be fine, sometimes a persistent broody will need another stretch of time to get over the cluckiness. So be cruel to be kind next time you have a broody, it should do the trick. Hopefully the eggs will keep flowing...