Fluffies

Today is 21 days since we set our clucky hen, since then we have been waiting and waiting. In the mean time we did have a few surprise arrivals. 

                        This and his/her, brother/sister found behind the chook shed in early December.

                                This Mum and chick were found just last week wandering the yard.

This morning I checked on the expectant Mum and nothing, not a thing was happening. I went out for the day and returned home to this .......

Which the became this.....

and then.....

soon followed by.....

and lastly with a bit of chick starter encouragement.....

 

HOW CUTE!!

She is still sitting on a couple of eggs, so still could get more but we are REALLY happy with 5 chicks given our best so far has been 2 chicks. These eggs were from a friend so not sure what they are, some were bantam others full size.I'll have to find out what breeds and then people can have fun guessing breed and gender of the chicks. I know some were silkie eggs.

aus.keeys

Time for bed...

So its dusk and everyone is settling in for the night. To be honest I've not really sat and watched them all go to bed but today decided to sit and watch. Just like people, some went to bed early and others waiting till it was almost dark. 

 Getting ready for bed.

 Bed buddies.

These guys, the babies of the bunch were along with the bantams, were the last to head to bed.

I leave you with this photo, although a little blurry I thought it was worth sharing. 

You can see that even though ginger chick is now just over 4 weeks old and is big enough to fly up onto the perch with its Mum, that Mum still puts her wing around it...very cute :)

aus.keeys

Pallets.....and other recycled materials

We wanted to have a backyard vegie garden for a few reasons -

• save money - I was sick of paying stupid prices for some of the easiest things to grow eg lettuce
• to encourage our youngest non vegie eating child to be interested and try things he helped to grow
• spend time together as a family doing something that benefits all of us - health and money wise
• learning how to preserve or freeze our produce so we have for the months its not in season
• to share with family and friends

 What I didn't want was to spend a fortune on setting it all up, it seemed to defeat the saving money part or the idea. Of course some things you have to spend money on there is no choice but where there is a choice, another option we have tried to do that. 

first pallet garden

The original garden bed was built with wood from a couple of pallets and filled with the manure, straw etc from a big clean out of the chicken coop. We left it for months and months to see how it would go in the weather.

This is the latest photo of this garden from a few weeks back.

The next garden game pretty much ready made, a HUGE pallet that had garden written all over it as soon as I saw it!

We filled it with manure from a friends cattle property that had been sitting around for about 6mths along with straw.

This garden now houses the zucchini and cucumbers which are growing like MAD! 

It was about this time we started thinking about needing compost and how we could build a compost bin so we by next spring would have some of our own. This would save money in not having to take green waste to the tip and not having to buy additives to boost the soil quality. I started researching and found all sorts of bins some cost alot of money and some we just slapped together but the end product was the same. I found a website that talked about a pallet compost bin which given I had pallets on hand grabbed my attention. After a few hours work this is what we ended up with .......

 

Its just pallets, chicken wire and a few brackets. The brackets were the only thing we had to buy to build it and cost us $12! We are slowly adding material to it and learning what we can and can't put on the heap. 

We look forward to next spring having our own compost to add to our gardens when preparing them for the spring/summer crops.

The next two gardens made were from another idea I'd seen and knew we had the materials for in the yard. Both these gardens used old roof tin and timber a neighbour had given us a few weeks earlier when moving house.We had run out of soil so went and bought some garden soil for this lot from the local tip at the cost of $100, yep thats $100 worth of dirt your looking at!

Our newest garden beds were built just yesterday.....yep we had gardening day, instead of boxing day. The garden beds are similar to the first bed we built of pallets.

We decided to build one not as deep as the other we will just be careful what we plant in it. 

This is the shorter bed with a layer of straw in the bottom, we just need to get some more soil. I already have some seedlings ready to go in. 

If anything I've learnt there is no point direct sowing as the rate isn't nearly as good as having them in the mini green houses and then moving when big enough. 

These mini green houses are my favourite, I have 3 of them and have a much better rate with them than anything else I've tried so far.

                                                       I planted out this corn today.

The most expensive thing in our garden so far apart from the $100 soil has been the tomato stakes but we figure we will get our money out of them over the next few years. 

I still think we will recoup our outlay in 6mths or so, its amazing how quickly the savings add up, we haven't had to buy lettuce in 2mths, we get enough beans for dinner a few nights a week, we have had our first few cucumbers, bok choi for stir fries for the past 2mths, spinach a few nights a week for 2mths, aprox 8kg of zucchinis and a capcicum. All this in just 2.5mths not bad at all!

aus.keeys

The SURPRISES just keep coming...

So while out in the garden today I heard alot of fussing going on from the chickens....I looked but couldn't see anything of interest so kept doing my thing. 

When heading back into the house, what do I spot wondering around the yard??? 

THIS......

Ummm why is there a Mum and chick walking around my yard?? 

 Seems another bantam had been sitting and is the proud mum of 1 little chick. As much as I loved watching them wonder around the yard, I'm a little worried about other animals taking them so they are now safe in a cadge till older.

Other chicken news of the day....

The four, ten week old black hens have been moved in with the other fully grown hens, we have been mixing them in the past few weeks and keeping an eye on them and decided today was the day. The move went well, they have a few less feathers than they started with but all in all was an easy transition it seems.

The Mum and four week old ginger chick moved into the cadge the black hens had been in, this will give mum a chance to teach it how to get up on the perch and whatever else a Mum teaches a chick to do. In another 6 weeks or so just like the black hens it will be time for it to move into the main flock.

Mum and the two bantam chicks now 2 weeks old moved into the old rabbit cadge Mum and ginger chick just moved out of. Mum was keen on the move to begin with but has settled in well now.

The other bantam is still sitting she is due on the 28th, we can't wait to see what hatches and how many :)

Its been a pretty busy afternoon with chicken house moving, we now have 23chickens with 1 rooster, 4 chicks and 18 hens and fingers crossed a few more by the end of next week!

aus.keeys

Busy few days... and Boys V's Girls

 

 This time or year is so busy, time just gets away, this last week has just flown by and I'm left wondering what I did? On face value it seems like I've done nothing but if I think about it ALOT has been done this past week!

I've picked LOTS of zucchini's and I mean LOTS I now have several lots of quiche in the freezer and gave some quiche away. I still have the large one I picked a few days ago waiting to be stuffed. I have 7 others still waiting to be used I picked today, I'm wondering what other people do with all their zucchini's?
Who cares to share their recipe?

We picked our first cucumber yesterday and it quickly found itself on sandwiches for lunch. Today we picked our first capsicum and although small was very tasty in tonights stirfry, can't wait for more.
The Bok Choi was also great in the stir fry tonight, although I found a white moth enjoying some earlier too! We get a handful of beans every few days, I didn't plant nearly enough it seems, (live and learn). Think I might plant some more tomorrow.LOTS of green tomato's I'm wondering if its ever going to be warm enough for them to turn red?
We seem to be spending more days like this....

Although the rain is nice we need some warm weather to move things along and ripen up those tomato's.

So who knows the difference between "boys" and "girls" ? Silly question really, well not really alot of people don't know their veggie flowers come in boy and girl varieties! So I thought I'd show you with these photos I took in the garden, as Mason who is 5 says "you can tell the girl one shes the one with the Baby and the boys do nothing" I had no choice but to agree hehe

Cucumber girl flower

Cucumber boy flower

Zucchini boy flower

 

Zucchini girl flower

Pumpkin girl flower

Pumpkin boy flower

  Once its pointed out its very obvious which are boys and girls. If they boys don't pollinate the girls with the bees help (or some human help) then the girl flowers just drop off without growing. The bees here seem to be doing a great job if the amount of  zucchini's are anything to go by!

aus.keeys

Zucchini MAD!!

Since our first zucchini the other day we have picked 8 others including one VERY large one I must have missed under the leaves when I've been out there before.

I usually try to pick them before they get to large as the flavour changes and I don't think they are as nice. That being said I might see about stuffing this one. I've not done it before and can't say I'm keen on the idea given I don't really like them other than in quiche but I'll give it a go. I'll update with a photo when I do....might be tomorrow nights dinner I think.

aus.keeys

Making a house a home....

I've been asked what kind of housing we have for our chickens, so I thought today I'd share with you.
I should add the beginning of the school holidays marks the BIG clean up of the cadges, so don't mind the mess. We give the cadges all a REALLY big clean each school holidays, in between we do small clean ups, lime and re-straw as needed and depending on weather. I'll soon blog our cleaning day :)

 We wanted chickens for eggs and didn't want to spend alot of money on fancy housing. To us spending alot of money on housing didn't matter to the chickens, they just want somewhere safe, warm and dry to live and we wanted fresh cheap eggs. Spending hundreds of dollars on housing defeated that purpose. All our housing has been second hand and either free or cheap, from ebay, free cycle or facebook.

This is the first cadge we started with, we put in a perch for them to roost on and an old set of cupboards we pulled out of the house as a nesting box.

This nesting box is still one of the favourites with 4-6 eggs layed in it most days.

This is the second cadge we bought when we got the bantams. It's similar to the first cadge, we didn't have a nesting box set up as the bantams weren't laying till a few months ago, however they found their own special place to lay their eggs. This second cadge now houses the four black hens, they only in the last few afternoons have started mixing with the bantams.

The bantams like laying in the lawn mower catcher.

Our third cadge we only bought two months ago and since having it has become the safe haven for mums and bubs and those sitting waiting to become mums.Its a bit overgrown cause we don't want to disturb the sitting mum and with all the rain the grass has taken off like MAD!!

You can see there is a small green cadge and a compost bin in this cadge.

 If you look you can see mum doing her duty sitting on the eggs, just another 8 days to go, chicken eggs take 21days to hatch.

We do have a few smaller cadges we use for various stages, this bird cadge we had the black hens in when they were still needing to be heated inside and now houses mum and 2 chicks. 

This cadge is and old rabbit hutch, it was a freebie on the curbside collection. It houses mum and one chick at the moment. 

As the chicks grow and needs change we will swap them around. 

 We fenced off a section in front of the 2 main houses, this means we can let them out of their cadges without having to let them into the main yard. This comes in handy when having friends over and having food outside, chickens love helping them self to a table of food and don't mind who is watching!! We also dog sit from time to time and the dog loves the chickens....to death :(    He will chase them and play with them till they die...a bit like a cat with a mouse I guess.

 For the most part our chickens free range in the yard, our grass has never looked so good and we have next to no weeds, they even eat the dog poo so no pooper scooping needed BONUS!!

Look has much the chick has grown...

Newborn

first feathers coming in

3weeks old

Almost 4 weeks old

 aus.keeys