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

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

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