Escapee Chicken

 
 

Lola is our escapee chook. Where Ninja, Scarecrow and Nightmare are usually content to stay in their (ample) yard, Lola takes every opportunity to escape.

Sometimes she digs under the fence and wriggles out commando-style; other times she flies onto the roof of the henhouse and escapes that way.  Not even clipped wings deter her.

I understand her desire for freedom.  Despite her obvious intelligence (or maybe because of it) Lola is at the bottom of the pecking order and spends much of her time being pecked at by the other chooks. 

Lola's favourite hiding place is under the now enormous tomato bushes.  This afternoon I noticed that she has developed a taste for the ripe tomatoes at the bottom of the bushes.

Clever girl!

Flaunting her freedom

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Our Four Chooks

We currently have four pet chooks, Scarecrow, Nightmare, Lola and Ninja.

Lola and Ninja are Isa Browns, and Scarecrow and Nightmare are Black Australorps.  Lola is light brown, Ninja is dark brown and Nightmare and Scarecrow are an identical shade of black.  None of us can tell them apart.

The chooks have a long yard along our back fence.  In the yard I planted four fruit trees; a Santa Rosa plum, a blood orange, a Jonathan apple and a Goldmine nectarine.  The idea is that the hens will fertilise the fruit trees and keep them bug and weed free, and in return the hens will receive fallen fruit and summer shade.

We, of course, get four beautiful brown eggs every day and the enormous pleasure of having Scarecrow, Nightmare, Lola and Ninja as pets.

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Just as Difficult

People say that young children are difficult to photograph because they won't stay still, but I think foraging chooks are easily as bad.  When the earth is full of bugs and worms, posing sedately just isn't an option.

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Victoria Sandwich with Lemon Butter

A Victoria Sandwich is, of course, not a sandwich made with bread and butter, but a type of sponge cake.

I made this one for afternoon tea on Friday, however unlike last time, I used our chooks' eggs rather than ducks' eggs.

The lemon butter (or curd) is made from my favourite lemon butter recipe ever, which I posted here.

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Double Yolker

A few days ago one of our chooks produced her first double-yolker.  It was the biggest egg that I have ever seen.

And it was delicious poached on toast for breakfast.  Look at the colour of that yolk!

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The Hardest Working Pets in Town

Would you define earthworms as pets?  It is probably a stretch to do so, yet I am very fond of the earthworms in my two worm farms.

The worm farms take all our 'green' food waste, including vegetable and fruit scraps, tea bags and leaves and coffee grounds, and turn them into beautiful, dark worm castings and worm 'juice' that, when diluted, makes a fantastic liquid fertiliser.

I have two commercial worm farms, a rectangular one and a round one.  I have had them for at least the past decade and they continue to work beautifully.  About once a week I add a handful of lime to neutralise the acidity of food scraps, but that's about the only maintenance the farms require.

I once killed off my entire worm population during one of Adelaide's severe heatwaves, so I now bring the worm farms into the laundry if I think we are going to have a run of extremely hot days.  The composting worms are quite expensive to buy, so killing them off is not a good idea.

I love my worms so much that when we moved to Adelaide I brought tub of my Melbourne worms in the car.

My goal for next summer is to produce all the garden fertiliser I need on site.  I hope to use a combination of compost, chook poo and of course, the wonderful castings produced by my composting worms.

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Ecstasy

Ecstasy for chickens is being able to dust-bathe.  

They spray dirt all over themselves and ruffle their feathers.  They roll around and writhe and close their eyes in sheer bliss. 

And if one chicken decides to dust-bathe, every other chicken nearby will try to get in the same hole to dust-bathe too.

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First Egg

There was great excitement at our red house yesterday when we found the first egg laid by our new hens.  It was perfect in every way.

2011

Going back through my blog archives I found the photo below of the first, tiny egg laid by one of our Melbourne bantams four years ago.  The hands that held it were four years younger and smaller than the hands in yesterday's picture, yet the excitement of discovery was exactly the same.

2007

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Autumn Vegetable Garden: May 2011

This is the first autumn that I have had a vegetable garden in Adelaide and I am amazed at how long my summer plants are lasting.

The eggplants and cherry tomatoes are still fruiting, although growth is slower than a month or two ago.  Even more surprising is that the basil plants haven't blackened off yet, despite some very cold nights.

I'm thinking about leaving the eggplant and capsicum plants in the ground until next summer to see if they will produce for a second year.  Have you ever done this?  Was it successful?

Apart from the remains of my summer planting, I have planted out some seeds and seedlings of winter vegetables such as lettuces, beets, turnips, swedes, broccoli and broad beans.  The tricky part is keeping the chooks from digging them up.

What are you growing in your garden this May?

Jap pumpkin

eggplant

iceberg lettuce in a planter

cherry tomatoes

chillis

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Partly Free Range

When we had bantams in Melbourne they free-ranged over our backyard all day long.  They only lived in their 'house' at night.

However, here in Adelaide we don't have side gates, so we have to keep our new chooks, Temple and Caramel, in their pen during the day.  They only free range in the afternoons when someone can be outside to keep an eye on them and keep them out of mischief.

Full size hens make much more of a mess than little bantams, so for the garden's sake it's probably a good idea to keep Temple and Caramel locked up most of the time.

It does feel strange though, to have graduated from babysitting children to babysitting feather-babies.

And no, I'm not feeling at all clucky.

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Chookie Ice Cream

Somebody once told me that silverbeet is like ice cream for chickens.

Judging by the way our new little hens guzzle down the silverbeet I pick for them, I'd say this information is correct!

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We Have Chooks

We have two new family members, 15 week old brown hens named Caramel and Temple.  Yes, I know Temple is an unusual name for a chook, but the namer was most insistent that Temple was what he wanted to call her.

At present Caramel and Temple are terrified of us, so they're staying in their pen while they settle in.

Now we're a five pet family; two chooks and three goldfish.  The kids are hoping for a dog next, and I am reliably informed that it will be called Popcorn - whatever breed it is.

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