Introducing Jed :) Born on the 28/9/2010. His mum "Tick" is a Bullarab and his dad "Spinner" is a Great Dane x Neopolitan Mastiff. Jed is a wonderful addition to our family and im sure he will fit right in.
Some new babies hatched out this week. We have eggs hacthing almost every week now with an excellent hatch rate due to the pc fans i have installed into the incubators.
The garden beds are going well and we ate out first lettuce from the gardens on Thursday night YUMMO!!
Ok so i put out a call to my forum buddies for eggs to be donated to our schools gardening program. The kids are going to hatch and sell any left over chicks and use the money to buy plants for their gardens. Im pleased to say that i was FLOODED with offers of eggs :) and im stoked. The first lot should arrive today 2dz crossbred eggs and a doz mixed. The kids will be very happy im sure. The idea is for me to hatch them at home (ditching any bad egsgs) then take the chickies to the school when they are a few days old to hopefully help get past that delicate "dropped dead for no reason" stage and save tears all round. A huge thankyou to those who donated eggs :)
Some new chickies arrived over the week. We now have australorps,australorpx,australorpxwelsummer,australorpxsussex,light sussex(1),chinese silkie(1),pekin(1) and 2 of the cutest little jap bantams bubs in the world calling my brooder box home, plus "Ranger" the lone chickie.
I fitted a pc fan to my still air incubator and after a sleepless night getting up to make sure i wasnt burning the house down, im please to say its running like a champ! Temp is steady and im getting excited that i might actually get a decent hatch rate this time round.Its a wonder what folks can do with an old mobile phone charger and a pc fan :)
The 3 boys went camping to "Cascades" on the Tuross River and had a blast, a natural water slide forming the highlight of their weekend. They are heading back next weekend and taking the 2 older girls, so its will be just me and Miss Lolli for the long weekend.
Not much in the way of gardening going on, my leeks are up and look wonderful and i can see cabbages poking their leaves up. And my silverbeet in the foam box is looking good too. More tomatoe seeds to plant. Second raised bed will be finsihed this week in time for the tomato seedlings to go in.
School holidays are a mixed blessing with no early morning starts but as the week wears on the kids start to get bored and fight.Keeping them busy is the key and the boys love to do gardening so its a win win situation.
Yes we know that caged eggs are a no no. We all know what goes on behind the scenes with hens being crammed up to 5 deep into small cages in stinking hot sheds with lights running 24/7.
So most people opt for "barn laid eggs" which are endorsed by the RSPCA and brings to mind a peaceful setting of a nice barn with a loft filled with straw in which the hens can scratch and get exercise and have space to move.
That is what I thought too, sadly this is not the case. When I went to purchase some hens that were being offered by my local barn-laid egg place i was shocked and horrified to learn that the eggs I had been buying and feeding to my family we causing such distress and cruelty to hens.
They were practically bald and were a miserable bunch of birds,crawling with lice and packed into small plastic freight crates to be eitehr sold off to people like me or off to the dogfood companies in the following days.
Many had large open wounds from other hens picking at their bare flesh. Some had lost the tips of their toes due to a build up of ammonia in their feces in the bottom of the shed. Nearly all had sores on their feet. One had even had her eye pecked out and a nasty infection had set in. I had originally gone out to buy 5 hens for my backyard coop and ended up bringing 10 home and in the following weeks managed to help re home over 200 birds with friends and through advertising. This is where my love of Hy lines comes from. The girls were in poor condition but soon started to come good with fresh air and room to move. They even managed to become tame enough to tolerate being picked up and toted around by the children. We love our chooks and their eggs are a bonus.
We here is the awful truth behind "barn laid" eggs. The hens are in a tin shed in tiers or banks instead of cages. The national recommendation is 12 hens per sq metre which works out to be about the size of an A3 piece of paper per bird. This is apparently enough space to move around and nest properly.
The hens are 'de-beaked" a process which involves cutting the beak with a heated blade or laser in order to stop the birds cannibalising each other. Feather picking and cannibalism is a sign that the hens simply do not have enough space.
There is no happy end for the hens, once past their laying peak they start to cost more to feed than what they make so they are culled at 80 weeks of age and when you consider that naturally a hen would live for up to 10 years that is a very short lifespan.
Some are sold off to the public but most just end up as dogfood or compost.
Barn-laid is the egg companies and the RSPCA's dirty little secret.
Choose free range or even get a few of your own hens to supply your eggs. Don't let hens pay for your eggs.
I have tracked down some Indian Game hens and some fertile eggs through some people one of my favourite forums "Gourmet Backyard" Its a great local forum based here in the ACT,promoting organic gardening,livestock keeping and gourmet cooking using homegrown produce. A friendly bunch inhabit the forum and i never fail to get a giggle form their musings. I have learnt quite a bit on the site and made some friends too :)
We had 2 chicks hatch out of 8 on Friday, not a very good result but I'm having trouble stabilizing humidity. Unfortunately one has since died due to a birth defect, he was born without an anus. Quite a strange thing to happen.
So we have one chick left, his/her name is "Ranger" as in the lone ranger (hehehehe) Ranger has been given a teddy to snuggle up to and get plenty of cuddles throughout the day. From what i have read i expected to have a nightmare on my hands with constant chirping but Ranger seems quite happy with the teddy
We also had an outbreak of cocci which is a parasite of the gut, go through all our chicks. We lost all but 2 of our older chickens :( Everyone in the pen is now on sulphaquin.
We had some more tomato seeds arrive from eBay and even more have sprouted in the their pots.
I planted some zucchini plants,some cucumbers,cabbages and sage.
After watching my new favourite show "Return to River Cottage" i decided to build a poly tunnel. Hugh seems to be able to grow anything in his poly tunnel so we will see what ours lets us grow.
Today is day 18 for 8 of our chicken eggs in the incubator. I have topped up the water trays and added a damp cloth to help with humidity. The incubator now wont be opened until the last chick has emerged from the egg.
I also added 8 more eggs to the other incubator they and 9 others are due out between the 2-4th of October. We have 12 campbell duck eggs due out on the 7th of October.
hmmmm whats happend this week?? Oh I know we got our first duck egg from our new ducks :)
We planted some heirloom tomatoes,eggplants,chilli plants and pumpkins.
I learnt how to make lemon butter YUMMO!
Bought some more tomato seeds on Ebay, going to have toms coming out our ears, oh well i will have a crack at tomato chutney :)
The quails are growing well and are almost fully feathered now. I have 7 chicks from a friend that im growing out to see if they are Arthurs or Marthas hehehehe Arthurs will be eaten, Marthas will be kept to lay eggs.
Im trying to track down some Indian Game eggs so i can grow my own meat birds.
My first chicks of the season leave in a few weeks and my bantams arrive, we have decided that the colorbond aviary will make a wonderful Bantie Barn. They arrive in the school holidays.
On Friday we said a very heartbreaking goodbye to our sweet dog Bundy. Loyal,loving and ever faithful protector of home and family. She was always up for a game of zoomies with stroodle or a swim with the kids. So with a very heavy heart she left us for doggy heaven. Run free my beautiful girl, we will always love you xxxxx
Yesterday we welcomed 2 beautiful white call duck ladies to our flock :) They are super cute! I have put the this link in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_Duck so you can see all about this breed. They have settled in nicely and we even splashing in their little pond half an hour after they got here.I love having ducks again :) My 3 quail chicks are growing like weeds and are little eating machines. All the info i ahve read on quails says they are scared of humans from about 3 days after hatching...no one told mine that lol they actually come over to me when im feeding them and dont mind being picked up and handled as i try to figure out if they are males or females.
The chickens in the brooder are growing well and im turning the light off on them for the day it seems warm enough to me. They should be ready to go to their new home down the coast when the new owners come for them, bringing my new bantams :)
We have switched over to multigrain bread this week,on a whole it has been a smooth change with only one of the kids jacking up that he didnt like it. But with no other choice, its that or nothing.
We have been enjoying cake made from our fresh eggs and of course yummy curried egg sandwices on multigrain bread.
The coriander,mint and parsley are going gangbusters now that the chooks are confined to their pen. I feel kinda mean but they have desimated the grass and weeds with absoultly nothing left but bare dirt and chick poo at the back door. And we dont want them getting into the new vegie garden. But i have been weeding the front gardens so they have heaps of green stuff to keep them busy, i sprinkle their feed amongst the weeds and they spend the day scratching through it.
