Hovabator Incubator Fridgemate Hack
A cheap incubator can be turned into something much more accurate and reliable with a simple $50 digital temperature controller.
Willie Wagtail Chicks
A new generation of pest-eaters has arrived, with a nest of willie wagtails in one of our trees.
Missing Hen Returns With Chicks
Our missing hen returns with a pleasant surprise for us – four gorgeous little chicks!
An Assortment of Duck and Chicken Eggs
You get a lot of variations in the size, shape and colour of eggs between different breeds of chickens and ducks. There’s a fair bit of natural variation within a breed, and even with eggs from the same bird. Here’s a lineup of some recent eggs we’ve collected.
An Alternative Broody Hen Solution
If you’ve got a broody hen, rather than trying to “break her” why not let her raise a clutch of eggs? It requires almost no effort on your part, and is a lot of fun.
Processing Chickens
That’s the euphemism for those that don’t like to say “slaughtering and butchering chickens”! I processed the last two roosters from our first batch of chicks today. We’re keeping the one female from the group to join our layer flock. This photo is from the start of June – I just realised I hadn’t taken … [Read more…]
Chicks Taken By Predator!
Some sad news, I’m afraid – two of the three chicks that Girlie hatched have disappeared. We’d left Girlie and the chicks in the main chicken run, since they had a safe indoor area that the rooster can’t get into (the entrance is just small enough that he can’t/won’t go in). Things had been going … [Read more…]
Organic Fruit Fly Control and Hatching Chicks
We had a fantastic presentation today at the Jamberoo Community Growers meeting, by the people from Organic Crop Protectants. A big part of the talk was on organic fruit fly control, using their “eco-naturalure” male fruit fly trap and attractant/insecticide products. It looks like a great system to keep these frustrating pests down. You simply … [Read more…]
Playing With Their Food
I was telling some friends at work about our new chicks, and when I mentioned that we were growing them out for meat they asked if our girls – aged 4, 6 and 8 – knew. To be honest, we’ve been upfront with them since before the chicks hatched. We’ve been clear all along that … [Read more…]
Hatching Chicks
This story has been a bit of a saga. Remember back when I got Molly the leghorn to go broody and slipped some eggs under her? Well, none hatched. I think it was a combination of inexperienced first-time mother and low fertility rate of eggs. She was sitting on 6 eggs: three exploded in the … [Read more…]