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
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…]