Tag: chooks
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Bird Nets For Garden Beds
We have a real problem here with wild birds eating our seedlings. They love broccoli, lettuce, beans, beetroot, silverbeet, corn – they even pulled out some of our onions and garlic! Don’t get me wrong, I love the birds – satin bowerbirds and purple swamphens are the main offenders – I just wish they’d leave our…
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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…
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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…
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Backyard Veggie Patch Workshop in Jamberoo
A few weeks ago I attended another Sustainable Illawarra workshop – “Starting a Backyard Veggie Patch” at Jamberoo Primary School. Megan then attended the repeat of the workshop a week later. It was great that we were both able to do effectively the same workshop without need to organise child care! The workshop was delivered…
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How To Encourage A Hen To Go Broody
I previously posted asking if anyone had any suggestions on [how to make a hen go broody](http://green-change.com/2010/01/14/how-do-you-make-a-chicken-go-broody/). I got some helpful answers, and did some research, and found a few suggestions: – leave eggs in the nest – put golf balls in the nest, so she thinks they’re eggs – set up a nice quiet…
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We’ve Got Ducks!
We had been planning to get a couple more chickens once we got our chook run finished. Molly is a bit of a sporadic layer, and the silkies are even less reliable. We figured a couple of good layers would shore up our egg supply so we’d never need to buy any more. Sarah had…
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Backyard Escargot
Would you eat escargot (i.e. snails) in a fancy French restaurant? Would you buy prepared snails from a deli and cook them at home? What about eating snails from your garden? I was doing some research, trying to figure out how to get rid of snails in gardens, and discovered that the garden snails we…
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Interview And Photos
We did an interview and some photos with Paul from Wollongong Council for Sustainable Illawarra today. Paul is going around and gathering stories from about 25 different households, putting together some case studies and other materials for the Sustainable Illawarra project. Maybe we’ll end up on their web site, or possibly in a booklet or…
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Where To Buy Chicken Tractors
I previously posted a list of online resources I found useful (for both plans and inspiration) when designing our chicken tractor, but I got a lot of emails asking where people could buy chicken tractors. Not everyone has the time (or tools!) to build something from scratch. You can buy chickens tractors in two main…
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First Egg!
I’ve long watched [other chicken-bloggers report their first eggs](http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22first+egg%22&btnG=Search+Blogs), and now it’s finally my turn! When I came home from work today, I went out into the backyard to have a look at the garden and the chickens, as I normally do. On a whim, I opened up the door to the roost to check…