New Chickens

I love how the keeping of poultry often comes hand in hand with opportunities to help other people. This has been the case this past week when I had the opportunity to buy some new chickens for my flock, whilst at the same time, helping out a couple of other poultry keepers. The first, was the person who owned the chickens I have bought. This man has been struggling with a serious illness for some time and has not been able to keep up with caring for his large flock of poultry. The time had come for him to downsize.

I bought five beautiful little bantam wyandottes from him.

The second opportunity to help someone came when I decided to sell my Australorp rooster and pullet to another poultry keeper who had recently lost most of his flock to thieves!

Selling the australorps helps me, because I now don’t have to worry about trying to handle birds which are too big for me, and it helps the buyer to replace some of his stolen flock.

That’s the way things seems to work in the ‘poultry world’ and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Our young chicks are continuing to grow at an incredible rate. They’re eating everything in sight at present, and love their greens, unlike many other youngsters I have known.

A few weeks ago I went to the Reject Shop and picked up a couple of Bra Savers. Not that I have any lingerie that really needs any special care, but when I saw these on the shelf, I had an immediate idea for another way to use them!

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Our First Poultry Show

I finally managed to grub up the courage to enter one of my chickens into a poultry show. I selected my Gold laced Wyandotte hen, Wynona whom my daughter Hannah affectionately calls “Little Win” for the show.

It was a small show for one of the poultry clubs I am a member of, so I thought this would be a good way to dip my toes in the water. Wynona is a very placid–dare I say– bombproof hen, who takes most things in her stride around home, so she made a good candidate for my nervous handling during preparation.

I took the preparation slowly, bathing her on a Wednesday, giving her a rest day on the Thursday then doing nails, feet and legs on the Friday with another rest on the Saturday before Sunday’s show. I’m pleased to say that this time when I attempted to trim her toenails there was no bloodshed! I trimmed them back just a tiny bit and then tidied and shaped them with a small nail file. Wynona seemed, if anything, curious about that process and offered gentle comments to her “pedicurist’ from time to time as I worked.

Here she is all washed, trimmed and ready for her big day. All that needed to be done on the day of the show was to give her feet a quick wash and oiling and to oil her comb and wattles.

She doesn’t look very impressed with me in this photo. I think she just wanted back in with her flock mates by now. I’d had her separated and quarantined from the others for almost a week!

The morning of the show dawned and we were up and on the road bright and early. It was a crisp cool Autumn morning, the kind that lets your breath hang in clouds of steam in the air. The chickens were all still roosting when I went to fetch Wynona from her pen. As for Wynona, she was up and having a sip of water as I slipped through the gate into the orchard. My rooster stirred and grumbled in the chicken coop and I am sure I heard one of the hens mutter something about how ‘mum’ must be sick if she was up that early!

We loaded Wynona into the back seat of the car and headed out on the highway. None of us having eaten breakfast. Wynona sat quietly in her carry pen, curiously peering out at the world rushing by the windows at 100kmh, faster than any chicken has ever travelled on foot!

If it was crisp at home, it was downright cold when we reached the venue for the show. Hannah and I got Wynona out of the car. I went to see the stewards and registered my entry and then we began the final preparations. A few stray feathers had popped up along the sides of her comb and I held her while Hannah carefully trimmed them away with a small pair of curved scissors. I gave her legs and feet a last minute clean and then rubbed oil into the scales to make them gleam. Wynona quite enjoyed that part and had a little doze while I gently massaged.

Finally, she was as ready as she would ever be, and I carried her down to the poultry pavillion and loaded her into her show pen. The hardwork and patience paid off though when I went back to her pen a little while later and discovered a lovely surprise!

 

“Little Win” had lived up to her name and took out first prize in her class. (Just don’t tell her she was the only bird in her class! I’d hate to shatter her illusions).

I also received a lovely prize as a female exhibitor on the day and I had a lot of fun. I think this is something I will do again. It was a friendly atmosphere, a lovely day, and there were so many beautiful fowls there to view and admire!

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Perching Chicks

The latest batch of chicks are growing and developing a lot faster than our first batch did. I have to wonder if this is because they are hybrids as opposed to pure bred. Yesterday, we placed a small branch from a tree into the corner of the brooder and it was not long before one of them was up on it, showing off her superior balancing skills!

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A Grand Day Out!

On Sunday, we had a nice little outing when we travelled up the Blackall range to the township of Maleny. There was a poultry show on up there, which I had entered my little black pullet into, but then I had to withdraw her when she prolapsed. We still stopped in to view the other birds in the show as well, and that was well worth the trip to see some beautiful poultry. I didn’t think to take any photos of the poultry while I was there even though I had my iPhone with me and could easily have done so. It was quite crowded in the sheds and I didn’t want to be in anyone’s way. You can see pictures of some of the winners at the Poultry Matters Forum.

After looking around at the poultry show, we went into the township of Maleny to take a look at the Sunday Markets and to have some lunch. I got my camera out at the markets to snap photos of the beautiful cupcakes one of the stallholders had on offer.

Maleny township is a very pretty place and has some unique sculptures in the main street. The town is in the middle of a thriving dairy district, so these sculptures are quite appropriate.

I don’t know what the sculpture is called, but I called it Metallicows.

We ended our trip with a delicious seafood lunch at Captain Merv’s Seafood Cafe

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Not So Good Friday

I mentioned in my previous post that our Good Friday this Easter break was accompanied by its own set of challenges. Well, now I have gotten past the worst of it, I can post about what happened.

On Friday morning, I went up to the coops to let my chickens out, and to fetch my Australorp pullet so that I could get off to an early start with her training for the show bench. I went into the coop and did my usual head count, and short period of observation of the hens which I do every morning in order to ensure everyone is present and in good health.

Right away, I noticed that something was ‘off’ about the Australorp. She stood off in a corner, alone and had the dreaded ‘downward tail and ruffled appearance’ of an unwell chicken. I let the other hens out to forage, released the rooster from his nightbox and then picked up the pullet, who submitted, unresisting to being handled (another red flag) and carried her down to the patio where her training pen was set up.

I set her on the table where her pen was, and commenced to gently examine her, prodding and feeling all over for any sign of injury or disease. My heart sank at the discovery I made.

I will be placing the rest of this post behind a cut as some of the photographs are somewhat graphic.

A Box of Whistles!

I am not the first person in my family to take to the practice of keeping and raising my own chickens to provide eggs for the table and enjoyment in the garden. When I was small, my father kept a flock of white leghorn laying hens and would often either hatch chicks under a broody hen, or bring home day old chicks to slip under a hen so she could raise them.

The first time I recall Dad bringing home some day old chicks, he arrived home one afternoon and got out of his car carrying a small cardboard box, about the size of a shoe box. As he walked into the house, the box was cheeping and chirping.

Being a curious seven year old, I asked him. “What’s that you’ve got, Dad?”

“A box of whistles,” he replied.

Later, he showed me how to give the ‘whistles’ to the broody hen and she went on to raise them quite happily, into productive members of our flock.

On the Tuesday before easter, we hatched six tiny new chicks and thus became the owners of our very own ‘box of whistles.’

 

We got six chicks from 7 eggs which is a very good hatch! For now, their names are Prima, Seconda, Tierza,Quatra, Quinta and Sesta.

They are hybrids. Two of them are Australorp X Light Sussex (They are the larger, bluish coloured chicks) and the rest are Australorp over Commercial Australorp. They are good, strong, healthy chicks and I look forward to adding them to our laying flock, or selling them on to others for laying hens.

Good Friday, however came with its own set of challenges, which I will post more about later!

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Pips!

We have pips!

Now to wait and hope that healthy, well formed chicks zip their way out of the eggs over the next 24-48 hours.

It’s all very exciting, and right on cue, Bertha, our Light Sussex hen has gone broody. It is as if she could sense that the possibility for chicks was there. I may slip some of these under her if all goes well with the hatch.