When we moved here we inherited chickens and wanted a dog. I grew up with farmers in the family and there never seemed to be a problem with dogs and chickens, although often both dog and chickens were confined to their own yards, so I didn’t think there was a big deal there, but ending up with a dog that likes to kill chickens would be problematic. We had contacted the pound to see whether they had a suitable dog, but they basically said that a mature dog can’t be…
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Growing sunflowers; tough through the dry
I’m inside writing for a couple of hours today because it’s too darn hot to be out in the sun. It reminded me though to post about growing sunflowers and how I’ve been impressed by how hardy they have been through dry weather. I sowed these seeds back in September when there was still some moisture from August’s rain in the ground, expecting that we would get the usual return of rains in October, but it has been extraordinarily dry. They are in a plot down the hill, two hundred metres or so…
Read MoreCompost – dam, slashing and chickens.
The soil in my vegetable beds could do with a lot more organic matter, so I’ve been on a compost mission in preparation for the next warm season planting. I had dug in some alpaca manure (very like sheep manure) for my beets, tomatoes and tomatillos, but wanted something more like a soil conditioner for the next bed. Another task was clearing some of the dam. It is very overgrown, and in order to launch our little boat to get out and fix the pump I first had to clear a…
Read MoreMarans chicks; one week old!
Our ten marans chicks all made it to 7 days, albeit with a couple of near-tragedies. The hen has been marvellous, and it’s fascinating to watch them in action and how they respond to her cues. They are housed in a shed with a door we made to fit, with a small yard outside that I wired in and part-covered with old weed-cloth. I had all sorts of worries; that they wouldn’t be able to get over the threshold, or that they would get out through the chicken wire and…
Read More21 days later. Marans chicks hatch.
It was 21 days on Saturday since I got my fertile Marans eggs from friends Phil and Lindy, and put them under my broody hen. Right on time, 9 of the eggs hatched, and another hatched a day later. Ten out of twelve is a pretty good success rate, so fingers crossed that we can keep them all well. As the hen went broody under our house stairs I let her brood there, but had a shed ready to move them too, with weed mat over the concrete and a…
Read MoreFertile eggs.
We have a broody hen. She was the last of them to insist on laying under the house as I was re-training them to use the laying boxes in the coop, and that was OK since it’s easier to collect those eggs. But then one evening she was still there, sitting so still that I thought she was dead at first, as she didn’t even move or cluck when I went to pick her up. I put her in the coop for the night, but next day she was back,…
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