New arrivals

Yesterday saw some new arrivals at Burrow Downs. A trio of mille fleur Belgian d'Uccle. Bruce has been after me to get some after seeing them at a Poultry auction a while back, and I finally managed to locate some nice birds to add to our menagerie.

They are now settling into the quarantine pen in the shed after their long trip, which gives us an opportunity for lots of handling while they are there for the next week or so.  Isolating new birds and stock when they first arrive helps reduce the chances of introducing illness or disease into the existing stock.

Belgian d'Uccle are such sweet, and quite quirky little bantams.  They are a 'true bantam' which means there is no larger form of them (unlike our Faverolles, which have both an original larger type as well as the bantams). Developed in the Belgian town of Uccle, they have beards and muffs and feathered feet. They come in a variety of colours.  We chose to get mille fleur as Bruce loved the colour. He calls them 'dot cam' birds as the pattern looks a bit like a military uniform autumn dot camoflage  pattern!

We are looking forward to having these little guys around.

Using what we have - part 2



We seem to have chickens everywhere at the moment! This has involved multiple pens and brooders as some are still too young to go in with the older age groups. Of course multiple groups means multiple drinkers and feeders.

The commercial drinkers and feeders are great, but after a while it can be expensive to buy them, particularly when you need quite a few of all different sizes to suit different aged chicks. I have tried just putting the feed into pans and dishes, but this way there is a lot of wastage.  The chicks stand in the feed and scratch it out into the bedding. I was going through a lot of feed this way, forever topping up the dishes.  That can be expensive too. I needed a better solution.

After searching around on the internet for a while I decided I would try and make my own. Well, I can tell you it was so easy and I am so pleased with the results! I now have much less food wastage, the chicks are happy and it cost me nothing to make.

I used an empty yoghurt container and cut four holes about 2cm square each around the sides at the bottom. The red arrows in the picture on the right are pointing to where the holes are. I then cut down a plastic container we had (about the size of an ice cream container) so that the sides were low enough for the chicks to eat from.  This was to be the base. I positioned the holes so that they empty out into the bigger corners of the base. The two are then held together with a screw which goes up through the base and into the bottom of the yoghurt container (it is inside so nothing can get hurt on it).  Fill it up, and you are ready to go.

Now to look around and see what I can find to make into bigger feeders.

Merry Christmas to all

Such a crazy time of year as everyone prepares for Christmas Day and the holidays.  I was shopping in town yesterday doing some final preparations and thanking the heavens I didn't have much to do.  We are staying home this year so things will be quieter than usual, but I think we will enjoy the break and the time to simply take stock and prepare for the new year.  This break I want to take the time to breathe, stop for a minute, look over what we have achieved, and look forward towards what we will do in the new year. I have so many plans for the next year and it should be exciting time if I achieve even close to the things I want to in that time. I am looking forward to sharing our progress here with you.

While I plan to take some time out, I also seem to have a list a mile long of things I want to get done!  There are garden beds to be weeded, a shed to clean out, new chicken pens to build. The chicken pens are my Christmas present! Call me crazy, but frankly that pleases me more than gifts of perfume, jewellery or other things that you use once or twice and put in a cupboard. After a long cold spell here (when will summer start?), the vegetable gardens are finally starting to make progress so there will hopefully be plenty of picking and some more planting to do as well. There is no excuse for boredom here.

Christmas day will be fairly simple for us this year, but will basically follow our usual format for a Christmas lunch.  Local ham, roast turkey and chicken, home made potato and green salads and Christmas pudding made using my mother's recipe. We eat lots of fresh fruit at Christmas time too.  Cherries, peaches and apricots which make the kitchen smell beautiful.  It is hard not to pick one up to eat everytime we walk through! A boxing day brunch of 'eggs benedict' with our own eggs, spinach from the garden and leftover ham with thick crusty home made bread carries us through. I am salivating just thinking about it.

So to everyone this holiday period, wishing you all the best for the season, however you celebrate it and reminding you to take the time in amongst all the craziness to breath and enjoy the simple things. I leave you with one of my favourite Australian carols which I hope you enjoy.

Poddy lamb update

The poddy lambs have been going great guns. They have grown well and are actually catching up to the Wiltipoll lambs who are a bit older than them. They are still loving their morning and evening bottle, though we have started the weaning process now.  Much to their disgust their morning feed has now been halved.  Soon their afternoon feed will be halved too.  They have plenty of grass in the orchard - it has been such a good season - and also have free access to sheep pellets to supplement.  In January they will be totally weaned and we will bring the Wiltipoll in from the big paddock to wean their lambs as well.

Of the two lambs, I have to say that Flopsy is may favourite.  She is the one that loves pats and cuddles.  Sox is more standoffish and flighty.  That is them in the photo - Flopsy is the one in front.  The photo was taken a couple of weeks ago before their tails dropped off.  They seem to have doubled in size since then!  Not bad for a couple of newborn orphans.

Love is a new chicken brooder

Forget perfume and jewellery, true love is when your other half makes you a new chicken brooder/broody box just because he thinks you might like one.


New chicken brooder box

This box is the ants pants. Designed to keep growing chickens safe from predators, it has solid sides and wire top and bottom as well as a fully covered section which can be closed off with a little door. Very important as around here we have our share of predators.  Its first try this afternoon with some chickens in it saw one of our local Nankeen Kestrels sitting on the fence screeching while it had a closer look. Uncovered little chicks are not safe around here.


The box under construction

The starting point for the box was a wooden shelf set - on special at $17.00 from the hardware store. The rest was made with bits and pieces in the shed. A couple of coats of fence paint and it was ready to go.  The chicks certainly seem to like it as much as I do!

Chickens enjoying their new home

Just like Cleopatra

Cleopatra is apparently known for hatching a chicken that she incubated between her breasts.  Luckily these days we have incubators, but the information came in handy when the broody hen left some unhatched eggs behind in the nest.  As the eggs had been laid over a period of time, and broody had been sitting on them from the beginning, the chicks hatched over several days. 

By the end poor little hen couldn't sit any more as new chicks needed to be out and about eating and drinking, so some eggs were left behind.  I took them up to the house to dispose of as they were cold, but candled them just to see how far along they were.  To my surprise one little chick had pipped internally and was starting to make its break for freedom! Not having any incubator space available, I remembered the Egyptian queen and tucked the egg down my shirt to keep warm while I set up another incubator to try and hatch it in. Little chick must have liked it's warm spot as before to long it was cheeping away happily in its shell. After about an hour or so, it was into the now warm incubator and hello world.

Interestingly enough, this little chick, while it has been living with some slightly older siblings in the brooder from the time it came out of the incubator, is actually quite bonded to me.  It loves to sit on my hand and snuggle in to my neck.  Fingers crossed it is a girl, as if it is I am bound to call her Cleopatra!