08 December, 2017

more chooks

How much happens in only a matter of weeks!

The girls are still with us, still scratching away, a lot bigger.

We had a dip in egg production for a while - Hainan laid three eggs - one with a weird 'soft' shell, one that came out crushed and bloody, and one that was normal. And then she stopped. And Honey stopped egg production, too. For about a week, I was worried at first that they were egg bound, and then I was worried that Hainan had torn something up inside her laying that broken egg, and then I was worried that I'd hurt them or injured them while checking that they weren't egg-bound...

The local vet where we take our cats was very helpful. Right in the middle of fretting about it, I called the vet and the tech there was so helpful and lovely and encouraging. I needed that - to know I wasn't a failure at chook management. So I'm feeling a bit better about it all now...

Anyway, we got back into egg production about three days ago, and yesterday we had a breakthrough: TWO EGGS! (Okay, so one was weird and long and was shaped like those really smooth river/sea stones, but still...an egg!) Hopefully we'll see another two today. They've sure been swallowing the curl grubs down something fierce...

They sat on the 2nd bed for 2 weeks, happily picking and scratching and grumping and clucking back and forth, although I think at the end of the two weeks they were getting a little bit bored with the space - I haven't managed to grow much inside or around the cages as yet, you see. So it's a bit of a wasteland beyond grass and dirt and the mulch I throw in semi-regularly.

November 2017

So I moved them on from the 2nd bed on Sunday, but I've found the grass isn't as torn up as I'd like, and I'm thinking I probably should have left it there for three weeks at a time, rather than the standard two. But what's going in there will mostly be corn and beans and cucumber and fruiting vegetables.

One of the things about the chook run/pen is that it's pretty small and rather low. It's not easy to climb into and fix things, and it felt kind of poky. So I added another 'level' to it.

Behold Casa de Chook, now about 1.5m tall, with a lot more airspace (even if no more floorspace) and the potential for perches and wing flapping! I can also climb into it without catching on anything, which will be a relief. Fewer scratches (we hope)!

December 2017

I finished it just last night, and while it does need a little more work on it to neaten things up, I'm pretty happy with it right now...

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