ARE YOU CHICKEN?

Posted by Bec Pollock on Feb 16, 2012 in ECO-LIVING | 7 comments

For Urban Homesteaders like ourselves, it is the busy season. As the cold weather began to ease up at the end of last year, the planning, potting up and propagating began. I bared my white legs in shorts, pulled on my gardening gloves, and started imagining all the delights the garden would produce in the coming warm growing season.

This Spring was easier than the last, as in 2010 we were preparing for and hosted a PermaBlitz, which involved building several types of garden beds in our front and side yards, including four large Raised Wicking Worm Garden Beds. Sure, there were projects waiting to be done this year (and still are), but it was so pleasant to plant seeds and raise seedlings in our mini greenhouse, knowing there was a home waiting for them without any backbreaking work. If we didn’t complete any more of our other desired projects, we felt some comfort knowing we would still be able to produce so much of our own fresh produce.

This year one of our goals is to avoid burn out, so incorporating relaxation into our days is important, as is enjoying the work we’ve done so far! Now in the height of Summer, our garden is a jungle, full of sunbaking tomatoes waiting to ripen, beans and zucchini that grow before your eyes, overripe apricots and plums falling from the tree before I can harvest them, various herbs ready for the taking, and corn reaching for the sun. Plenty to keep us busy, with weeding, pest control, troubleshooting, harvesting, processing and preserving.

One of the projects we did want to get ready for, however, was to get chooks. Our family had long wanted some backyard livestock, chickens being the most urban and kid friendly, and the easiest to start with (I hope for bees after that, perhaps fish and maybe one day, my dream, Nigerian Dwarf Goats).

We see chickens as an integral aspect of building our urban homestead, not only because they provide eggs, but they eat our kitchen scraps, garden weeds and pests, they provide nitrogen rich fertiliser, as well as education, entertainment and companionship. The reason we had hesitated for so long, was concern that we did not have enough time to care for them properly (being working parents with little kids and community responsibilities).

You see, there is far less guilt if your vegetables or fruit die from neglect. Chickens are a live animal that demand a duty of care, and from our point of view, far more than poor old factory farm meat chickens or egg layers are given these days. However, after posting on my blog about whether to get chooks or not, the resounding response was go for it, it is totally worth and they hardly take any time at all!

We’d been thinking about getting chooks for a while, and had done the research for local rules and regulations and local resources, which I had posted on my ACT blog, everyday eco in the ACT – Keeping Chickens. Once we had decided to get chickens, the next big decision was about the chook house. Making it ourselves from reclaimed and recycled materials seemed ideal, except that we have no skill, experience or tools, little time to scout the resources, plus the desire to have something very safe and secure (nothing nasty gets in, and no naughty garden-eating chooks get out).

There is a local option for wooden chook houses, made using recycled materials (Sonya from Canberra Chooks), occasionally second-hand chook houses are available on Allclassifieds, as well as those cheap versions from eBay or pet stores. We wanted something durable, and preferably made from metal. There are a few options for Australian made metal chook tractors (you can move them around your yard, on their wheels) but the company we bought from, Royale Rooster, had a double height model which allowed for up to 10 chooks.

Chooks, having originated from jungle fowl, like to sleep up high for safety, plus we thought we may want to increase our flock in the future. It may not be as affordable as a DIY chook house, but it was easy to put together, seems very secure, and had optional extras we wanted, like fox-proof flooring and weather shields. The food and water dispensers are also easy to use. Once we had ordered it and knew when it would be delivered, it was time to find the chooks to live there.

Heirloom or non-hybrid varieties of fruit and vegetables have always appealed to me for their taste and growing characteristics, to help increase biodiversity, and for the feeling of raising something a bit rarer or different. Same applies to the breeds of chicken we were keen to raise, and had done some research previously into these.

While there is nothing wrong with having garden-variety brown chooks, the breeds that seemed most suitable to keep in a backyard flock, to be handled by kids, for dual purpose (eggs & meat) and that were attractive, were Sussex, Wyandotte, Plymouth Rocks or Barnevelder breeds. We were happy to have full sized, hardy chooks in one or more of these breeds, but as novice chicken keepers, we were hoping to buy pullets (teenage chooks) or POL (point of lay). This became an impossible task, as we could only source the breeds we desired in fertilised eggs, or day old chicks.

Perhaps if we had been looking later on in Spring or Summer, there would have been older chooks on offer, but the breeding chooks at the hatcheries were only just coming back into lay after Winter. (We considered trying to get ‘rescue hens’ but couldn’t find a local team who did this, plus again, as novice chook owners, we thought the poor chooks rescued from a factory farm might be beyond our skills. Another time…)

We didn’t have any brooding equipment at that stage (safe, hygienic, temperature controlled place to keep them for 6 to 8 weeks), and again, wondered would we have time to learn and care for fluffy little cheepers. We felt strongly about getting the breeds we wanted, as well as being able to get them used to being handled by getting them as babies. We decided it would be a great school holiday experience for the kids, one worth spending the time doing, if we could source the equipment.

A kind offer from a reader of my blog was made, but we decided it was worth buying the heat lamp and other equipment, if we ever wanted to get baby chooks again, were breeding our own, or had a sick chook who needed some warmth.

We went to Tiny’s Green Shed and happened across a cabinet that was already decked out to house animals, with good ventilation and at $10, worth bringing home to try. We gave it a good clean, and set it up in our foyer, with some layers of newspaper and pet store wood shavings, the heat lamp and a safe column heater (as it was early Spring, quite chilly still, especially overnight).

The brooder temperature needs to be adjusted as per the age of the chickens, until at about 5 weeks they have enough feathers to keep themselves warm without an external heat source. At about 6 to 8 weeks old (depending on the weather outside) they can be introduced to their chook house during the day, and eventually be moved outside permanently. This varies, of course.

There are several breeders in and around Canberra, and Anita from Hot Chicks Poultry was very helpful. She had a cancelled order of Light and Speckled Sussex, which would be 2 to 3 weeks old when we picked them up. We ordered six chicks, three of each type of Sussex, knowing that at that age it is very hard to tell what sex they were. While 4 chooks seemed like a good amount for our family, if we got three hens that would be good, and if for some freakish reason all six were girls, that would be fine too!Those that turned out to be roosters, would either be rehomed, or eaten.

One reason for keeping chooks is reconnecting with our food, and educating our children about where their food comes from. We had talked to the kids about the possibility that some of our chickes will end up being dispatched, and we also covered how baby chicks are fragile, how we need to handle them carefully, and how we could find one dead for many reasons. Then came the day, and it was just a short drive out to Murrumbateman to pick up the new additions to our family, feeling a bit nervous, but very excited.

Stay tuned for the next instalment of “Are you chicken?” where Bec talks about the early days of her little cheepers…

Bec Pollock, AKA dixiebelle, has been living in Canberra for three years now. Her claims to fame include Kid Wrangler, Wife Extraordinaire, Part-time RN, Wannabe Urban Homesteader, Novice Permaculturalist, Earth & Communities Supporter, Ambling Prepper, Laptop Activist, Rambling Blogger… read more of her musings at www.eatatdixiebelles.blogspot.com.