On the bright side

The hens might not be laying but this monarch butterfly was busy on the swan plant. 

The grass is growing and so are the cicadas. 

The raised beds have dried up but there was a crop of potatoes still in the ground from before it stopped raining. 

It's still a bit warm but Henry had found a cool spot. 

The weeds are head high but I found this cape gooseberry bush in amongst them. 

And the possum has taken every last apple but the lemon tree is still producing. 

The next generation

The white hen has been laying and sitting on eggs in the long grass alongside the drive. Today we found her in the coop and when I nudged her to one side to look for fresh eggs, there were two chicks beneath her. 

We have no roosters so this white hen must have been visiting next door. The chicks are only a day or so old and when I went to check on the hen's nest, I found more than a dozen abandoned eggs and two recently deceased chicks. 

We decided to leave the chicks with their mother rather than hand-rearing them as we can manage another two birds in the flock. 

But we picked out one of them so that we could have a closer look. The children were really gentle with the tiny chick and we're looking forward to visiting them again tomorrow. 

New Year, Old Projects

The time off over Christmas has given me the odd opportunity to catch up on some things that I'd left undone. 

Staking this kowhai was a top priority. It had quite a lean and has started to yellow. It's a special tree as I planted it over one of my two placentas. I also love kowhai and the tui that they attract so I was keen to save it. Fingers crossed it works. 

Fixing the flapping and fraying wind barrier on the raised beds became more pressing once I planted my first crown of rhubarb and a cape gooseberry. 

I used my father's idea of threading through a bamboo cane and hooking on a bungee cord. Some of the original hooks had rusted through so I hammered in a baling hook saved from a cube of sawdust. The bungee won't last in the sun though so I'll need a more sustainable option for the long term. 

Inside the house, I conquered my fear of meringue and made a pavlova base. Sadly our hens have stopped laying (in the coop at any rate) so I had to buy eggs. I was able to buy them from a local producer who once took some of our chicks so they're almost our own eggs. 

I also squeezed in an hour of sewing to put together a shopkeeper's apron and a tool belt for the children. They need the straps adding in but they're much closer than before. Progress at last. 

Chicken news

Our little flock of chickens has survived another winter. They started laying again within a day or two of the equinox and mostly lay in the coop. I did find a clutch of around 14 eggs in the grass atop the retaining wall last week and the vegetation had kept them cool and fresh. I'm still waiting to see a troop of chicks emerge from the bush as next door's rooster has been pacing the boundary fence impatiently.

The quails are busy again, dashing around the lawn, and I found a lovely pair of handmade ceramic quails at our local gallery a few weeks ago - a real bargain.

One chicken is not doing so well though. I'd noticed that her breast seemed to be well fluffed up but she seemed in good health otherwise so I didn't worry. When I found her in the coop last week, I took the chance to have a closer look. I suspect that shes one of our original chicks as she didn't mind me handling her - even though she had a huge growth over her breastbone.

A trip to the vet resulted in a cyst being drained and once that was done, the vet could feel a large tumour underneath. She's still in good health though so hopefully she'll carry on living out her life happily on our block.

Kumeu Show 1

Looking forward to the day when I have more time and can extend our flock... 

Elders and Berries

This was my haul from the garden last weekend. Hydrangea heads for an arrangement for a party, three eggs, a dozen apples from our young tree and a few teaspoons full of elderberries - just enough to flavour an apple crumble. 

I was interested to find that the berries in the shade were ripening faster than the berries high up in the sunshine. I can't begin to explain that.

The tree was covered in sap-sucking passion vine hoppers which I'm sure are the reason for the meagre harvest.

We should have more success in future now that this young elder tree has been planted by the chicken coop. I hope the chickens will eat the bugs and not the berries and we'll have sufficient blooms for elderflower champagne.

Roses amongst thorns

One area of our friends' garden is a mix of prize-winning roses, palms and succulents. They love the roses and seem to have mixed feelings about their spikier companions. 

In contrast, I don't mind roses but love the tropical succulents.

Our front border now features a mix of both. The old rose has been the subject of several vicious prunings and has bounced back each time. It was cut back to a few inches above the ground last winter but is now twice the size that it was in these pictures which were taken at the end of last year. It's leggy and totally without flowers. Maybe it needs more food... 

The succulents that my father planted when he dug out this bed are unquestionably thriving. The weedmat and mulch have done a good job of keeping out intruders and there is obvious growth amongst the new plants. And not a single one has been attacked by chickens! The bromeliads were damaged by a peacock but I hope that they'll survive. And the agaves which have been in this border through thick and thin (and renovations) have some lovely big pups beneath them now. 

I hope to create similar borders below the house and the shed. There are some natives below the shed (flax and nikau) and one lonely canna lily after my other bromeliads and iris fell victim to a pukeko or possum. I think that some more exotic plants would look good - maybe a strelitzia and some red hot pokers. 

Below the house, there's some good ground cover in the form of rosemary and native grasses but my father added some interest along the driveway with more succulents and miniature palms - some of which are even producing offspring. Driftwood and rocks have kept the chickens from scratching out the new plants and large logs in their old dustbaths have forced them to look elsewhere for their ablutions. 

Huntsman's Stew

From this...

...to this...

...to this! Mmm...

Grazing

Chicken soup for the soul

Warning: this post contains a graphic (but respectful) description of the slaughter of  our three roosters. Feel free to click away now if you don't fancy reading that. 

We were lucky enough to have only three roosters from our last clutch of chicks. We tolerated the crowing and kept our fingers crossed that there'd be no more chicks. But when the three of them started fighting, we knew that it was time for them to go.

One of the other mothers at Playcentre was prepared to take them in - for soup. So I dropped them off with her father-in-law last weekend. When I arrived, I spotted a slaughter kit laid out in the shady courtyard in front of their house - a coil of rope, a single glove and a stanley knife. I popped the roosters in the shade, in their boxes, intending to make a quick exit. But I ended up bearing witness to the demise of our surplus boys and I was very glad that I did.

My friend's father-in-law sat on a stool at the base of  a camellia bush. He plucked the first bird out of its box, gripping it firmly but gently at the nape of its neck. He stretched out the bird's wings and coiled the rope slowly around the base. When the wings were secured, he turned the bird upside down and did the same with its feet. He then silently hung the bird from the lower branches of the bush.

Next he delicately plucked a few feathers from the bird's throat and took up his stanley knife. He flicked the knife slowly at the bird's throat, searching for the jugular vein. After a short time, rich red blood began to drip on the fallen leaves at the base of the tree. The bird remained quiet and still, totally immobilised but calm. My friend's father-in-law massaged the bird's throat to make the blood run more quickly before taking up the next bird.

As he took each bird out of the box, he declared it to be beautiful and treated it with great respect. The second bird died before the first and he untied it from the bush and laid it carefully on the ground. He tapped its open eye with his finger tip and the eye shut. The first bird followed and the third bird was taken from its box.

The third and final rooster, who'd fought his way to the top of the pecking order, was a little less docile. His squawking and flapping as he was handled brought the man's wife from inside the house. She told me that, at six months old, the roosters would be tender. Their carcasses would be dipped into boiling water to loosen the feathers and the wings would be the greatest challenge for plucking. Luckily they have a machine that makes it easy.

I've been promised two of the roosters in return so that I can make a hearty soup in anticipation of the birth of our second baby. I just hope that I can do them justice.

Nest eggs

As the spring equinox approaches, our hens, including last summer's chicks, have started laying in earnest. We've found clutches of eggs under the shed, in the long grass and in the hen house too, thankfully. I see lots of pancakes in our future...

Caught red-handed

At the end of autumn, I planted some bulbs in these pots. The chickens decided that the pots were actually dust baths and have been scraping and scratching at them for a few months now. I kept re-planting the bulbs but eventually half the soil was scattered across the drive and the bulbs had disappeared - perhaps squirreled away by an enterprising mouse who'd been conspiring with the chickens.

Not having learnt my lesson, I planted some herbs in another pot, close by. I thought that plants would be less tempting than bare earth with soil underneath. I was wrong. I had no choice but to chicken proof my containers. The solution came in the form of gutter guard plastic sheeting with cable ties (to fasten it into a circle) and chopsticks (to anchor it in place in the pots). So far, so good - no incursions have taken place.

I've planted up some money plants in the green pots with sedum around the base (top left - click on the collage for a bigger image) and some land cress for salads too (bottom right). If those survive, I'll re-plant the mini herb garden too.

In a sudden burst of productivity, I also planted some sprouting chokos by the compost heap (top right) and some pelargoniums close to our recently pruned hydrangeas (bottom left) - more on the pruning soon! 

Line-up

Counting our chickens

It's almost six months now since our hens emerged from the bush with a brood of chicks in tow and we're finally able to tell which ones are roosters. We seem to have done quite well this time - probably only three roosters out of a total flock of 11 birds. Three roosters too many! 

It's only when we put out fresh food for the chickens that we see them altogether and can count them and check them. Normally they're spread out, foraging, over quite a wide area - and they move so quickly that it's easy to double count or miss one!

Two of the roosters are white - including the second from the top in the photo above - and the other one has the black and white markings of some of our original roosters. The striped markings must have come from the mother though as our roosters had both gone by the time that these chicks were conceived.

The white birds are evidence of our hens straying into next door - though which neighbouring property has a white rooster isn't entirely clear!

Inspiration

It's going to be some time before I'm ready to grow prize-winning produce and I doubt I'll ever produce blooms of the required quality. But if our chickens will only co-operate by laying in the coop, I might just be able to enter some eggs at next year's Kumeu Show... And I know just the right person for making vegetable conveyances in years to come.

Prize Poultry

At Kumeu Show

Little and Large

We found the tiny egg on the left lying on our gravel driveway. I'm not entirely sure what bird laid it - it looks too plain to be the egg of a California quail and too small to be a pukeko. And I don't think that many other birds would still be laying so late in the season. Any ideas? 

Offspring

The upside of the sad demise of our rooster was that we wouldn't have any more unwanted chicks to deal with. But those hens are not better than they should be (as my mother says) and they headed next door to visit a different cockerel. We are now in a heated dispute with our neighbours as to whether they should pay us chick support or we should pay them a service fee. Harumph. 

The last sighting

One of our hens produced about 12 chicks at the start of this year. We didn't manage to catch them and so they were left to fend for themselves under the watchful eye of the mother hen. Sadly this was the last we saw of them all together.

The hawk had a feast and a neighbourhood cat was seen on the prowl as well. Two drowned in the water before I had chance to put rocks back in the trough and one got trapped in the chookateria. Disaster!

Just one chick remains and looks fighting fit and (thankfully) female. The frustrating thing is that we probably won't get any eggs from either of them now that they seem to have gone totally feral.

Early sighting

Our chickens are just unstoppable this year! We had 27 chicks at the end of last year and now there appears to be another 11 on the loose. The cunning hen hatched her brood in the bush and hasn't been close enough for us to catch them yet. 

I think we'll let them grow up a bit then cull the roosters (and cook them like poussins?) and keep the hens. We'll have to get rid of our mature rooster too seeing as he is both their father and brother and we really don't need any more chicks.