Chooks!

Mmmm, green grass.

Before we went to Qld our three old hens went to the great chook run in the sky. When we got back I mucked out the run, laid new straw, scrubbed the drinker and feeder, moved the wood heap from behind the shed to the top of the driveway and went and got six pullets. Just like that.

Original run with passionfruit vine growing over. Nesting and roosting to the right and accessed from inside the shed.

Run now twice the size, much better for six chooks. Still some kindling wood I need to move.

This is laughingly called the "Chookie Playground". All the grass has been eaten.

Should have put a "Many photos of poultry warning" at the top of this post.

Here's all six of them. Only one has a name. The mostly white one has been christened Egg White by Ally. That second from front one is laying, see how her comb is bigger and more red.

I've been keeping chooks for nearly twenty years now and I'd be sad not to have a few hens always. Secretly I'd like to have great flocks of them, I can fantasise! We use 1.5 to 2 dozen eggs each week in our household and I don't have a compost pile - I give all scraps to the chooks - and when I muck out the run it goes in a pile for a while, then on to the garden.

Such useful birds. I love them.

Comments

[Frogdancer]

I love mine too. Just about to go and put them to bed.

[lizzy D]

gorgeous girls, thanks for sharing your excitement, i'm getting 2 eggs a day now and won't be too long until the rest of the flock are laying. Watching the chooks go about their business is pure therapy

[victoria]

Your new chooks are nice, I will enjoy further photos and tales about them. You know you're supposed to bury the old chooks under the passionfruit vine? (after they're dead). The new ones look like they have a good place to strut and poke around.
In a past life, about 11 years ago, my husband and I lived on a rented property with a fair bit of space and we started up a poutry business (not as our main jobs but as a hobby). We had hundreds of different poultry at a time - breeding and growing and being sold - turkeys, chooks, minature ducks, large ducks. I used to sell people baby birds and say tell them to come back if it turned up not to be the type they wanted (male or female). No one ever bought a bird back. It was something I would never do now but it was highly entertaining and kept us busy!!