Casa del Chook – Living in the Bush
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One of the nicest things about moving away from the big city is the country living. The pace is slower and the attitude is less aggressive. The toot of a car horn invariably means a friend is driving by not someone offering negative feed back on your driving skills.
We have always entertained the notion of having chickens running around the yard and finally we have the ability. The plans have been modified though. Anyone with a garden using wood chips as a water saving method will know where I’m coming from here.
Chooks live to scratch and have no concept of how a garden should look.
But behind a chook wire fence, they have made a brilliant addition to the yard. Got leftover veggies or indeed the scraps left over from their preparation? Into the chook pen. Pulled out a few weeds and want to turn them into compost? In they go too.
After having the chooks for just on a year, the sandy soil in their yard is looking a lot more healthy. Between the chook poo and the weeds, the soil has really built up. We even have worms in there although it’s risky for them to reveal themselves. Nothing gets the excitement levels soaring like turning over a few shovel loads of dirt and a worm or two turning up.
Egg production is a real eye opener too. The eggs are big. And the yokes so yellow. Nothing like their pale cousins in the supermarket. The laying process is a sociable event too. We have 4 chooks and they take it in turns to produce an egg. After one has laid an egg it comes out of the coup and loudly declares success. Then another will walk up the ramp and lay her egg right beside the first one. Out she comes and the process continues.
The actual chicken coup sits right in the back corner of the yard under a huge gum tree. It’s shaded from about 10 am so the chooks have cool conditions throughout the day. Never the less the current heat wave has dropped production from 4 eggs to 1 per day. I don’t blame them at all. We have had such a mild opening to the warmer weather that the 100 degree Fahrenheit days have been a bit of a shock to the system.
So that’s how chooks have entered our lives. Even more fun than I thought they would be and great little recyclers to boot. A welcome addition to the homestead.
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