Electranet

Sorry about the typos in my last blog. I have since run it through spellcheck and found 10, (I can hear Kate cringing. She hates typos). But i will happily admit that I'm not a good speller and that I believe  spelling should actually be phonetic.

Thanks for all your comments, it was great to get so many for a newbie and I have posted replies to most of them in the last blog. I think that is what I will try to do if I can think of a direct reply and if not the questions will go onto a list that I will refer to for future blogs.

One last housekeeping thing and that is the blog layout. I'm not convinced it will stay, mostly because I can't get the photos as big as I'd like them, however there are some very cool features of this layout that you can try; On the upper left corner where is says classic there are another 6 layouts you can choose from to view the blog. My favourite is flipcard. Check them out and let me know what you think.

Ok, enough housekeeping.

I wish the clip above was a bit clearer and that I could have got a wider angle but I hope that it can still give you a bit of an idea of setting up of an enclosure for 200 chickens.

We have used electranets/electric netting/electric poultry nets, for close to 10 years now.

 I can't imagine keeping free range chickens without them. 

More later..

Cheers,

Farmer Bren.

Chooks Out, Chooks In.

Follow that path just a little bit further into the green clearing and there you'll find our flock of chickens that are now ten weeks old.

They are living with a flock that are about 25 weeks old and are doing really well.

Bingo the Maremma is happy guarding the chooks, although sometimes they make it difficult for him to enjoy his dinner.

Most of the time it is difficult to tell the 2 flocks apart. But look closer and you'll see the ten weeks old are smaller and their comb hasn't developed or filled with blood to make it red yet.

A ten week old above and a twenty five week old below.

Now the brooder is empty what are we meant to do?

Clean it out, restock it and send Bren off to the other side of Melbourne to pick up a new flock. This time we are getting three hundred one day old chicks and 25 ducklings.

Ooohhh, I can hardly wait.

Make sure you pop by later on to check out them out.

Maremmas, Chooks and TODAY.

What do you do when you have 3 flocks of chooks but only 2 Maremma guard dogs to protect them?

You merge 2 of them without really merging them of course.

The chicks are in the silver brooder and their pool fence enclosed yard and the twenty two week old chooks are in their own house with the whole area surrounded by solar electric mesh fencing.

Banjo the Maremma is protecting the little chickies without having ever seen them.

Many of the older chooks are staying close to the chickies. They can probably hear them and smell them.

And for those of you interested in the Daylesford Organics media branch, Channel Nine's TODAY show will be filming its weather segments every half an hour from 6am tomorrow (Tuesday) from Daylesford.

You can also watch it online by clicking the link on the TODAY website.

They will film Alla Wolf-Taska cooking breakfast from the kitchen at the Lake House. She will be using and talking about local ingredients including Daylesford Organics' eggs.

Chicks.

Yesterday Liam was working in the shed when he heard the cheep-cheeping of a strange sounding bird. He hunted around a bit and came across one of the new chicks. It seems they have been flying up to perch on the edge of their fence and jumping over. The shed is about 20 meters from their chick house.

While we are all for free range chooks here at Daylesford Organics, we believe at 5 and a half weeks old these chicks are a bit too young to fend for themselves.

Until they are big enough not to fit through the holes of the solar electric netting fences we have covered their yard with bird netting. This will also stop any hungry birds of prey from getting to them.

Miss Pepper, who has taken to dragging that green thing around everywhere with her, can't quite work out why the chicks are hiding.

And look what I got when I got home from the school run.

It seems we have a microclimate across the road at Bren's parents' block. Our daffs are barely out of the ground let alone flowering.

I hope you have a great weekend.