Nick & Willow.

Allow me to introduce you to the two newest members of the Daylesford Organics team.

Meet Nick.

And Willow.

Nick and Willow join our other two maremmas Bingo and Banjo.

Our maremmas live with the flocks of chooks and protect them from foxes. They do a fabulous job and to date, we have never lost a chook to a fox on their guard.

Hopefully at some stage in the near future Nick and Willow might be the parents of some baby, puppy maremmas. We'll keep you posted.

We are pretty excited to have them here, doing their fantastic and important work. Its day one and they are already settling in beautifully and taking their job very seriously.

We hope you guys are having a great weekend.

Oh and if you are looking for our eggs in Melbourne this weekend you can buy them at Organic Wholefoods in Smith Street Fitzroy, at the Ceres shop or from Ceres Food Connect.

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.

Bringing Home The Chicks.

Thanks for all your comments regarding the title of my last post.

I wonder how many people were disappointed when they opened it.

So here they are, 200 one day old chickens.

The whites, Leghorn cross New Hampshires,

the blacks, Australorp cross New Hampshires,

and the browns, Gingerhams.

Once we have finished oohhing and aahhhing over them they go into their freshly fitted out house. 

We put the boxes under the lights and cut the boxes apart until they are flat.

Some of the chickens are adventurous straight away.

While others haven't even opened their eyes yet.

It's not long before all the colours begin to mix.

Better not forget to shut the door hey Pixie.

Chooks go bush

During the warmer months our flock of chooks follow behind the vegetable harvest. After the vegetables are pulled up, the chooks go in and enjoy the leftovers, scratch up and fertilise the ground.

Now it's Winter and it's time for them to come up onto higher ground which for us means into the bush.

But first we have to make a few modifications to fit their houses in.

Cutting a few trees down to make way for their houses means firewood for next year,

some bush poles for building our tractor shed,

and some sawdust.

Every year we are surprised by how much the chooks look at home in the bush and then we remember that they were originally jungle fowl.

I love this one of Mr Rooster mid crow.

Collecting the eggs.

This Mrs chicken stayed home....

Doesn't this look like the definition of free range?

Hello Banjo, we are friends.

Enjoying a dust bath.

We try to offer them pasture as well as bush but given the choice they much prefer the shelter of the trees and scratching amongst the leaf litter.