Chook love art.

Produced, directed, photographed, fed and tended to by Farmer Pierre.

Chicks, Compost Tea & Eggs.

Those baby chicks are 5 weeks old today.

They are feathery, long legged, independently eating and drinking and starting to do some crazy stunts like flying up to perch on the side of their fence.

At night they go into their house by themselves and all we have to do is close the door. Liam fitted their perches into their house today so they can start to roost while they sleep.

Bren and Liam are playing around with this old cheese making vat today. It has been sitting around at our neighbour's house until recently when Bren asked if he could have it.

He has plans to make it into a compost tea brewer as we have outgrown our old, badly designed one. The fact that this one is open will make it easier to clean and therefore grow the good bacteria and exclude the bad.

They filled it up with water and it leaks so now they using food dye to try and find the leak.

While they are playing around I'm collecting the eggs.

We have roll away egg boxes fitted to all our chook houses. This means that as soon as a hen gets up to leave the nest after laying her egg, the egg rolls down out of her reach. This makes it easier for us when collecting the eggs and keeps the eggs cleaner because the chooks can't peck at them or poo on them.

How To Pick Up Chicks.

We are off to Melbourne this afternoon to see some family, some friends, pick up my new computer and do some school holiday stuff.

But before we go there's some preparing to do for the 200 one day old chickens that will be coming home with us tomorrow afternoon.

We spread out a bale of straw to sit their house on.

We used to take the wheels off the house and park it on the ground but the straw acts as insulation.

Liam drives the house onto the straw where it will sit for the next few months.

The wire mesh is the floor of the house.

The heat lamps get hooked up.

These lamps have ceramic bulbs so they get hot but don't light up.

This is to keep them warm but not to keep them awake.

The lights are on pulleys that can be raised and lowered as the chicks get older and taller and hardier.

The corners of the house are rounded so they can't get stuck in them or squash their friends.

Next for the wood shavings.

We use wood shavings for bedding on the floor of the house as its virtually dust free and incredibly absorbant. The chicks will live on these shavings for the next few weeks and we wont have to change them at all.

The feeders and waterers are full, the cardboard is down, so they don't get buried in the wood shavings in the first few days.

See ya tomorrow!!

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.

Home from Tasmania

We had a wonderful time in Tasmania visiting my Mum and Dad.

We visited The Honey Farm and The Wildlife Park, we made up and watched performances, played with the toys I had as a child and my girls laughed their heads off at photos of me and my sisters when we were children


We fed their goats, sheep and Pete the Dog,


We hiked to Lobster Falls (don't mention the wrong turn and the biggest hill you ever saw on the way back,)


we visited The Mole Creek Caves,


attended Ra's baking school and loved the end results,


and had a break from routine which enabled us to catch up on a few things.


Thanks Bee and Ra, we'll be back again soon.