Chook business.

[brickie in oz]

We bought two new chooks as we thought the others had gone off the lay, so now we have 5 bantams.
I check for eggs every other day, hmm the little brown hen isnt here, maybe she got out?
Checked underneath the laying boxes and there she is, sitting on top of 46 eggs.
So we didnt need new chooks after all.

Some of the eggs are floaters so will have to be given to the worms.

[wotavidone]

Bantams. Are they not amazing critters? Great mothers, but you do need a rooster
We have a little banty who must be at least 6 years old, and she still presents us with an egg every now and then.
And she still shakes a tail feather at Angus, our Faverolle rooster, (full name Angus the Rapist. There is definitely no love involved.) Its kinda comical. Ol Angus would weigh at least 3 kg, and he's so fat and out of condition he actually falls off before he gets the deed done.
Good thing we have 9 Isa Brown hens doing a decent job of laying eggs in the nesting boxes where they belong.

[cobblerdave]

Gudday
We have 4 hens in suburban Brisbane.....and of course council rules... No Roosters. So the girls have had to be a little lonely. Bout a month ago one of the dominant hens is starting to try to crow....sounds pretty funny the girls doing it for themselves. What is not funny is one of my neigbours cant tell the difference and is starting to complain to everyone. Pretty soon the council will be involved I bet and all hell will break loose. The rest of the neighbour bring over waste food for the hens and all get eggs so it could get interesting.....

Regards Dave

[david s]

We always used to keep three white and three red or black chooks. That way you had a fair idea which one wasn't laying. I once killed the wrong one and found masses of eggs like a bunch of grapes inside.

[wotavidone]

Sounds like your poor chook was egg-bound. Anyway I bet she roasted nice. I recently bought 9 new chicks, to augment the 6 laying hens I already had. Cheap because they were only 6 weeks old. By the time they were old enough to lay, 6 of them were roosters. And where you have a 7 roosters for 9 hens, guess what, they don't lay. This is because they are worn out from being chased around by horny adelescent roosters all day. I fixed this by chopping the heads off the 6 new roosters, leaving only lazy old Angus the Rapist. Got 8 eggs today from the 9 laying hens. Beauty, eh?
The roosters cooked up real nice. Youngest kid can't bring himself to eat them, since he watched me pluck a couple, but the rest of us certainly enjoyed the sort of flavour and texture you just can't get from a store bought chook. I have a two chook rotisserie that came from a deli that decided not to do roast chicken anymore. These roosters had to be done one at a time, because despite not being meat birds as such, they dressed quite heavy.
There is one left in the freezer, saving him for the wood oven.

[wotavidone]

Chooks are true characters, eh? The other day I was cleaning out the henhouse, toilet training not being their strong point, when I noticed some had stickfast fleas on their combs. I'd already bought a synthetic pyrethrum spray, that was supposed to be safe and acceptable for low toxicity for humans, no transfer to the eggs, etc., that I was intending to spray the henhouse with. So I did the henhouse with the spray and that night the wife and I went out with some cooking oil and a torch to grease their combs. It suffocates the fleas, but the chooks don't like being woken in the night to have cooking oil dumped on their heads. Next day, the missus comes in from feeding them and says, "Can chooks get mad at you? I swear they are giving me black looks!"
I went and had a look and there was no doubt - they definitely had the sh%ts with us.