Sunday, January 9, 2011

10 things I love about chooks


1. Our chooks now live in the orchard in their new cage.

2. We made the cage ourselves.

3. We used only materials that were here.  Recycling at it's best!  Even the nesting boxes, tin feeder and water drum were salvaged here.

4. The chooks will eat the fruit fly from the dropped fruit off the trees.  They will be mostly free range chooks that will be let out every day to roam in the fenced off orchard. 

5. Fresh eggs!

6. The egg shells when crushed go in the compost.  You have to crush them well because they don't break down, but they are an excellent source of new calcium for the soil.

7. House scraps put to good use.  What the chooks don't eat we compost.

8. I use shredded paper in their nesting boxes.  They don't mind and it means when I clean it out the paper (and poo) go straight into the compost pile which is a good balance to the high amount of grass clippings we compost in summer.

9. I am going to plant passionfruit vines on the outside of their cage.  The chooks will gain extra shelter and shade when they get going and we get the fruit.

10. This makes this a project both started and finished during the holiday break :)


I need a couple more big chooks and a rooster now.  I am thinking Australorps to go with the 3 Isa Brown hens we already have.

Permaculture is in progress!

1 comment:

Kelly Casanova said...

Wonderful creatures aren't they?
I'd love some Australorps, not too suitable for suburbia though so I'll stick with the Isa Browns for now (fantastic layers)