The wide ranging experiences of someone who lives in the Australian bush in a knocked together tin shed with a heap of animals and still manages to hold down a job, study full time and raise a family.
Teal'c has been growing and developing rapidly from the fluffy little eating machine that first arrived at our house several months ago. He is now almost fully feathered and is getting the characteristic black, Lone Ranger-ish mask of his species. He has been outside in his aviary both day and night for a week or so now (as opposed to just in the day time) and today we decided to upgrade him to the flight pen for short flights. The 'flight pen' is actually just a closed off section of the chook pen with perches added for the purpose. It won't be long before he is outside, free during the day and sleeping in the aviary at night.
He looks Lone Ranger-ish doesn't he.
Roadie the butcher bird (at the top of the photo) isn't too pleased to see a competitor for food. He will be a problem once Teal'c is out for the day, but with some training he will hopefully come to tolerate the company.
Teal'c enjoying the sun.
On the ground you can see newspapers and cardboard boxes; we throw all our paper into the chook pens and they turn it into valuable compost for us. This pen is in the process of composting.
This is Teal'c three weeks ago in his aviary, begging for food.
He has grown up a lot in the last few weeks.
What is happening with your animals at the moment?
This is Esmerelda, the Yellow faced whip snake that calls our yard home.
The yellow faced whip snake is a very common visitor to yards in our area, we see the two that live in our yard regularly. This particular snake (Esmerelda) is fond of following me around as I feed the chickens (if I feed late) and I have had to chase her off when I feed the sheep so she doesn't get trodden on. Whip snakes are friendly and curious creatures, they like to know all the gossip and will come very close to you if you sit still for a long time (although, as most sources say they are timid snakes, that might just be the ones that live here).
They eat small reptiles like skinks and frogs, are diurnal (not night owls) and home bodies; staying within the same area all their life. They have been known to lay eggs communally and may even exhibit pairing behavior. They would rather get away from you than bite and there has never been a fatality from a whip snake bite.
People in our area often kill them thinking they are Eastern brown snakes (they do look a bit like baby browns), but their behavior is very different and the extra large eyes give them away if you stop to look closely. Whip snakes are mildly venomous; having the same kind of venom as bees. If you are allergic to bees, don't get bitten by a whip snake. They are not aggressive at all if you don't try to pick them up (they hate that), but they will crawl (slide?) over your legs in a friendly manner if you are sitting on the ground near them.
Differences in behavior between whip and brown snakes Brown snakes
Mostly encountered at dawn and dusk, unless you disturb their resting place.
Behave aggressively as soon as they see you; rising to striking position, swaying and coiling body together.
Flick their tongue rapidly and often.
An Eastern brown snake in an aggressive pose ready to strike.
Whip snakes
Mostly encountered from mid morning to mid afternoon.
Behave curiously; rising up above grass to watch but not in a striking position (see photos). Will follow people or animals but usually puts out a 'just passing through' vibe.
Do not often flick their tongue, instead remaining still and quiet.
A curious whip snake checking out the area.
Esmerelda watching me to see if the camera is dangerous.
Deciding that the camera is not dangerous she shows me her good side and goes about her day.
We have been keeping guinea fowl for years. When we were managing (and working) a bio-dynamic avocado orchard we used them to keep down insect pests in the trees and paralysis ticks on our house cow. Now we keep them to reduce tick numbers for our sheep and dogs, and because it seems too quiet without them after all these years. They are exceptional insect hunters and will eat adult ticks by the thousand, they are also efficient watch dogs and escort snakes and goannas from the yard very swiftly (except that one time when they chased a black snake into the house instead). They do however have some unique characteristics................
The flock collectively have OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder); they tour the perimeter of the yard at a specific time each morning and afternoon and if anything is out of place they will stand and cackle at it for about fifteen minutes, examples of 'out of place' are leaving a pot upside down when it was previously the right way up, parking the car two meters closer to the house, leaving a shovel leaning against the fence or a visitor's car is parked in the driveway.
Individual guinea fowl will behave in a bossy way towards chooks, dogs, sheep, ducks and sometimes humans when food is at stake. You can see the warning in the body language of the guinea fowl in this clip, he is warning the rooster off 'his' grain.
They don't like to sleep in a pen at night but will go as high up the tallest tree they can find. Ours come gliding down to the ground at dawn with much squawking and cackling.
One of our dogs; Jess, has been obsessed with one particular guinea fowl for some time and she sometimes gets a bit overwhelming for the poor boy. He sometimes flies onto the top of the chook pen to get a break from her. This clip shows her patiently waiting for him to come down so she can protect him.
In my experience, guinea fowl are terrible parents; they hatch too many babies then try to walk them too far and don't protect them from predators (kookaburras, goannas, foxes, currawongs, butcher birds, hawks and snakes here). We get around this by finding the eggs and giving them to a clucky chook to raise, this has the added advantage of making them less flighty in nature as some of their behaviors are learned from their parents.
The latest batch of guinea fowl keets with their (no doubt bemused) mum.
There is some debate about whether guinea fowl actually help control ticks; here are a few articles on the subject to help you make up your mind. For my part, I definitely think they make a difference.
I let the Salmon Faverolles out for a run in the yard for the first time this morning; they were so excited and happy to be treated like 'big chooks'. There are only seven of the original ten left; all three died from the same mystery Marek's like disease we seem to have acquired. Treatment with St John's Wort tincture prolonged the life of one chick but he ultimately died and the other two were fine one night and dead the next morning with the characteristic neck drawn back, splayed leg posture.
The seven remaining chicks are growing fast and have reached that awkward adolescent stage between chick and chook when they are scruffy and disproportionate to look at, but these chicks somehow manage to make that stage look cute (I really am in love).
In their pen, waiting to be big chooks.
Three days later, they are big chooks and the pen is open.
Foraging for bugs with mum.
I will let them out for a few hours every day for a few weeks to let them learn to forage and enjoy being chooks. We will need to build them a pen of their own soon as I am a bit worried that my cross breed flock will be too aggressive for them; they really are gentle and docile chooks.
Everyone who keeps chooks has occasional unexplained deaths in the flock, I had some a few months ago; I had 'chook sat' another small flock for a few weeks at my house last New Years, and I (stupidly) didn't keep the two flocks separate enough. They were in different but adjoining runs. Some of the other flock died (two of them) and I lost six from my flock. Since then I have had one or two getting sick for no apparent reason.
The symptoms ;
Weight loss with no loss of appetite (I wish).
Cloudy eyes with no running or ulceration.
A limp develops in one leg followed by a drooped wing and staggering gait.
Eventually the chook is paralyzed in the legs and one wing and develops a scoliosis (curved spine) with the head twisted.
Even at the later stages the chook is bright with a good appetite and wants to live. Because it only appears very occasionally since the first six deaths I had thought it was something they ate or a tick causing it and tried changing their brand of mixed grain and watching what goes into the house scrap bucket, I have limed the chook pen and shelter repeatedly and replaced the mulch in the deep litter yard. Although it doesn't explain the other flock's deaths, I also decided it could have a genetic cause as I haven't introduced any new chickens into the flock for five years; the whole flock is interbred to a large degree so I may have inadvertently introduced a genetic flaw, so I introduced a new rooster (an Austrolorp) and got some fertile eggs from other sources to bring in some new genes.
The chooks who were sick got to live inside, in a box (changed twice daily) and were fed a special ration of chicken crumbles, rolled oats and chopped herbs (comfrey, parsley and stinging nettle, also chick weed in winter) to boost their weight gain. All of them eventually died, until one night I had a dream; I watched my flock suffering from this disease, suffering paralysis and losing weight ,one by one they died and as I woke up from this nightmare I heard a voice say 'Mareks'. The first thing I did when I woke up was to google Mareks (because that's what we all do with nightmares, right?). I found that the symptoms are a pretty close match to what my chooks had but that the age range was too big (the usual age for chooks to die of Marek's is 1 - 10 weeks) and the rate of death was too low (most flocks suffer 70 -80% loss).
Marek's is caused by a herpes virus that attacks the nerve endings and sometimes the eyes and skin and usually results in death. Even though my chooks were only occasionally suffering and the sufferers were of different ages, I decided that it was probably Mareks.Some more reading about Marek's you might find interesting.
My daughter, who is studying Veterinary Technology at uni, text me one day with a link to a research study into Herpes treatment; apparently St John's Wort has shown promise as a herpes treatment in humans and other mammals, it was worth a try with avians too. I picked up a bottle of St John's Wort tincture from our local Co-Op and had it ready to go when the next chook got sick.
Wobbles is a four year old hen who suddenly became paralyzed. I treated her as usual but added 1 ml of St John's Wort and echinacea tinctures to her water a day as well. After a week she regained most of her motor function and is back to laying and running free in the yard, although as tinctures are made with vodka, she retained a deep love of anything alcoholic (hence the new name, Wobbles).
The clip below is of Tonto, he is six months old and his first symptom was the staggers as the video shows.
The clip below is from YouTube and it shows another chook suffering from Marek's.
I treated Tonto with the same diet and medication as Wobbles and he is now on his first day back in the yard. He is a bit weak and wobbly (another one) but he seems to be recovering.
If you have Marek's disease in your flock, give the St John's Wort treatment a shot, it might save a few lives and we can gather some anecdotal evidence for it's use.
I recently managed to get a few short clips of Roadie the butcher bird playing with various things around the house. I thought I would share them with everyone as I find the antics of the animals of our family (all species) endlessly mesmerizing.
My chook flock tends to be very eclectic; I gather unwanted chooks of all breeds who tend to have chicks of unknown parentage. We haven't had many new editions lately, so I bought a dozen fertile eggs (from my friend Milton) to set under a clucky hen. The new chicks are Salmon Faverolles; reputed to be quiet (not noisy) and docile (very dumb and trusting).
What beautiful babies they are.
They hatched a week ago and I am in love.
They are very quiet; I can barely hear them cheeping in the pen, and very docile; they don't get out of the way when I take food in to them. They have cute little fluffy bodies and a bouffant hair style to go with it.
I will be keeping a rooster and some hens from this lot and taking a rooster and two hens to school for the kids to look after too. I may need to build a separate pen for them though as I think my wild, feral flock would be too rough on them (they really are very trusting and dumb).
Today is a sad day; my favorite rooster died last night. He was a cross bred frizzle rooster, his mother's name was Eagle and his father was Raoul; he looked just like his dad.
He was an old boy for a rooster; five years at least, but I kept him because he had beautiful babies and because he was a gentle, caring boy, good with chicks and hens and people of all heights and shapes.
As is the way with these things he got into a fight with one of his grand sons and lost the fight. He was in intensive care overnight, but the hot day and his advanced age did him in.
I will miss him.
Ryan Rooster a month ago.
I am looking for homes for some of Ryan's grandsons as I am going to have a Salmon Faverolles rooster next I think;
This little boy is still waiting for his adult feathers, but he will be steel grey I think and a full frizzle look.
Some good news for the day;
I have one little Minorca chick hatched! They are so cute; with their short little beaks and big eyes.
The Minorca is the one with her face away from the camera (of course)
Let me tell you the story of our sheep..................
Four years ago I began to worry about bush fire danger to our humpy so we began to mow around the general human habitat with a push mower; laborious and boring work (I can tell you). The procedure involved having my two daughters walk in front of the mower and clear a 10 meter wide strip of bush of sticks, rocks and clods while my partner and I took turns pushing the mower (with a catcher) and emptying the wheel barrow of clippings from the mower.
Although this process yielded lots of kindling for the fire (sticks) and mulch for the garden (clippings), we soon got sick of it as it needed repeating on a monthly basis over summer and it took a whole weekend of 8 hour days to complete. So after two years; a new plan was hatched......
We decided we needed to let animals take over some of the work as they didn't have to go off and earn a living and study too. After a lot of research into suitable animals for the purpose of fire hazard reduction we settled on sheep as the most useful; horses are too delicate and browse branches in preference to grass and ground cover; goats are the love children of Houdini and an old world daemon and will escape a maximum security enclosure in order to eat your favorite shrub; geese are too susceptible to predators, eagles, foxes and dogs; cattle need more feed than we can provide on our poor land, so sheep it is.
I didn't want a breed of sheep that required tail docking, mulsing and shearing so I looked around at the older varieties of sheep who shed their wool and are capable of surviving without massive amounts of human intervention. I came up with Shetland sheep and Wiltshire horn sheep as my preferred breeds because both have usable wool but don't need a lot of attention.
As it turns out, Shetland sheep are impossible to obtain in Australia so I began looking at Wiltshire horn sheep and discovered that they are wild and wary creatures who never tame fully. I kept asking around and talking about the idea until I ran into a local lady who breeds...Wiltipols.
Wiltipols are a newish breed of sheep made from crossing Wiltshire horns with Dorpers (another shedding breed). They are reasonably docile, shed their wool and do not require a lot of care or intervention. I asked the local lady; Evelyn, to let me know when the next lot of lambs were ready to go. Meanwhile we began to save for fencing and managed to build two smallish paddocks by the time our babies were weaned and ready to come home.
They eat everything and anything; lantana, bladey grass, native grasses, the lot.
You can see the old wool gradually shedding and the new fleece below.
give them a handful of mixed grain of a morning to keep them coming to me and so I can check them over
They came when you call them and I love their playful yet gentle natures.
We eventually moved to electric fencing to make paddocks for them as that has proved to be the most flexible method of getting the firebreak mown.
They do a brilliant job of clearing the fire breaks and they are just going into their first moult. I believe that getting our four girls (and the later addition of Kitty, another story) has been the best labor saving initiative we have ever instituted.
I have yet to figure out how to collect the shed wool in any useful amount, but it will happen if I keep thinking about it.
This clip shows one of our dogs; Jess, guarding her pet guinea fowl. It may look like she wants to eat him, but she is actually looking after him. The little nips she gives him are a signal to move; herding behaviour. That particular guinea fowl was a sickly chick and so spent a month sleeping in a box by the fire, which is also where Jess sleeps (not in a box, on a mat by the fire), so they must have bonded. She spends her day following him and if he gets into a fight (which he does a lot) she will move in and break it up. When he goes outside the yard where she can't follow Jess will sit at the gate looking worried until he returns. When he flies up into a tree to sleep at night Jess comes to the door to be let in, she flops down by the fire with a sigh that sounds like the one I give when I get home from work.
Jess has an adult puppy; Val, who also lives with us, but she has never been like that with her own pup. I don't know if this is frustrated herding/ guardian behaviour or if she has an OCD tendency.
Thursday 11 July 2013
This is a short clip showing two of the birds who call our place home arguing about who owns 'my' wool basket. They are both from the Corvidia family; a currawong (big black one) and a butcher bird (grey scale one) and so are about as smart as the average 5 year old. We raised both of them and they have both spent considerable time in the wool basket as chicks.
All our animals (kids included) go through a 'we don't hit' learning phase where we show them it isn't acceptable to be violent in the house, that way there is a safe zone for everyone even natural enemies like these two.
You can see them both asserting their right to the basket but being too polite to fight because I am there. They sometimes roost together in the house so are not really enemies, although their species usually are. Things will probably change when they both have children (you know what that's like).
Pew (the currawong) has left home and joined a gang of juvenile currawongs although he still spends about one day a week at home. We expect that to change when he gets a steady girlfriend and hope he doesn't bring the grandkids home for baby sitting too often.
Roadie (the butcherbird) is hunting for himself and doesn't need help with anything. He still sleeps inside (its Winter and the stove is warm) on a high perch and relies on us for affection (play and cuddles) but that will change in the Summer when he starts to look for a mate. Being a member of a solitary species, he won't join a gang but will find a single girl and settle down for life.
With wild birds there is always a risk of over-humanizing (and who wants more of them) but the risk is fairly low with the corvid family, thanks to their intelligence.
The galahs on the other hand......well that's a story for tomorrow.
