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.
Happy Ostara to all; it is the spring equinox, which means that day and night are equal, due to our planet appearing to have no tilt at this stage of its orbit around the sun. It also means that my hens will bring forth chickens (and they have, right on cue), the sheep girls will cycle for the first time since they birthed their babies at Imbolc (it's driving Stag the ram crazy as he is locked away from them until Mabon, at the end of March) and daffodils flower in the garden. In the bush the kangaroos all have bulging pouches and the wattle is flowering like little golden suns.
At this time of year the world is new and fresh, new life springs forth from every corner and the potential of the summer is revealed. This time of year is so inspiring.
This year we celebrated by taking a Cheese and Garlic tour. We visited some market gardens in the area and a cheese factory and ended up at a brewery for lunch (of course). It was a brilliant day. Unfortunately all the photographs I took of the day were lost when my phone threw an SD card (that's how my partner phrased it). Instead I will share some photos of Ostara at the humpy....
This is Steve; he comes to the 'Retired chooks' pen for a feed when I refill their feeder. He is a King Parrot and his mate's name is Kerry.
We have two batches of chickens at the moment; one lot was hatched two weeks ago and one hatched on Ostara morning (20th September)
There are some chicks from each hatch in this photo; our hens tend to mother all the babies together.
The zucchini are beginning to fruit.
The cabbages are hearting up
The Hugelkultur beds are looking green and productive
Yes, we planted lettuce, even though they will bolt to seed after a very short pick. I love lettuce at this time of year.
The last planting of snow peas are fruiting. The other two plantings were eaten by chooks so this will be our first harvest.
I also went to a spring garden tour in my mother's garden, I have a lot of photos from that, but the garden is so awesome it deserves its own post.
The Salmon Faverolles are all grown up; they are passing the scrappy, teenaged stage and becoming full grown chooks. I think I will see some eggs this spring, maybe we will set some under a clucky chook and have more adorable babies. I have found them to be very quiet, docile chooks with lovely natures.
Here are some photos to refresh your memory;
Newly hatched Salmon Faverolles
At a few weeks old
At that awkward teenage stage
One of the little pullets, all grown up.
Another pullet with one of the minorca pullets behind her
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.
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)
It has been a few weeks since I received my Diggers Club order and set up the little seedling house..so time for an update. The Diggers Club seeds have proven very fertile with most seeds germinating within days of being sown. I have developed a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for my planting and potting on (I just love the official sound of that; really it's just the way I do things for now).
I sow the seeds in punnets of potting mix, label them and put the date on them.
When the seeds have germinated and are big enough to handle, I pot them on individually into newspaper pots filled with compost (to give them a burst of nutrients when they need it).
How to make paper pots (although I use several layers of paper to make them last longer)
Once the seedlings have recovered from potting on, I move them to the second plant stand in the vegetable garden area to grow up enough to plant (or to wait until bed space is available).
So far this SOP is working really well and I have been able to produce lots of tomato (Black Russian), carrot (Purple Dragon), rocket (Pronto), broccoli (Purple Sprouting) and Love-in-a-mist (Blue). The beetroot (Heirloom mix) has sprouted in it's punnet, but I haven't had time to pot them on yet.
A weekly water with fish emulsion mix cures the leaching of nitrogen from the compost by the newspaper pots that was happening to begin with.
I water the seeds in punnets with pure water every three days or so and the seedlings with the water from the chook's drinking container when I wash it out (about every two days). The vegetables in the beds are surviving on the water from the sheep trough when I change it (about every three days) and the washing and rinse water from clothes washing (once a week). This system means that I use every drop of water twice (the shower water drains to the bog garden site, which will be planted with comfrey, banana, Louisiana iris and sweet potato, but isn't yet) and I can survive for much longer on our single tank of rain water.
In other news....
I have a hen sitting on some Minorca eggs, thanks to the kindness of one of my friends (thanks Zoe) who gave me a dozen fertile eggs. I thought it was time to introduce some new blood into my flock, and fertile eggs are the best way to do it. When chickens are raised in the flock from the egg up they do not introduce new diseases and the trauma (to the chickens) of introducing new flock members is eliminated.
Today has been fairly productive in the garden.
My mostly-absent partner brought home two bales of straw for animal bedding and an expensive bag of blood and bone last night. This morning the rabbit, the chooks and the out of season chicks got new bedding along with the sheep shelter that was cleaned out yesterday.
New deep litter for the chooks
My daughter and I also collected another barrow load of wood for the next stretch of Hugelkultur bed and I planted the first few plants in the finished bed after spreading some expensive blood and bone.
