Biggests Kitchen Table - keeping chickens

Rhonda from Down--To--Earth has started up this idea of the Biggest Kitchen Table, with the idea that it would be like everyone sitting around a virtual kitchen table discussing things. The first topic is keeping chickens (aka chooks), clicking on the image above will take you to Rhonda's post which is a wonderful resource on the basics of keeping chooks. I'm certainly going to be referring back to it, it's a fantastic guide.

We've kept chooks for years, firstly in a small A-Frame coop we bought after seeing it on Gardening Australia. We eventually upgraded to a larger house - the little A-frame was a bit crowded. It's still doing duty as a hen house - we gave it to our neighbours who keep a few silkie bantams in it, it's really better suited to the smaller chooks.

The plan for our chookhouse came from Better Homes & Gardens (link). We modified the design slightly to use materials we already had, but basically followed the plan. I can't remember if the plan included nesting boxes or not now. If it did, we didn't make them, we use 'traditional' nesting boxes - old grass catchers from mowers, picked up on road side recycling days.

The BH&G site also has plans for an A-frame style chicken coop now (link), this one has all of the plans on the actual web article, you don't need to send away for the plans as you do for the one we built.

The girls have restricted access to the whole backyard, but they do tend to make a mess of the garden & scratch up plants, so their main run is the back corner of the yard. They have a feeder inside the house and water, but we've hung a second water bottle under the house as well. The fence isn't very high, they could probably fly over it if they really wanted to. We did clip their wings once (just on one side) when they were young & tended to fly into the neighbour's yards, but have never had to repeat it. We think they got the idea that it was wiser to stay in their own yard!

The fence contains them to their yard, but I don't think it would keep foxes out. The main fox protection is the locking them into their house each evening. We've had a problem in the past (at our old house) with foxes taking the chooks after we had let them out of their house for the day, and then left for work. The clever foxes noticed that even though it was daylight, there was no one around that they needed to beware off. So far we haven't had a similar problem at this house. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstal had a suggestion on one of his River Cottage programs that foxes could be deterred by placing clumps of human hair into stockings & tying them around the fence. The idea is that the human scent from the hair will keep foxes away.

collecting the eggs - chook & duck

Our chooks came from Barter & Sons Hatchery in Luddenham, on the outskirts of Sydney. You take the Northern Road exit from the M4 (south, not towards Penrith), follow the road to Luddenham, and look for the hatchery sign. It's maybe 15km from the M4.


I just looked up their details in the yellowpages, and found they now have a website - Chicks-R-Us. This seems to be mostly about renting incubators to schools, for the kids to watch the eggs hatching, but there is a bit of information about the actual chook farm and has the contact details. Edit: okay, so you can't link to actual entries in the yellow pages, the page expires quickly. Details are 85 Eaton Road, Luddenham, ph: 4773 3222.



We have two Australorps and a Rhode Island Red. According to the website, they also sell White Leghorns and cross breeds. We have always bought point of lay birds, when we started we wanted to be sure that we only had females, and we didn't want to fuss with raising baby chicks. We're starting to think that maybe we could get some chicks & raise them specifically for eating, but that's still in the discussion stage. Maybe in another year or so.

Our original decision to keep chooks was an ethical choice - we didn't want to buy battery eggs, but it was so confusing trying to decide which eggs we should buy. And every so often you would get stories on the current affairs shows about the mis-labelling of the free range eggs or on the misuse of the terms free range & barn raised and all the other descriptions they use. It was too confusing, so we decided to get a few chooks, raise them in our back yard and know exactly where our eggs came from. And we haven't regretted it at all. We always have plenty of eggs for our own use and plenty to share with family and friends. We get manure for the garden, we get a disposal unit for vegie scraps & uneaten food and we get the pleasure of watching our beautiful girls scratching around the yard.

Can't leave a post about our chooks without a picture of our backyard prima donna's - the ducks! The back part of our yard contains the ducks in one corner, chooks in the other corner & a climbing frame for the kids between them.


Edit: Books I'd recommend: The Chook Book by Jackie French
Lucky Ducks by Phoebe Thorndyke


Emma: our block is tiny, it's only 700 sqm in total. I measured the chook yard this morning, it's 5.4 x 5.5 m, and I think the fence is about 1.5m high. The posts are higher, but we've only put one lot of wire on it. The chooks don't make much noise, they get a bit excited when they lay an egg, but that's about the only time they make much noise. The ducks are way noiser, they make a fuss about anything & everything. A few of our neighbours have chooks as well so everyone is used to the occasional chook noise, and luckily no one minds the duck noise.


My egg recipe: Meringues

Ingredients:
egg whites
caster sugar - double the volume of egg white
(eg if you have half a cup of egg white, use 1 cup of sugar)
a few drops of vanilla

Warnings:
1. do not try to make these if it's too humid or if it's raining, they just won't turn out properly.
2. make sure your beaters & bowl are completely dry. Meringues really don't like like any form of moisture. It's best to use a glass or metal bowl, not a plastic one.
3. these will not be perfectly white, they should turn out a very, very pale brown.
4. and you need to bake them for about 2 hours!

Method:

Preheat oven to 120 deg C

Place egg whites in a large bowl (really large, the mixture will really expand as you beat it) & beat at high speed. Keep beating until soft peaks form.

Start adding the sugar, a tablespoon at a time. Beat each spoon in thoroughly before adding the next spoonful. When about half the sugar is gone, add a few drops of vanilla & beat in.

When all of the sugar is added, keep beating until the mixture is really thick.

Put the mixture into a piping bag & pipe out little meringues onto a baking tray (covered with your choice of baking paper or foil - I haven't tried making these on those silicone tray liners so can't comment on whether they work or not). I pipe out fairly small meringues, maybe 3-4 cm across the base. If you make bigger ones, the cooking times may need to be extended. Meringues need to cook for a long time at a low temperature, to dry out completely.

If you want to, sprinkle some 100s & 1000s over the meringues before baking. You can also add some food colour to the mixture if you prefer coloured meringues/

Place tray in oven & bake for an hour.

Reduce the temperature to 100 deg C & bake for another 20 minutes.

Reduce temperature to 90 deg C & bake for another 20 minutes.

Reduce the temperature to 75 deg C & bake for a final 20 minutes.

Let the meringues cool slightly on the tray before removing to a cooling rack.

Enjoy your meringues! If these aren't to be eaten immediately, store in an airtight container. Mine have never survived for more than a few days so I don't know how long they will keep for.