Patrick

Last week I got attacked by our rooster Patrick. I was holding one of the hens and he got all stroppy thinking she was in need of protection.  As I turned my back and knelt down to put her in the hen house, he threw himself at my back and managed to tear a hole straight through the pocket of my jeans. He also gave me quite a decent scratch in the gap between my shirt and the top of my trousers.

I didn't think much of it and assumed it was probably just an unlucky one off, but then he got Henry. Poor Henry was playing in the yard crawling through bushes and inadvertedly flushed out a couple of hens at the same time. Patrick gave him several nasty scratches on his back through his t'shirt and worst of all, a big scratch right on his cheek. 

 

Poor Henry was really shook up and all of a sudden playing outside didn't feel safe anymore. Patrick is a pretty big bird now, the thump as he hit my back the other day was substantial, and in addition to normal chicken claws he has spurs that are about 3cm long on each ankle. Perhaps unsurprisingly Henry was pretty enthusiastic about condemning Patrick to the pot. 

But we didn't do it. Not yet anyway. We were all getting pretty tired of the poo everywhere from the chickens having free-range of the yard and having to fence off the vege patch and every plant pot was tiresome.

So Greg built a fence. We gave them a big area down on the lawn and he did it in just one afternoon. I don't know why we didn't do it earlier.

And Patrick gets to strut and crow for a while longer yet.

xmarnie

Tiger for Tea

So tonight we are having Tiger for dinner. Not the stripey, four legged kind but a rooster called Tiger that until yesterday was scratching about in our yard with the rest of the flock. This is a big step for us. When we first decided to get a few hens we had no real intention to eat any of them. We're city folk after all. Our flock was only ever going to be small, they would be pets as much as egg producers and we were not planning on getting a rooster. Then things changed.

Little by little we became more farmer-y. First there was the family of gumboots at the back door - essential footwear when your chickens free-range and the whole backyard is their toilet. It just didn't occur to us city slickers that our romantic idea of free-ranging chickens happily clucking about in the yard would mean an awful lot of stinky, slippery poo. Then there was the dog attack and subsequent maggot removing from the wound using tweezers. Then various night-time treatments (you have to do it at night because they are sleepy in their coop and easy to catch) such as worming and de-lousing of their legs. The de-lousing is 'fun'; you grab the chook and dunk her legs in a container of cold vegetable oil every night for about a week. Not to mention the trudging outside every morning and every evening, rain, hail or freezing frost to let them out and shut them back in. 

Of course now that Greg has built our fancy solar-powered-automatic-chicken-house-door-opener-and-closer, that part at least is no longer necessary.

Then we bought three hens from a local chicken breeder and one day one of them crowed. So Patrick joined us and even though we hadn't planned on him, we love him. Roosters are pompous and flashy, arrogant and brave. But Patrick also does lovely things like steadfastly refuses to eat a tasty grub he finds and will call and call his hens with the sweetest, soft little clucks till they come and gobble it up at his feet. Sure it looks a lot like rape when he jumps on them multiple times throughout the day, grabs their necks and squashes them but we must not project too much.

And once you have a rooster, you just might get some chicks. So when Tina went broody, Greg built her a little house in a day and we let her sit, sit, sit.

Three beautiful fluffy babies later and we were delighted. Of course if you breed your own chooks you can't decide what you'll get and sure enough after a few weeks it soon became apparent that we had two roosters and only one hen in our little brood. Malcolm as it turned out, chose his own fate and flew over the back fence into the jaws of the dogs that lived there. Poor Malcolm ended up in our neighbor's rubbish bin. We never saw the body. But Tiger just kept getting bigger and flashier...and a problem that needed to be solved. The bigger and more rooster-y he got the more Patrick and even the other hens started to take notice of him. It seems chickens will not tolerate more than one rooster and life was getting hard for Tiger. It's rough out there in chicken-land. Tiger was a nice looking bloke and he tried hard to do the grub-sharing thing but nobody cared. 

So the decision was made. We asked around, and nobody needed a rooster. So what do you do? You do what farmers do and you eat the spare roosters. We have a friend who is an experienced 'chicken processor' and he offered to help. It was decided that Sunday would be the day.

We chose not to tell the kids the whole truth of Tiger's fate. They don't know he's not coming back from Craig's house and they won't know it's Tiger we are eating tonight. We will tell them eventually, just not right now.

Greg did the deed. His friend talked him through it and they assure me it was quick and efficient. I know some people do this sort of thing all the time but it's all very new for us. Greg was keen to learn and said he felt fine doing it. I'm ok too. I actually feel pretty good about the process. I didn't feel squeamish or sad as I carved up the carcass for tonight's soup, and I think I'll be fine eating it. The meat looked good and the fat was lovely and yellow from a healthy diet full of grass and grain. For the first time ever I will be eating something that I know, absolutely, had a good life, the best life a chicken could want, and that it's death was quick. 

So thanks Tiger, tonight we will toast you.

...well tonight we'll slurp you in soup. We may have you on toast the following day.

xmarnie

Easter gardening

Greg has been working hard in the garden lately. He has planted heaps of spinach and herbs and filled up a bunch of the pots that were lying around with all manner of yummy things. The garden was really rather unloved when we moved in and already its looking so much greener, healthier and neater. 

 

I love watching the kids hang out with their Dad outside. It does often lead to frustrations, I think Greg sometimes tries to do too much without accounting for all the eager 'helping' hands but its beautiful nonetheless. 

His big project at the moment is constructing an automatic chicken house door opener. There are a few on the web that talk you through how they have done it but it's all too technical for me. Solenoids? Voltage ratios? Micro switches? Torque? The idea is that the door will be connected to a timer and a little motor that when set will automatically slide open the door in the morning and (I believe) automatically close the door after dark in the evening. Initially it will be powered by a small battery however eventually he plans on hooking it up to a small solar panel! Once done the opener will save us from having to trudge out in our gumboots and pjs every morning to let them out and again each evening to lock them in. It will also allow us to go away on short holidays. Someone still needs to visit the chookies once a day to collect the eggs, clean out the poop and top up their water but none of that is really a big deal.

I really am so impressed that he is even attempting to build this thing. He's so clever this bloke of mine. And busy! Each weekend he's out there building stuff, fixing stuff, and being all-round handy (right now he's even doing the dishes). It's really quite daggy, I know, but I'm even impressed by the confident way he handles a drill. I'm gushing? Ok I admit it, I have a thing for the tradesman look. I really do love it when he puts on those blue King Gees and heads out to do stuff. And unlike when he really was a tradie, he doesn't come home worn out and angry with bleeding knuckles and knees and an on-call phone. Now when he gets out the drill it's for fun and he comes home each day in a nice clean suit, at pretty much the same time, he's home all weekend and it's so easy to get time off. Let nothing bad be said of the public service!

Last night the boys set up the tent in the yard and had a sleep-out. Henry has been keen on camping in the yard for ages and last night Greg agreed to set it up for them. They had so much fun getting it all organised; blowing up the mattress and ferrying out blankets and pillows and story books. We worried that Milly would want to sleep out there too but she was cool. After I put Milly down I came out to the sunroom and could hear the boys reading stories out in the dark. It was so cute. 

It didn't last long though. Apparently Greg (who wasn't really that keen originally on actually sleeping out there) was just getting all cosy and sleepy when Henry decided that actually he wanted his own bed. So in they came.

xmarnie