Category Archives: Hobby Farming

Plan on growing your own fruit, nuts and veg? Or perhaps getting a few chooks and goats? Big Farmer Trev gives you the answers you need to produce some first class tucker!

Ask Trev!, Hobby Farming

Ask Trev: How to buy Belgian Duccles?

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This question comes from Maddy in Melbourne:

Dear BigFarmerTrev,

I have had many breeds of hens since starting my hen owning journey.

The Belgian Duccles are my favourites.

I decided that if I continue with hen ownership it will only be Belgians.

They’re a true bantam, easy to care for, quirky, loveable and cute!

 I presently have 4 girls , 2 of which are Belgians and getting on in years.

I noticed that my hen breeder has not advertised Belgians for ages. So I sent them a msg asking if they ever get them anymore and they said no.

Feeling rather sad about this, I set about looking online to see if anyone else sold these little darling birds and have stumbled upon only very very serious award winning show bird sellers who ‘auction’ breeding pairs.

I know nothing of this particular side of hen keeping.

As such I have a number of questions.

The first and silliest being – should I quit my day job, move to the country, buy a breeding pair of Belgian D’uccles and live out my dotage winning prizes for my amazing birds.

That silliness aside – will these serious breeding people sell birds to me if I just want a coupla female pullets?

I cannot imagine my life without a few Belgians D’uccles following me about the garden.

Please share any wisdom you may have re – hens that sell via auction / showing birds and quitting your day job to move to the country.

Yours in good faith,

A city kid.

Ask Trev: Chicken Perching Problem

Dear Maddy,

First of all, I don’t think youre first question: should I quit my day job, move to the country, buy a breeding pair of Belgian D’uccles and live out my dotage winning prizes for my amazing birds?  is silly at all.  I used to live only a 20 minute drive from you in Melbourne and look at me now – I live in the bush, breed ducks and win awards for them every year at the Rylstone Show!  Some people have dreams of being famous singers or crushers of empires – moving to the county and breeding poultry is far more sensible, attainable and frankly less stressful.

The answer to your second question: will these serious breeding people sell birds to me if I just want a coupla female pullets? is yes, they will – but you will pay top dollar.

If you don’t want to pay the breeders rates, and they can be pretty high, then your best bet is attending a Poulty Auction.  When our Muscovy’s flock was decimated by a fox some years back, we drove over an hour to Bathurst and attended their monthly poultry auction.  Not only did it save us paying the local breeders rates (and note that now I occasionally beat those same breeders in competitions) it gave me a chance to eye off all the different birds and see what would work best with my flock.  I ended up bidding on and winning 3 black & white muscovy ducks, as all ours before this were plain white and I wanted to add some diversification into the gene pool – worked a treat!

Given you have a very specific breed of bird in mind – Belgian Duccles – it may even behoove you to contact via phone or email some of these poulty auction sites and see if they regularly have the birds you are after up for auction.  You don’t want to head all the way out to one to find they never auction off what you are after.

Your other option may be social media, pages for fans of pretty much anything exist now (I’m sure there is probably an ‘Australian Napkin Appreciators Society’ page) so maybe do some online searching, see if there are any Aussie/Victorian pages about Belgian Duccles and see if they can be of assistance.

Hope these answers are of help 😊

Ask Trev – Chickens: the balance between pet and livestock

Ask Trev: How to deal with molting chickens

 

Hobby Farming

How to get rid of possums from your ceiling

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The fun of living on a farm, surrounded by bushland.

Birds singing, kangaroo’s hopping through the paddock….

…galah’s & cockatoo’s stealing all the ducks tucker, wombats digging holes under the fences and letting foxes through to get your chooks, monitors stealing eggs and eviscerating your waterfowl, feral goats breaking down fences to get at your nanny’s.  Oh it’s heavenly.

Capturing Wild Animals: Monitors for relocation

And then, a possum decided the ceiling of the farmhouse is a great place to settle down to raise some babies.

Bloody possums!  For the most part I don’t mind them, they do the occasional screeching at night or steal some of the poultries wheat, but they are tolerable.  Until they decide your bloody home should be their bloody home!

We had one recently, it found a gap between the roof tiles and the guttering and decided to move in.  Not just move in, but in the ceiling space right above our bed!  We could hear it skittering and growling and scratching and gnawing and generally being a pain in the arse during the nighttime hours.  Not only was it causing damage, but keeping us awake.  I was tempted to go up there with my shotgun but I didn’t want to blow a hole in our damn roof.

So I found out the best ways to get rid of them, and it worked a treat!  So here’s Big Farmer Trev’s top tips for getting rid of possums out of your ceiling.

 

Tip #1 Lights

Possums are nocturnal creatures, so the perpetually dark ceiling cavity of your home is the perfect place for them to take up residence.  You can spoil this for them by sticking up some lights.  Make sure they are safe lantern’s that produce no head, the last thing you want is the possum to knock one over and start a damn fire.

Leaving these lamps up there for two to three days constantly lit will drive the possum barmy.  Instead of it being constantly dark it will be constantly light and it will want to find a new home.

 

Tip #2 Smells

Possums have got a very sensitive sense of smell, and do not like to hang around where odours that smell awful to them perpetuate.  Garlic is good, so are peeled onions.  Cloves work well as you can spread them like buckshot.  But what I found best was mothballs.  Not only do these smell stronger that the garlic or onions, but the beauty is you can fling them around your ceiling cavity without having to worry about removing them later.  You don’t want to have to go crawling through your ceiling cavity to remove peeled onions before they start to rot.

 

Tip #3 – Entrapment

Now in NSW where I am located, you need to get permission to catch a possum, but thankfully that’s not hard to get.  And usually the powers that be will also hire to you a cage specific to the purpose.  You can either place this in your ceiling cavity, or else place it outside near where the possum is getting in and out.  If placing it in your ceiling cavity, make sure you aren’t putting it near your lanterns and mothballs, or the possum isn’t going to go near it, no matter what yummy treats you place inside.

Once you catch the possum, choose a tree that’s far from the house but still in its established territory, then release it.  Hopefully it’s going to like the tree a lot more than your house and decide to live there instead.

There are lots of other tips I’ve read online, but I’ve found using the above makes all the others superfluous.  Simply put some lanterns and mothballs in your ceiling, then bait a cage so you can catch it and move it to a tree further away from your house – problem solved!  And don’t forget to plug up the hole it used to find its way in, just in case it doesn’t like it’s new tree and decides to giving living above your bed another go.

 

Capturing Wild Animals: Feral Goats

 

Hobby Farming

Video: Short Freak Hailstorm hits Rylstone

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After days in the 30 degree heat, we had a short but intense storm hit on our farm, about 10 kilometers out of Rylstone.

It dumped 7ml of rain in 7 minutes, along with a ton of hail – some pieces almost the size of golf balls!

Then just like that it was gone, leaving a blue sky and a pokadotted lawn.

Of course, every stormcloud has a silver lining, and in this case it gave the kids some entertainment of their trampoline afterwards!

Do you live near Rylstone and cop this freak storm?  Did it do any damage?  Tell us in the comments section below!

 

Video’s: Flooding of Rylstone Showground & Cudgegong River

Ask Trev!, Hobby Farming, Tales of the Trev, Transformatorium

Ask Trev: How does Big Busy Trev manage to get everything done?

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This ‘Ask Trev’ question comes in from Michael in Melbourne.

‘You’re a busy man.  How do you make that work without either having a clone to help you out or somehow create a 36 hour day?’.

 

Well Michael it’s true, I am a very busy man.  Between this blog, my radio show, working full time, performing househusband duties, managing my giant Transformer collection and building furniture for their shed, as well as hobby farming where I raise goats as well as ducks and chickens, boredom is something that receded from my life many years ago.  Add on top of that the most time-intensive activity of all – being a father of two young children – and spare time in non-existent.

The many faces of Trev

First off – I will never clone myself.  Never!  Do you know how big my ego is?  How much attention seeking behaviour I indulge in?  I don’t need another one of me running around telling my jokes, eating my meat and vying for all the attention that should rightly be mine!

And now there’s more of me… him… us

Also I’m married.  What if my wife can’t tell me from the clone?  I don’t need no stinkin clone getting busy with my missus!  Plus, Primus forbid, what if it turns out by some quirk of the cloning process that he is better in bed than me?!  I don’t think my ego, large as it is, could take the hit of my wife saying ‘last night was the best sex we’ve ever had Trev!’ and I hadn’t even been at home!

As for 36 hour days, well manipulating the time stream to that extent is beyond even my capabilities.  Sure I could take my family to Mars where the days are at least 25 hours long – I could get a lot done in that extra hour – but it seems like a hassle.  It was hard enough moving my Transformer collection from one state to another without taking it to a whole other planet!

 

So how do I manage my busy lifestyle?

Well there are several things I do – some are time management and some are just sacrifice.

*Giving up hobbies: I have way too many hobbies.  Like way too many.  So some have had to be toned down and others sacrificed completely.  This blog for example, has gone from an entry each week to about two a month.  I’ve given up video gaming, though to be honest I think the gamer in me had run its course anyway.  I used to brew my own beer and had to give that up.  And I don’t farm as many fruit & vegetables as I used to, though still enough that each week we eat at least one or two things that come from the garden.  I’m also a bit of a bibliophile, but reading a book for my own pleasure has been relegated to the odd 5 minutes in bed before blissful slumber.

For a while juggling being a gamer and father was so easy!

*Multitasking: Except at work where it is a requirement, I don’t schedule.  Don’t believe in it.  What I do do is do multiple jobs in the same room at the same time.  So for example when I’m in the kitchen (with quasi-laundry attached) I might be wiping benches, preparing meals, stacking the dishwasher, loading the washing machine and unloading the dryer all at the same time (well not literally – thanks to the failure of mutation science I only have two hands).  Then the same goes for other rooms and even parts of the farm – nothing like chasing off some feral goats in the ute while you are on your way to go cut firewood in the back paddock.

Sigh… I remember when multitasking meant drinking and rocking out at the same time.

*Be Married: Dear sweet Primus let nothing ever happen to my wife!  Not only because she is the love of my life, but also because she does so many chores to manage the house & kids and our lives in general.  Chances are if she disappeared from our lives my children and I would be huddled round a fire in tattered clothing, eating beans from a can and hoping it would rain soon so we could wash ourselves.  Our existence would be akin to those survivors of a zombie apocalypse.

Make sure you treat your wife right – romance is a lot easier than being a single parent!

*Child Labour: Those damn kids can work for their food!  OK, so maybe I don’t actually deny them sustenance and or send them down mineshafts to search for coal.  But at 6 & 8 years old respectively they are at the age they can chip in with the chores.  Every day after school, before they are allowed to go play with toys or video games, they need to help unstack the dishwasher, unpack their school bags, put all their breakfast and lunch dishes in the sink and most importantly go feed all the animals.  Not only does it teach them responsibility, but it means they are spending time with their pets.  How kids can ignore a real-life dog but spend hours training a dog to obey in Minecraft is beyond me.

Wish all my chores were this cute when I was young

Of course the children love to be involved with all the constant projects going on around the farm and house too.  They help plant and pick all the vegetables, which not only helps me out but makes them more inclined to eat what we grow when it come to fruition.  My son loves to help out with my construction projects and is currently helping me build a display table for the Transformers shed, and my daughter loves to bake with her mother and make muffins for their school lunches.

Dig boy! Dig!

*And lastly, what I do most, is go, go, go!  All day, every day.  Sigh… Every. Damn. Day.  I would be lying if there wasn’t part of me that would like to spend a day just lounging on the couch, eating potato chips and rewatching Deadpool movies.  But if I wanted that I shouldn’t have had kids and chosen to live on a farm.  Life is so rewarding, and so very, very tiring.

Sometimes I fake back injuries just so I can lie down in the emergency room for an hour and rest

 

So that’s what I do Michael, that’s how Big Angry Trev manages his life.  And maybe I have kind of inwardly cloned myself in this one body.  There is Big Angry Trev the blogger, Big Farmer Trev the hobby farmer, Big DJ Trev the radio host.  And most importantly (Big) Dad (Trev) the father.  Big Gamer Trev is dead and buried but I hope to resurrect Big Brewer Trev at some point and start making my own beer again.  But then that begs the question – would I ever have the time to drink it?

 

Thank you for your question.

Got any other ‘Ask Trev’ questions?  Pop them in the comments section below!

 

Related Articles:

Ask Trev: Where does all my mucus go?

Ask Trev: Fun & Romantic Treasure Hunt

Ask Trev: How do I avoid Spoilers?

Hobby Farming

Recipe – Curried Duck Eggs

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Don’t ya hate it when your poultry has a secret nest?

I have all these great laying drums set up for my ducks, but for some damn reason half of them prefer to find some nice secret spot in the garden and lay their eggs there every day until I discover it a few weeks later.

This just happened yet again, so we’ve gone from no duck eggs to having well over a dozen that have to get used up pretty quick from not being refrigerated.

So I decided to try out a recipe of my sisters to use them up – her magnificent curried eggs.  She makes them that mouthwatering that for years I’ve insisted on a plate of them instead of birthday gifts from her.

While I can’t profess to make them as well as her, I gave it the ol’ college try and they still came out pretty damn good!  And it’s a simple recipe so really easy to make.  So here is Big Angry Trev’s sisters recipe for Curried Duck Eggs.

 

Ingredients:

*16 Duck Eggs – boiled

*120gm Butter

*4 tbsp Cream

*2 tsp Curry Powder

*1 tsp Mustard Powder

*Black Pepper

*Paprika

*Chilli Flakes

 

Method

*Boil the eggs, slice in half and scoop out the yolks.

*Put yolks in a bowl and add butter, cream, curry powder, mustard powder and season with black pepper.  Mash.

*Spoon mix back into egg whites.

 

Seasoning

How you season your eggs is up to you.  Typically as the househusband I have to cater to everyone’s particular tastes so I divvy the eggs up into 3 lots.

First lot I put on no seasoning for my kids.

Second lot I put on paprika for my wife.

The third I put on paprika and chilli flakes for myself.

I’ve yet to try them with hot sauce but that’s only a matter of time.  But I definitely recommend the paprika, it really makes the flavour pop!

 

And there ya go, a simple recipe that is an effective way to use up all those extra eggs you find lying around the farm.

 

Related Articles:

Meat Recipe #5 – Mum’s Oven-cooked T-Bone Steak & Onions with Mushroom Gravy

Meat Recipe #10 – Duck Egg & Venison Chorizo Omelette

Meat Recipe #12 – Roasting your own Duck

Meat Recipe #13 – Roasted Duck in Crabmeat Sauce

 

Hobby Farming, Random Rants

The RFS saved our farm from bushfires and friends & family saved our sanity

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Despite, thankfully, not losing our home like so many other poor souls, our family was affected by the unprecedented bushfires this summer. We had to evacuate our home for an extended period – twice, with the flames getting to within 500m off our back fence and 200m off our side fence. These were scary times for us, like many others across the state. If it wasn’t for the RFS fighting the fires tooth and nail for months on end, I have zero doubt our property would have been consumed and they have our families eternal thanks.

Image taken from the cab of a fire truck on our road the night we had to evacuate. (Photo Credit: R. Oldfield – NSW RFS)

These fires affected our entire family unit. We had to cancel our sons birthday party and all my wifes family coming for Christmas. We had to spend Xmas itself at relatives homes instead of in our own. We had to tear our farm apart to try and make it as fireproof as possible, and we are still now trying to put it back together. We had all our most treasured personal belonging stashed in three other people’s homes and likewise for our animals three more. We stressed and fretted and on one night drove for our lives as the police came down our road on their loudspeaker ordering people to evacuate, our animals and children in tow. We sat up until 1am at my mother-in-laws house watching the reports come in about a house destroyed on our road, wondering if it was ours and if we would have a home to return to.  We consider ourselves fortunate that all we lost in the end was a few fridges and a deep freezer full of food (a waste of good ducks though).

So yes, we were much luckier than many, but the NSW fire season was truly a horrible month for our family.

 

So the RFS saved our home, but what saved our sanity? Easy to answer – community, friends and family. Without these people my wife and I would have descended into madness long ago, and ours is a tale of how people pulling together made what was a terrible experience so much less worse than it could have been.

 

Here are some of the examples of how we were helped by truly wonderful people:

 

Community & Emergency Workers

*The Grader Drivers that came to our property on two separate occasions and put in fire break lines everywhere they could, in an effort to stop any grassfires that might make it in onto our land.

*The local branch of the RFS, who provided constant updates and were always able to answer any questions we sent to them, even at 2am while our road burned.

*The local member who posted constant updates and videos about what the fires were doing in our area for weeks on end and was an excellent source of information. I may have been a Greens voter all my life, but there is a National’s member who has earned my vote!

*My sister-in-laws friend taking in our chook and 8 of our ducks for a full month and caring for them, despite never even having met us before.

*Our neighbours across the road and next to us keeping an eye on our property in case there were spotfires while we were evacuated.

Grader driver putting in containment lines in our back paddock

 

Friends

*My friend Jordan driving over a hundred kilometres and spending 3 hours in 40 degree heat evacuating all goods from the Transformatorium shed into the main house (we thought that the firey’s might be able to save the house but would probably let the shed burn if they had to). Then in the hot sun helped me clean out gutters, that had never been cleaned before, of dead leaves and other flammable material.

*My boss and friend Toni from work storing my 3000+ Transformer action figure collection in her loungeroom for an entire month, despite it meaning she could hardly move in that part of the house.

*Our friends Lisa and Scott taking our pet goats for extended periods on two separate occasions and feeding and watering them every day despite the heat.

*Our new friends and neighbours down the road, Bill and Lynne, feeding the poultry we couldn’t evacuate, even though it meant a daily drive closer to the fire front.

*So many of our close friends messaging us with comforting words and emotional support, yet allowing us the space to breathe when we had to.

 

Family

*My brother-in-law Matt driving over a hundred kilometres with his chainsaw to cut down every tree within a 5m radius of our farmhouse, then staying the night so the next day he could seal breaks in our guttering so they could hold water in case of ember attack.

*My sister-in-law Jo storing so much of our personal belongings, taking our fish for several weeks, and making us Christmas dinner

*My mother-in-law Noelene putting us up for long periods – twice – while we were evacuated, looking after our dog and storing even more of our belongings (my wife’s family rules!).

*Our children, so young and yet so brave. Being evacuated twice, missing out on birthday parties, missing out on spending Christmas in their own home. That’s a lot for a 4 and 7 year old to cope with and they both took it in their stride.

*And more than anyone, my beautiful wife. By my side we spent so much of our summer trying to fireproof a farm that had never before been threatened by flames and was a tinderbox ready to ignite.

 

Ours is just one example of how families and entire communities came together to support each other during this horrible time for our state and indeed for our country. If ever there was evidence that the spirit of empathy and generosity is still well alive in this land, it’s been well and truly presented this summer.

 

So to all our friends, all our family, all the community and all the members of the RFS, on behalf of our family

Thank you!

 

Related Articles:

Retrofitting a ute to become a spotfire fighting vehicle

Bushfire Danger: Packing your emergency bags

Fires SE Rylstone & Kandos

Ask Trev!, Hobby Farming

Ask Trev: Hassle of a Broody Hen

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Dear Big Farmer Trev,
I had been warned about this with Silkies and it’s happened.
I have a broody hen.
I spent all weekend watching her trying to figure out why she is so grumpy.
She’s been laying an egg every day and getting mad as hell when I collect them.
Then she started walking about shouting and sulking and now she is mostly staying in her coop looking very upset.
I checked her over trying to figure out what on earth is wrong with her.
Physically she is in tip top condition.
My mate just walked outside and said ‘maybe she’s broody’
Then he said ‘I don’t actually know what that means, is that a thing?’
Pretty sure he is right.
So now I need your wisdom.
How do I ‘break’ a broody hen?
Or should I get her some chicks and shove them under her at night time?
Help!
Love Mads

‘I wanna be a mum!’

   Yup, she sure sounds broody to me!  You have 3 options:

1: Let it run its course, after several weeks she will get over it.

2: Lock her out of her coop during the day so it forces her to scratch about rather than sitting inside looking grumpy.  This sometimes helps decrease the duration of the broodiness by a day or two.

3: Get some fertilized eggs and put under her.  Do NOT get some chicks already born, she will know they are not hers and won’t look after them.  However if you get some fertilized eggs and put them in her nest, when they hatch she will think she is their mum and will act as such.

Good luck!

 

Related Articles:

Ask Trev: Chicken Perching Problem

Ask Trev: Grumpy Silkies Problem

Hobby Farming

Capturing Wild Animals: Monitors for relocation

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Note: It is illegal to capture Monitors in Australia in the wild.  It is only permissible to ‘capture’ a Monitor if it is already within a structure such as a house or, in the case of this blog, a duck pen. Even then a person can only capture the Monitor for the purpose of removal from the structure and subsequent relocation.  Monitors should never be approached in the wild and should never be harmed under any circumstance, being a protected species.

Monitors, Goannas , big friggin lizards – whatever ya wanna call them I love’em!

They are truly beautiful creatures. Before moving to our new farm I had only ever seen a couple in the wild; now we have a property full of them!

All photos taken on our farm in NSW

For the most part I love having them around. First and foremost as they eat baby snakes. Even full grown snakes don’t like to hang around them. Ergo the more Monitors we have, the less snakes. And as a father of two young children that suits me just fine.

Monitor’s are egg enthusiasts. I’ve often found them in our compost after the egg shells and even in our own yard I’ve taken film of them scaling trees to first go after Cockatoo eggs and then Magpie eggs. Considering the amount of both we have around our place, that doesn’t bother me too much and I don’t get involved since its part of nature’s cycle.

However at least a half-dozen times over the past two years I’ve caught them raiding out duck nests.

Now our organic free-range duck eggs are one of the few things we sell on our farm, so we don’t like them to be taken. And once a Monitor has discovered where the ducks lay, he will be back again and again and again. I’ve even found one pushing its head under the arse of a clucky duck to eat the actual eggs she is sitting on! It can be very frustrating when your new ducklings are only a week or so off hatching and they get gobbled down by a sneaky lizard.

So because of this, from time to time I’ve had to relocate the odd Monitor. Bear in mind this is always done with the upmost care so as to cause the animal no injury. I only relocate them when they have started the duck egg filching, before that I’m more than happy for them to climb our trees, keep the snakes away and just, well, be beautiful to look at really. Catching and relocating monitors is actually a surprisingly simple and easy process, and here is how you do it:

 

Materials Required

*1 garbage can

Yup, that’s it! Sometimes I’ve used a cage as well but I find a plastic bin works best.

 

Method

You see, Monitors are not aggressive creatures at all. They eat eggs and carrion and baby reptiles. They don’t attack big creatures and are not remotely hostile so when approached by a human they will run away as fast as they can, preferably up the nearest tree.

So your technique is simple, when you spot the Monitor in your house or coop, grab a plastic bin and a lid and chase him. If he runs outside and goes up a tree he will wait up there for hours until you go away so you have lost him. Plus it is then illegal to interfere with him in any way.  The idea is to back the Monitor into a corner of whatever room or pen it has entered.

Once in the corner he will turn his head and hiss at you. This is all bluff. Whilst Monitors do have venom sectretions in their mouths and a bite can make someone sick, they will only go the chomp as a last resort. Likewise he has claws like chainsaws and a tail that can it can use like a whip.  However again he will only use these as a last resort – he doesn’t want a fight – he just wants you to go away.

Quickly, very quickly but making sure you don’t snag one of his legs, dump the bin over him. If the opening is vertical slam the lid on, if it is upside down on the ground slide the lid underneath. Now secure the lid via its side handles, or if it doesn’t have handles simply tie it down with a bit of rope so it accidentally doesn’t pop off. The Monitor is going to be quite bewildered inside and is going to be trying to figure out his situation, not slamming himself against the lid trying to get out.

Caught using a cage as I didn’t have a bin handy

Relocation

Now it’s just a matter of taking the Monitor to its new home. Our farm backs onto a state forest so it’s a great place to let them loose for us. However as I’ve learned, make sure you let them loose under a tree for them to immediately scale. If not they are going to be looking for the nearest cover and that may well be the underside of your vehicle. Then you’ve got the headache of getting the bugger out.

Out of all the Monitors I’ve relocated I’ve only ever had one return, so next time I took him further afield. And I’m pleased to say that when bushwalking I’ve even spotted ones I’ve relocated before. Very easy, just triangulate the angry noise of cheeping birds and there’s a good chance you will spot a Monitor half way up their tree.

And remember, unless you have your own birds whose eggs you want to protect, if you find a Monitor on your property, leave him be. They are beautiful creatures, will never, ever attack you and will help keep your place clear of snakes.

Happy and humane hunting!

 

Related Articles

 

 

Ask Trev!, Hobby Farming

Ask Trev: Chicken Perching Problem

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Today we have another chook question from Maddy in Melbourne:

 

Dear Big Farmer Trev.

Firstly I would like to acknowledge and thank you for being instrumental in this city kids foray into pseudo ‘country life’. Ok I’m over stating things, into suburban hen keeping.

The little silkies did prove a complex hen to care for and I subsequently found myself down from two to one.
The bird vet said ‘they are very poor egg layers, you can’t get them wet, they’re very broody , have a myriad of health problems…’ whereby I asked him if that was his professional way of saying ‘why the fuck would anyone ever want to keep silkies?’ He laughed. A lot. Which I took for a ‘yes, yes that is what I was getting at’
In any case one of the adorable little munchkins made it but was desperate for companionship and I have managed to assimilate a new hen into my flock.

All is mostly going swimmingly.

 The newest girl is a Welsummer.

 She’s not just the prettiest bird I have ever brought home, she is the smartest.

 She was first put in with the Silkie who was thrilled to have a new roost pal. Problem being Silkies roost low and are very poor flyers and jumpers and . . . all that other stuff the bird vet said about silkies and more.

 Anyway I built a new coop, and trained the little silkie how to navigate my complex hen ladder system to get into the higher coop.

 She’s done well the adorable little munchkin.

 So anyway..here comes my question.

 The Welsummer (Penny) is still not happy at all with the coop.

 Every evening right on dusk the other two happily put themselves to bed and Penny paces about looking for (even) higher digs.

As a keeper of many birds I am hoping you can help me to understand where does she actually want to sleep?!

 In a tree?

 Over the neighbours fence?

 Is there a coop I could get built for her that would be appropriate for her discerning specifications or is she just being a dick?

 I’d love to let her freerange at dusk to see where she actually wanted to sleep but I fear she may end up over the fence.

 Someone suggested clipping her wings first.

 I’ve never done that to any of my hens. I am remiss to fuck with their abilities like that in case it disables them in a possible escape from a predator scenario.

 Historically I have just taught them that shit is so good here they don’t need to fuck off. It’s worked so far, but Pen really really wants a higher night time roost.

Or that’s what I assume she wants when she paces about considering her options and winds up on my shoulder or on the roof of her coop.
I’d rather figure out how to accomodate her needs than fuck with her body.
Do different breeds have different innate desires or is this a quirk of Penny herself?
Have you had hens that protested their accomodation and how did you address it if they did.?
Yours in good faith,
NOT a farmer by any stretch of the imagination but semi fluent in chook.
Mads.

Hey Mads,

Most birds roost according to their inherent nature and it’s damn hard to get any animal to go against it.  In the photo’s you’ve sent I see you’ve got those little chook houses that I’ve also got a couple of.  When I first introduced my Frizzles to their houses I kept them locked up in the little coops every night for a full week so they would come to see them as their homes.

This worked – to a degree.  The chickens would go inside their houses to lay eggs and often go inside them if the weather was foul.  However at dusk, most evenings the birds would fly up as best they could (Frizzles are not god flyers, yet still a cut above Silkies) and get up onto the highest part of the houses of a night to roost there.  I tried to change this but ended up giving up, it’s what they wanted to do, and they were still pretty safe due to the high fences I had installed.

However behavior can be changed.  After we moved state and brought all our poultry with us, for about 9 months my Frizzles had to share a pen with my Muscovy ducks.  Now Muscovy’s are about the only duck breed that like to roost rather than settle on the ground, and they found the tops of the chooks houses perfect.  Being about 3 times the size of the chooks and outnumbering them greatly, the ducks easily won this battle and the chooks took to roosting on the little perches inside their houses rather than on top.

After 9 months I had finally built a very large pen for the ducks and chooks and moved everyone and their accomodations inside.  As part of this new set up I had built big perches strong enough to accommodate the Muscovy’s and they quickly took to them.  However the chickens, even a year later, have opted to remain inside their coop of a night, despite the tops of their little houses now being vacant.  Where I was unable to train my chickens, the ducks succeeded.

From what I know of Welsummers, they are medium perchers.  As in they like to be up at a decent height but don’t feel the need to be up massively high in a tree like some chooks do

So my advice is either:

A: Just accept you are going to have to physically pop her in and lock her into the little coop houses each night, which she may not particularly like but will keep her safe, and hope she will eventually acclimatize to it

or

B: Build some taller perches inside your enclosure at heights of 5 and 6 feet.  Then she can sleep up higher and be happier.  The downside is she will be more exposed to the elements and won’t keep your Silkie company of a night.    Considering your pen has a ceiling of 7 feet, I don’t think you need to go any higher.

Of course you could do as others suggested and clip her wings, but I understand why you don’t and to be honest I’ve always adopted the same thinking myself.  I don’t want my birds to think they can escape a predator by flying away, only to find when they try that some bastard human has taken that ability away and they are now feral-cat food.

Anyway Madds, hope that is of some help.

 

Got any other advice for Maddy?  Pop it in the comments section below!

 

Related Articles:

Ask Trev: Grumpy Silkies Problem

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Ask Trev: How to deal with Molting Chickens

Hobby Farming, Meaty Goodness!

Meat Recipe #12 – Roasting your own Duck

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For years we have been growing our own fruit, vegetables and herbs and really enjoying both the fresh taste and the satisfaction of producing it ourselves.  Well for the first time ever, we have been able to do the same with our poultry as well.

We already had two Muscovy Drakes and our last lot of ducklings produced 3 more.  Having a ratio of 5 drakes to only 13 ducks was going to result in a massive amount of fights, so while we kept one of the new ones to keep expanding the bloodline, the other 2 had to go.

When you wake up to find this many ducks on your doorstep, it might be time to thin the flock

 

Slaughtering and preparing the ducks

With the assistance of a friends parents, we knocked off two of the drakes at the 13 week mark, and subsequently kept one duck apiece.  While this may sound gory, it really wasn’t.  By doing poultry we had raised ourselves, we could be assured that the ducks had had a good life (we free-range) and were killed instantly and humanely. I shant go into too much detail as this is more a recipe piece but in a nutshell this was done by:

*Giving the ducks a big feed of food and water (a last meal as it were), but then not allowing them to eat or drink for the next 24 hours so that there was nothing in their bowel or bladder.

*Holding the duck upside down by its feet, which actually calms it somewhat, then striking it just behind the  back of the head with an axe, yet not beheading.  This not only instantly kills the duck humanely but the allows you to drain the blood.

*Submerging the carcass in very hot (but not boiling) water for several minutes so you can pluck the feathers.

*Gutting the duck.

End result

Our drake came out at a very respectable 2.2kg, filled with beautiful lean meat as we had not purposely fattened him up.

 

Cooking

This being the first time we were eating our own livestock, I wanted to get the cooking exactly right.  Not an easy task since I’ve never roasted a duck before. After looking through various recipies I chose bits and pieces from several I liked and produced a fantastic result!  So enjoy ‘Big Angry Trev’s Roast Duck & Potatoes Recipe’.

Ingredients

*1 x Home Grown Duck

*1 x Lemon

*2 x Oranges

*Sage leaves

*Purple Sage leaves

*Rosemary

*Chinese 5-Spice

*1 dozen medium-sized Potatoes

 

Food Preparation

*Quarter 2 oranges and 1 lemon

*Go pick the two types of sage and some big sprigs of rosemary (or buy beforehand if you don’t have a herb garden)

*Alternating between the different citrus and herbs, stuff the ducks cavity to capacity

*Taking a knife, score the duck both on the breast and underneath, making sure to cut right through the fat but not into the meat.

*Rub a decent amount of Chinese 5-Spice into the scored flesh

*Peel the dozen potatoes, then boil for 10 minutes.  Shake virgoursly inside the pot to roughen the outsides, then set aside.

 

Method

*Preheat the oven to 180 degrees

*Put the duck in breast-side up on a roasting rack with underneath tray

*At the half hour mark, remove the duck, flip over and put back in.

*At the hour mark remove the tray and drain the fat into the saucepan containing the potatoes.  Put back into the oven breast side up

The amount of fat drained from the duck at the hour mark

*Roll the potatoes around in the duck fat, then place in a deep roasting tray on the upper shelf of the oven.

*At the 1.30 mark flip the duck for the last time

*At the 2 hour mark remove both the duck and the potatoes.

Drain the remaining fat from the roasting pan into a Tupperware container and stick in the fridge for future use.

 

Side Dishes

To add a bit of colour to the table, I personally did a lot of orange vegetables, roasting up a ton of carrots, kumura and (ugh) pumpkin. Also to compliment the oriental style in which I was doing the duck, I made up a huge bed of fried rice, full of peas, corn and bacon, topped with some crispy noodles.

 

So there ya go, Big Angry Trev’s Roast Duck & Potatoes recipe!

 

Got any other duck roasting tips, pop them in the comments section below!

 

Related Articles:

*How to save a Premature Duckling

*Meat Recipe #8 – Roast Lamb with Seasoned Vegetables

*Meat Recipe #3 – The Perfect Pork Crackling!