The Chickens Sally Port

I wanted the chickens to be able to have free access to the property during the day, and to be locked away safely at night. Since I made the chicken run from an old swimming pool enclosure, the best answer to this was to cut a door into the side of it.

This meant getting the angle grinder out (woohoo … loud toys!).

I made a simple rectangular frame from square tube steel and welded it together, then I simply clad the frame with a piece of galvanised tin.

Then I fitted a pair of hinges to the bottom of the door and a slide bolt to the top.

The door remains open during the day, and locks up tight at night to keep those pesky cats out.

The first time that I opened the door to the chicken run, the chooks were very pensive about using it.  I had to encourage them through with tasty treats.

Once they got the idea, they really got the idea! Now when we walk anywhere near the door (and if it is closed) the chickens get quite excited.

Since giving the chickens their door, the chickens have been much more content. They get more variety in their diet and they get lots of exercise running back and forth between the chicken run and the next door neighbours property.

By the way, a sally port is a small door that is usually cut into a larger door and is used in castles to allow the people inside to get in and out to make a sortie against besieging troops without being observed.

Sheep Pen

I built this pen on our property so that I could manage the sheep a bit better. I needed to get the sheep sheered but I didn’t have any sheep pen to make this possible. The need was to have a smallish yard so that the sheep can be held in and for the sheerer to be able to get the sheep and … well … shear them.

The basic design is a bunch of fence posts and some rails with a chute into the pen. The pen I designed is 6m x 6m and high enough so that the sheep don’t just jump over the top of the pen.

I had to use a bobcat to level the land first and then it was out with the auger to drill holes in the ground for the posts.

With the posts in the ground, I set up a simple guide that I clamped on the posts to set the rails while I screwed the rails in place.

Our donkey, Jimmy, decided that the pen was a great place for a good old scratch. So before the posts could “season” into the ground, they got wobbly.

I fixed this, somewhat, by fixing some corrugated iron sheeting. This has the additional benefit of providing the sheep with some shelter from the wind and shade from the heat.

When the sheep are being sheared, it’s high summer, so shelter is certainly appreciated.

Since putting the pen in … it has weathered well and the design is quite satisfactory.

Of course I still need to put in fencing to help direct the sheep into the pen.

The pen is close to the feed shed so that there is access to water and electricity. The shearer likes the setup and, with his approval, I’m happy.

Milk Stand

I needed to build a milk stand for the goats so that I can milk the does when they are lactating and also so that I can perform other tasks on the goats when I don’t have enough hands. Jobs such as: hoof trimming, injections, inspections etc..

I had seen a couple of good designs for milking stands on the internet but nothing that was just so.

I needed something timber because I am leaving the milking stand out in the garden and I don’t want it to rust, also the timber needs to be thick enough and weather resistant enough to cope with Tasmanian gardens, while also being able to cope with the weight and strength of the goats.

I’ve used fence rails for the top of the milk stand and to construct the stanchion while the rest of the base frame is made from DAR framing timber.

The head stock is made from one piece of timber fixed in place and the opening piece pivots on a bolt at the base of the stanchion. I’ve also got a bolt that goes through the head stock to lock the stock in place (holding the goat in place). On the other side of the stock I have screwed an ice-cream container that I have drilled holes through (so that rain water can run out).

So far, only Minnie has used the milking stand and she is quite comfortable in it so long as there is some food in the bucket for her.

I may have to modify the head stock for Holly as she is a much bigger goat with a thicker neck.

Kidding 23-11-2011

Much later (November 23, 2011) Minnie gives birth to a pair of the most gorgeous little kids you ever saw first there was a buck kid

Darius ... and then his twin sister, a little doe kid, Daphne

Darius started out with some breathing difficulties, but that passed (thankfully) with little intervention.

New Veggie Patch

Our youngest daughter has been on at me for a while now to do something with our veggie patch. Like most veggie patches, ours is in an inconvenient location that has no other use. The land slopes badly and it is in a spot that makes mowing difficult. The old patch was basically a sloping area that was set aside for vegetables, but not very practical.

My wife and I were at the hardware store and we saw some raised bed kits that were, basically, some bits of corrugated iron with corners and an edge to protect the user from sharp corrugated iron. The metal was all painted and they looked pretty good. My wife and I looked at the price tag (for a decent size they were > $200) and we looked at each other. I was thinking, “I could make something just like that with some of the scrap that we have on our property”, my lovely wife was probably thinking “Aw, crap … another project that will never get finished”.

Later that day, we dragged down two long pieces of roofing iron from the top paddock (about 3m long by 1m wide). We went to the tip shop and bought some 1m x 1m lengths of recycled corrugated iron and then the lot went into the feed shed for later.

I had some old framing studs sitting in the feed shed from previous projects, so I set to cutting the timber up into 1m lengths. The long pieces of iron were screwed to 5 x 1m lengths (to give the iron some stability) and the 1m pieces had 2 1m lengths of timber attached. These were then screwed together to make a box 3m x 1m x 1m.

Next I had to dig out the old veggie patch. Now these old veggie patches had been in continuous usage (more or less) for about 20 years and had had enormous amounts of compost, sheep poo, chicken poo, horse poo, etc. added to the soil throughout that period. I was very surprised to find that the soil was so very poor after only about 1 foot down. After that it was very poor sandy soil followed by clay. I dug all of the “soil” out so that the raised bed would be level. That meant that I had to dig down about 2’ at the high end, and about 4” at the shallow end. Next, we carried the raised bed over and plonked it into the hole.

We filled the bottom 6” with brick rubble and then filled it in with some of the very poor soil (to about 8” deep). Over this, I put down a sheet of weed matting, screwed to the inside of the raised bed to keep some very adventurous black wattle out of our veggie patch. Then we put in more soil to about 12” and put down a couple of inches of decomposed chook poo.

The chore now is to fill the rest of the veggie bed with more soil, compost, newspaper, soiled goat bedding, etc. After that, the veggie patch will need to be “rested-in” that is, allow the weeds to grow and blast them with glyphosate.

I still have some more sheets of roofing iron left over, so I will make some more compost bins. The goats make more compost than our current composting arrangement allows for.

The Flock Expands

I am looking into getting a pair of ewes to add to the Green Home Farm. Having looked into sheep a little, we’ve decided that we would like to get some sheep that shed their wool.

The main factors around shedding sheep are:

1. They don’t need to be mulesed;

2. They don’t need their tails docked;

3. They don’t get flystrike (or at least, they are MUCH less likely to); and

4. We don’t have to get a shearer in to shear them.

There is a very good article about Wiltipoll sheep on the Animals Australia website that makes a very good case for shedding sheep.

We’ll be getting sheep to serve two main functions on the farm: Provision of meat for the table, and grazing to reduce grass and improve the soil (with sheep poo).

Our daughters are a bit put off by the idea of raising sheep for slaughter, but it is an important means of reducing our food bill. A pair of ewes will produce lambs annually for us, and the offspring will be sent off-site for slaughter. This should reduce our meat bill quite profoundly.

Additionally, it means that we will know exactly how our food is treated before slaughter. For me personally, I think that it is ethically better to be responsible for the raising of the food for the family’s table.

The ideal sheep for our farm is a Wiltipoll. These sheep are bread from Wiltshire sheep and have been bread for shedding their wool. The wool is a secondary issue for us. We are not going to be spinning the wool, so it is no great loss that the wool produced by the Wiltipoll has no commercial value. The picture here is of ewes with their summer coat (image from Kars Wiltipoll - http://www.wiltipoll.com.au/). The good thing about the Wiltipoll is that we are not sacrificing quality meat for the benefits of sheep that shed.

I remember having a sheep when I was a young lad in suburban Laverton (in Victoria). Her name was “Sheep”. One day, Sheep disappeared and later in the month, we had lots of meat in the fridge. I can’t say that I remember being upset about Sheep, or even noticing (I was about 3 I think).

Still, I need to learn more about how they shed and how to manage the wool that they shed.

All Quiet on the Western Front

The goats are pretty happy and doing well. Holly is getting quite portly and is shaping up to be a very handsome doe. Minnie is still a little underweight, but I expect that has a lot to do with Holly being queen doe and getting all of the choice food.

Holly butts Minnie when Minnie looks like she is trying to get some food that Holly wants, or is getting some pats that Holly wants … or just because. However, Minnie isn’t averse to butting Holly right back. Just normal goatish behaviour really. I believe that when there are more goats in the herd that Minnie and Holly will get along with less butting, but I could be wrong.

Not long to go now until we have kids … I plan to have the goats serviced in late autumn so that I can have kids in spring.

Later next month I will be doing some more clearing in the top paddock in preparation for the goats moving up there. There is still a load of rubbish that needs to be cleared and the fence still needs to be goat-proofed, but that will progress as time permits.

Hen Pecked and Rooster Ruffled

Since introducing Raj to the flock, a number of the chickens have started to get quite bald backs. Mostly this is due to Raj mounting the chickens and being a bit rough. Early on, the chickens also had bloody combs from Raj holding them down.

Mostly, this appears to happen with the older hens, apparently, Raj’s favourite chicks (pardon the pun). I have seen a couple of other chicken keepers make jackets for their hens when this happens. Although, my chickens aren’t in any kind of distress from their loss of feathers, I expect that they will be getting pretty cold as it is coming into winter here in Tasmania.

Above is a picture of our own MF-Junior. He is the son of MF (munt-foot). You can see that he has quite severe toe curl, however, the condition certainly doesn’t affect his performance as a junior rooster, he protects the girls and gets the occasional sneaky “alone time” with the hens that Raj isn’t watching.

I will be making some simple chicken jackets for my hens so that they can be protected from the cold. I had better make some extras so that I can wash them periodically.

One Brown Egg

Our plan to cross the White Leghorn chickens with the Rhode Island Red rooster with a view to producing brown eggs is starting to pay off. One of our chickens is now laying brown eggs! Yay!

There is absolutely no difference in the quality or flavour of a brown egg compared with a white egg. It is purely a matter of preference.

The chicks from our second successful brood are a mixture of first and second cross. One of the survivors of the second brood is obviously a second cross White Leghorn/Rhode Island Red. She is kind of sandy in colouring, but essentially looks the same as the parent hens. The 1^st cross chickens tend to be white with the occasional black spot or “smut” whereas the 2^nd cross chickens are more uniform in colour, it is just a sandy colouration.

The ears and legs of the 1^st cross chickens are white and yellow respectively, whereas the ears and legs of the 2^nd cross seem to be more of a buff colour.

My lovely wife did some comparisons with the eggs from the supermarket the other day, and the XX-Large eggs that the supermarket was selling weighed in at 48 grams each, whereas our chickens lay eggs that average 65 grams (with the occasional monster egg, one of which was 90 grams). The largest egg that our Isa Brown chickens laid was 95 grams.

Our other observations regarding the quality of the eggs that we produce are that: the yolks of our eggs are much darker in colour, tending toward orange rather than yellow; the albumen tends to have distinctive layers with the albumen layer closest to the yolk more viscous than store bought eggs; the egg-shell tends to be harder; and, our eggs are eaten much closer to their laying date.

I would expect that the albumen consistency could be a consequence of the consumption time, given that albumen is mostly water; that may normalise in the egg over time. However, the colour of the yolk indicates that the chickens are getting a good level of protein in their diet. The hardness of the egg shell would indicate that the chickens are getting enough calcium in their diet, and in a form that the chickens can readily use, to lay down enough calcium on the egg shell without having to strip their bones of calcium.

The Run of the Coop

The cock from our first brood of chickens has now grown up to be a handsome chap indeed. The Rooster “Raj” is definitely the head of the run, but the sneaky leghorn cock “MF Junior”, manages to have clandestine trysts with the ladies whenever Raj isn’t looking.

When a rooster is displaying for a hen, he will vocalise and shake his wattles for the hen and then he will step back to show the hen a morsel that he has for her. The hen will then eat the morsel and allow the rooster to mount her (if his display is manly enough). Of course, the rooster is always looking for this behaviour in others as well because he doesn’t like competition.

The younger cock can’t afford to vocalise or put on big shows for the girls … but he doesn’t have to be celibate either. The main problem for the younger cock is that he isn’t as big as the head rooster. Any showy displays for the girls will get him beaten up. So what he must do is to be covert in his pursuit of companionship.

In our flock, MF Junior will only display for the hens if Raj is looking the other way. The displays are not as flamboyant as the head Rooster but he seems to be having his evil way with the hens.

Our main problem with MF Junior is that, being the second cock in the chicken run, he seems to be more aggressive toward our youngest daughter. Raj doesn’t give the girls a second glance, but MF Junior will attack our youngest when she goes into the coop to feed the rabbit and guinea pig and to collect the eggs. Our youngest is very petite and she is quite intimidated by MF Junior … it’s time that our youngest got some lessons in asserting herself.

Horses in the bottom Paddock

A couple of years ago, my wife was approached by a couple of girls who had a horse that they needed to agist for a while. We were assured that the arrangement would be short term as this was just while they sorted out selling their horse, Jack.

The girls were both pretty hard up and had children to feed as well as the horse to look after. So I was annoyed, but not surprised, when they more or less abandoned Jack on our property. Oh, sure, they came around once in a long while with a bag of carrots, but the paddock was pretty quickly reduced to dust by his rapacious appetite. I decided that the horse had to go and that the girls were being more than a bit irresponsible. I contacted the RSPCA and asked for advice. I was told, to my surprise, that they couldn’t do anything about Jack unless he was being starved. Obviously, I couldn’t starve the beast, so, with the help of one of my horsey friends, I started to feed him and get him into shape.

In the meanwhile, the girls were told that they had to do something with him or I would give him away. Oh, yeah, that got a lot of action. Anyway, long story short, I gave Jack to a friend of mine who is now using Jack as a paddock pal for his other horses. Jack is happy, the other horses are happy and the girls (and their children) are well off my property.

Well … we miss Jack. He was a cantankerous horse with an attitude and poor feet (turned out right front hoof) that made him, more or less, unrideable, and he terrified my youngest daughter. But, we miss him.

My neighbour has recently got himself a couple of horses. His property is about the same size as ours, so the horses eat all of his pasture in about four months. A while back, being right neighbourly, we offered the bottom paddock to our neighbour as a place where they could keep their horses on a rotation basis. The limit that we set to this arrangement was that we would want to use the bottom paddock again when we get sheep (not an immediate goal, but certainly there on the horizon).

The neighbour is a very nice bloke and he graciously allows our daughters to visit him and be shown around his parrot cages (he breeds rare and exotic parrots for the pet industry). His partner is a lovely woman who is always very nice to us and to the girls too. So, over the fence we decided, we’d have horses in the bottom paddock again, I wouldn’t have to mow it and my neighbours pasture has time to regrow.

By the way, this isn’t one of those, “you wouldn’t believe how my neighbour took me for a ride” stories.

As you can see from the picture, they are very picturesque in the bottom paddock.

Horses, in my opinion, are nice for someone else to have close to me, without me having any responsibility for. Yay!

Abandoned Cats

Late one night while my wife and I were sitting down to a nice relaxing night after both daughters had gone to bed. Our puppy, Max, the Cardigan Corgi was getting very excited and started to bark at the veranda doors. At the door we found a little black kitten. The poor little thing was thin and mewling terribly. We brought the kitten in and put the dogs out. Within minutes, the dogs were barking again. We went outside and found another kitten in the apple tree.

Now, my wife and I are not cat people. Plus … our garden is a habitat for countless native parrots and other native birds. Cats, also, eat chickens. On the other hand, our daughters had expressed a deep and abiding desire to have a kitten. Rock … hard place …

We decided that the kittens were in desperate need to have food. So we fed them some puppy food and a small amount of skim milk.

The two kittens were lovely little tom cats. They seemed to be quite healthy, but they were very skinny.

We determined that we would take the kittens to the RSPCA in the morning so that they would be given the care and attention that they deserve. The surprising thing for me was that they were obviously well cared for, just … well … abandoned. I suppose that the owners thought that it was better to abandon them rather than take them to the RSPCA themselves, I mean, after all, the RSPCA is, what, another kilometre down the road from our property. Ah well, who am I to judge?

We kept the kittens in a warm box in the garage overnight with some water (that, of course, they spilled everywhere). In the morning, my lovely wife took the kittens to the RSPCA where they were probably wormed and fed.

Heavy Machinery on the Farm

When we bought the property, the previous owner had an underground rifle range built into the side of the hill. The range was covered with corrugated iron and was constructed with heavy steel pipes. At the back end of the range, there were about 24 2000mm x 400mm x 25mm steel sheets welded together to provide a downward sloping bullet guard. Some friends and I harvested these materials some time ago, but I’d left a huge chasm in the middle paddock (about 3m x 20m x 2m). All of the soil that had been dug out of the ground to make the rifle range was piled up next to the range.

I hired a 1.5 tonne mini-excavator from COATES Hire for the weekend so that I could re-fill the hole and do some other stuff around the property.

I managed to get some of what I wanted to do finished, but not all. Most of the pile is now in the hole but I wasn’t able to clean up the top paddock. The top paddock is just too steep for something as top heavy as an excavator.

Next, I’ll hire a bobcat!

I will be harvesting some trees from my mate’s property in the next couple of months to make fence posts for the top paddock. I need about 120 fence posts, so that should be fun.

The Quarantine Pen

The quarantine pen has been constructed using 2,400mm star posts, 4mm white wire and 2000mm chicken wire. Each pen is 6m x 3m with a 500m wide gate.

There are two of these, side by side, with the gates sitting side by side (to make it easy for me to access). Across the back half of the pen I have also attached 70% shade cloth so that they have some decent cover.

The pen also has some tensioning posts stuck in at the corners so that the wires can be pulled taught.

I have constructed a pair of shelters in the quarantine pen from a pair of apple crates and a pair of cherry crates. The front was knocked off the apple crate and the cherry

crate was nailed on to the top (upside down) to make a nice box. I then screwed on some exterior grade plywood to make them a bit more weather proof and filled the bottom up with hay. The shelter in the background is the Cherry Crate on Apple Crate construction … only Holly thought I was taking a photo of her.

Ah well … she is a pretty goat after all.

Holly’s favorite game at the moment is to climb up onto her shelter and stick her head out between the two joined shade cloth sheets (they are held together with nylon cable ties).

All going to plan, the quarantine pen will be out of service again in about 2 weeks time (here’s hoping!).

The Quarantine Story

Well, the goats have been in quarantine for a month now. And they are beginning to get a little fed up with it. Our older doe, Holly, has managed to maintain an average escape rate of once every three days. So far she has:

· Wriggled under the wire – so I attached heavy steel pipes to the bottom of the mesh;

· Pushed the gate out at the bottom – so I put a concrete block up against the gate;

· Jumped over the top of the enclosure – so I put an extra wire line around the top;

· Made a huge hole in the lighter wire of the gate – so I attached some exterior grade plywood to her gate; and

· Made a mysterious escape – so I scratch my head and say … huh.

The younger doe, Minnie, just patiently waits on her side of the enclosure. Well … I say patiently, but actually there is an awful lot of bleating that goes on.

The main objective with the quarantine is to keep them separated at bed and meal times, so that they don’t share too many fluids. The quarantine pen has worked pretty well for that, although the proof of the pudding will be when I take them back to the vet for a blood test in March. I have very mixed feelings about that deadline.

I would hate to have the blood test come back positive for CAEV. I have already lost two young does and I don’t want to lose any more.

The importance of Quarantine

We have learned that it is very important to quarantine new members of the Green Home Farm when they arrive so that any nasty diseases or viruses that they may bring with them, do not affect the home livestock. Also, anything that may be in the home community isn’t introduced to healthy animals coming in.

A case in point is our two original goats Molly and Millie. Molly did not live long enough for any inbound disease and, when they arrived, there were no other animals that they could have affected.

However, this month I got a routine blood test performed on my two goats for CAEV. Millie, it turns out, had this condition. With Millie being in close proximity to Holly (our latest addition), there is a slight chance that Holly has picked up the condition. While Holly’s blood test shows that she is currently negative for CAEV, it is too early to rule it out.

This means that Holly must be quarantined from any other new goat that we bring onto the farm. Likewise, any new goat must be quarantined too.

It is heartbreaking when you discover that an animal has to be destroyed to prevent the spread of a nasty virus like this, particularly when you have become attached to them.

Now, we will quarantine any new animal when it comes onto the farm so that this does not happen again (or at least that the risk is much lower). This has been a hard lesson to learn.