Glut

Last night I made an eggy pie that had 15 eggs in it.  Today I made a Christmas cake (my second one) that had 10 eggs in it.  I made pikelets - one egg, apple pudding - another egg and when I open the cupboard this is what I have left.  Cripes.  I'm off to boil some eggs for lunches, make an egg custard and generally just drown myself in eggs....

Blue Eggs.

The blue eggs are from my Araucana chickens.  Unfortunately they are a light breed and so the roosters aren't much good for eating, but I'm still contemplating keeping them as a breed because the eggs are just so pretty.

Specially for Laura.

Duckling update.

Are they cute or what? There are definitely three now and perhaps more under Mama Black Hen.

William got the first hold (I managed to sneak one away while MBH was distracted!). He wasn't that pleased to learn that they are destined for the table, so maybe I will keep a few hens (I know drake is the name of a boy duck, but hen doesn't quite sound right for the girls, anyone know?) to breed from.

Are you my mother?

That little slice of yellow fluff is a duckling! Today is the day they were due to hatch so I opened up Mama Black Hen's box and .... ta da!! I have at least one little yellow pekin duck. But Mama Black Hen is grumpy. I would be too after sitting there for more than a month (duck eggs take 28 days instead of 21 for hen eggs). She growled at me and fluffed herself up all protective like. I don't like hen pecks so I left her be.

I wonder what she'll think when her offspring jumps in the water dish?

I swear it really is a duckling. See the little orange foot? Lets hope for more than one!

Now, "Sweetie? About that duck pen. It's getting just a little more urgent!"

The girls have been laying like crazy lately. I had my first day of 10 eggs (from 10 hens) yesterday.

It's been beautiful weather. Nice enough for me to get a little sunburnt when planting some trees. Time to break out the sunhats, sunblock and build shady huts for the kids where they can guard their treasure!

Frozen blueberries (one day they'll be my homegrown ones), a litte sugar and some homemade yoghurt - who needs plastic punnets with artificial bits and pieces? Am I mad to dream about owning a housecow?

Here chook, chook, chook.

I love my chooks. They are fascinating, entertaining and almost entirely useful. My husband thinks I'm a little chook mad, maybe because before we moved we had around 30 chooks! I've managed to tone it down a little and now have eleven. Very modest.

All my current chickens I have raised from purebred eggs. I wait till one of my hens is broody (wanting to sit on eggs and hatch them), then I get fertile eggs posted to me (amazing what you can get through the post!), and 21 days later (all going well) I have a bunch of fluffy little chicks running round.

The hen in the foreground is the only one I've named. I eat my surplus roosters and any hens that are too old, so I don't usually name them. Kinda weird to eat Henrietta/Sally/Maisy. But this one is a little different. She is distinguishable from her sister by the weird warty growth on her wattle. You can kind of see it in this picture. She is also the one that comes running up to me when I get anywhere near them and will eat things out of your hands. Her name is Griselda and she is a golden laced wyandotte.

The rooster you can see in the background is the only one I've kept from my last lot of chicks. I kept him thinking I might breed from him because he is so beautiful and big. He is a silver laced wyandotte. The hen next to him is a silver grey dorking and has five toes on each foot (this breed is meant to).

There is nothing like eating fresh eggs from chooks that aren't raised in teeny, tiny cages and that have a chance to eat greens and scratch for bugs. These are my eggs that I collected today. The white one is from my brown leghorn who is my little egg factory - she churns them out without missing a beat! The green one is from my lavender araucana and I'm not entirely sure who the others are from.

The other great thing from chickens is their poo. Smelly and a little gross but very useful. Fantastic fertiliser once it's been aged or put through your compost. I scoop up the untreated sawdust or hay or paper shreddings that I'm using for their nesting bedding which has been pooped all over and throw it on the compost.

I also intend to use their scratching skills for my garden this year. I want to build (or convince DH to build for me) a run that fits exactly over my raised beds (that I have yet to build) so that I can use a few of them to do the heavy digging and weed removal whenever I need them to.

Oh, and you can eat chickens to. I know this might not be every one's cup of tea, but I'm all about them having a good life but being useful right to the end. If they weren't useful I wouldn't keep them. And trust me, when you are woken up by five young roosters that have just discovered their lungs, you are running for the axe with no conscience whatsoever!

The one thing you really need for chickens is housing. If you don't have them properly housed for your situation you will have problems. They will poop on your doorstep. They will eat your veges. They will dig up your seedlings. They will get eaten by the next door neighbours dog. They will generally be a royal pain in the backside.

I have mine in a wire (including a roof because my chickens have always managed to fly even with clipped wings) enclosure about 4 metres x 4 metres. One corner has walls and a solid roof and then a wall out into the enclosure and perches so they have an open ended roosting house. Then I have four nesting boxes on the ground. We can put a sack barrow under each side of this enclosure and roll it to a new patch of grass every few days. It looks like a dog's breakfast but is very functional. I would like a few smaller ones that I could move by myself but for now this works.

Every afternoon, if I'm home, I let them out for an hour or two. They scratch around happily under our trees or in the grass. When I do build my garden I will have to fence it or they will scratch around happily in that too! I call them back into the house with some food and lock them up for the night.

Chooks are pretty cool and it seems I'm not the only one who thinks so. Here is Give a girl a fig with a funny post. And a fellow local visiting a chicken show with some great chicken photos.

I think I'll always have a few around. Here chook, chook, chook.

Oh my, what was I thinking?!

I thought it might be fun if the kids and I made this delicious recipe for Apple Custard Teacakes, which I found on my sister's blog, courtesy of sugarfishblog.

Well, the first thing was the fight over the little table I let them stand on - we found out Miss-almost-two has a mighty push in those little arms. Once that is sorted out, we measure and mix (spill, slosh, taste custard powder, sift everywhere but the bowl).

Then I turned around from having a quick scull of my cup of tea to find them both elbow deep in the sugar container, munching it up as fast as possible.

I gave them each a beater to lick to distract them while I wiped up (I know, raw egg, bad mother, but they are from my own chooks so I'm confident they won't get sick from it). And then sent them to wash their stickiness away. Mister-four-and-a-half comes back and says,"Come and see what O did, Mum! It's a big disaster!" (Where did he pick up such a turn of phrase?!).


So in the bathroom was dear daughter almost overflowing the sink because she has dumped a toilet roll in the basin, hmmmm, breathe deep. I cave in at this point, turn on the TV and finish off the baking myself!

And the finished product:

Verdict: very, very good! I didn't bother with the cinnamon and sugar and butter on top afterwards and the kids ate them just fine (apple and all). They are very yellow because I used three small eggs instead of two and they are free range with really golden yolks. These will go down in the family recipe book for making again!

Thanks Cat and Ruth. xx