New Chickie(s)

Literally the day after Dolores died, I purchased a new 8 week old Pekin Bantam chick (which is a small variety of chicken) off of trade me (a local ebay type web auction site). Since I wanted everything to go smoothly with introducing my new chick to the rest of the flock, I had purchased a medium-sized dog crate to keep inside the existing chicken run for the new chick to keep her safe. As I've been researching chicken behaviours, I've discovered how absolutely brutal chickens can be to each other. There is really a pecking order amongst chickens.



Call it an impulse buy as I went to pick up one and ended up with two. Ha! But really, it's easier to introduce 2 or more to the existing flock than just one. If you only have one, the rest of the hens will go nuts pecking the lone ranger...

Here's a quick clip of the first monitored introduction.

Friends for dinner

We had our friends over for dinner this weekend. I thought I would share the menu.

For starters, Holming made up a spicy salmon roll and a California roll. He has his own special (and secret) recipe for these that I'm not allowed to share. But, believe me they were yum.

Pancetta Wrapped Chicken Thighs
Marinate boneless/skinless chicken thighs in olive oil, fresh thyme, crushed garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper for 3 hours.
Lift from marinade. Place fresh sprig of thyme in the thigh then wrap the whole thigh with a strip of pancetta. Grill for 20 minutes or until cooked through.

Pear, Blue Cheese and Caramelized Walnut Salad
1 pear
Rocket lettuce
Puhoi Valley Matakana blue cheese
Caramelized walnuts- I used 1 Tbls balsamic vinaigrette with 1/4 cup sugar. melted into a syrup then added 1 cup of walnuts. Once coated bake for 10 minutes.

Dressing- whisk together:
walnut oil (you can use olive oil)
Lemon juice 3 parts oil to 1 part juice
dijon mustard
salt and pepper

Garlic, Thyme and Mascarpone Polenta
2 tsp fresh thyme
2 cloves of garlic
saute in 20 grams of butter for 2 minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups of chicken stalk and bring to a boil. Then add 1/2 cup of polenta and continue cooking for 3 minutes.
add 1/4 cup of mascarpone and serve.

I opted out of making desert because when we went to Japan Mart earlier that day, we ran across these yummy Mochi ice cream balls that our friend Zoltan really loves.

What a great night of food, wine and laughter. If anyone wants to come to dinner at our place, email me.

One Sick Chook

I’ve not had a very good start with keeping backyard chickens. Two weeks after receiving the ex-battery hens, Dolores fell ill in a bad way. I noticed one Friday that she was separating herself from the other girls, which isn’t normal for her, as she was the Mother Hen of the flock. I quickly went down to the chicken run to examine the situation and discovered that she also had very bad diarrhea. My first thought was to text my husband, and the second was “what the hell do I do with a sick chicken?” Not knowing much about chickens, I just left her in the run with the others and hoped she was just having a bad day. By Saturday morning, I was all over the internet searching for remedies on how to cure chicken diarrhea!

I tried everything from olive oil to epsom salt and when that didn’t work, I tried apple cider vinegar. I even examined her to check if she was egg bound (when an egg is stuck in the oviduct). The list goes on and on. Since this was my favourite bird in the flock, I broke down and took her to an avian vet. Fortunately, she poo’d right on the examination table so he did a gram stain of her poo and said Dolores had traces of Clostridia O. I couldn't find any information on that on the web. He gave me a 5 day supply of Clavulox tabs (250mg) and told me to keep her fed and hydrated as I had been doing so far.

On returning home from the vet, we finally decided to isolate her from the others. In hindsight, that’s the first thing we should have done, as whatever bug one chook gets the others can get too. After finishing all her antibiotics and all the hand feeding and hydrating (and all the time I took off from work), she finally died. What a long and sad process.

I did so much research to help cure Dolores. I feel like a walking chicken encyclopedia (or Google link). Unfortunately all the remedies I read and tried just couldn’t cure my girl. We ended up burying her next to the chicken coop. Good bye Dolores.

My favourite sounds from the girls

Just a quick post to introduce my favourite sounds that the girls make. They are a needy lot and start coo-coo-cooing once they hear my voice.

This clip shows how they all gather at the chicken run door when they see me coming.

The black hen with red comb (Roxy The Red Ruby Gem) is my screamer.
She starts making that noise the minute she hears my voice....even if I'm in the house.

Next is a 2 1/2 minute clip of feeding time. You might want to lower the volume on your computer before playing this one, as Suki (the black chook with flat red comb) gets very excited when food is involved.
Suki is the most timid one of the group and doesn't like to be handled- at all. She is also the loudest of them all.


This last video clip is of Suki, again. Usually she just goes on and on and on, but I couldn't get it all in one shot. I think she's camera shy.


I never thought I would have chickens nor did I ever think I would enjoy it as much as I do. It has been fun getting to know each of their personalities.

Till the next post

Chooks

If someone would have told me that I would one day have chickens- I would have never believed them. Since living in New Zealand, I've surprised myself with all the new adventures I've encountered. I don’t believe it’s this country I’m living in that has changed me, I believe it’s the knowledge and resources that are available in the world that has definitely broadened my horizons.

Don’t ask me how I came up with the idea of having pet chickens. I can only tell you that it started a little something like this-

I said- “Honey, do you know what would be really cool?”

Holming says- “No thanks; I don’t want to know (also thinking- how much is this one going to cost us???)”

I still say- “Wouldn’t it be fun and cool to have our own chooks?!?!?”

Holming says- “Where did you learn that word from?”

I say- “That’s what they call chickens here in New Zealand. Oh, and- think of how much money we would save on groceries each month.

Even though he didn’t buy that last comment, he saw the excitement and enthusiasm in my face and couldn’t resist. Wink...Wink...

If you have seen the photos on my picasa album, they tell you the story of all the manual labour we have put in to building our own chicken run, and remodelling the chicken coop that I purchased, then hated, so Holming took it apart and made it bigger. I would like to share the story of how and why we decided to get ex-battery hens.

Once Holming agreed to the chicken situation, I realised that I didn’t have the first clue as to where one goes to get live chickens. I didn’t even know that there is a difference between meat chickens and layer hens (the ones we get our eggs from). While researching, I came across the Animal Sanctuary’s website. They had a section on adopting ex-battery hens. Just clicking on that link, opened my eyes to a whole new world of animal cruelty. I had absolutely no idea that the “non” free-ranged eggs I used to buy came from a place like this .
Hens are kept in cages (up to 7 in one small cage) in a dark building with no windows. They lay every day their first season, then get so traumatised by the conditions they are kept in that they lose their feather’s and stop laying. The hens will lay again at some point but they need recovery time to regrow their feathers. However, the egg farms don’t want to wait around for that to happen. So at this point the hens are killed or sold to pet food companies (and you know what happens there).
The whole process just seems so inhumane, and can’t be very healthy for us humans to eat these kind of eggs...from stressed-out, traumatised chickens. From that day on, I decided we would ONLY buy free-range eggs in the Lee house. So, I was on the hunt to rescue and adopt a couple of ex-battery hens.

Finding ex-battery hens was no easy task. Places like the Animal Sanctuary go in a rescue a hundred or so hens at a time then adopt them out. Unfortunately, because of all the bad press (for the egg farms) and great information sharing (by the public) such as blogging, you tube, and non-profit orgs, the egg farms in these parts would rather kill the hens instead of allowing the rescues to take place. I ended up joining the Chicken Rescue Network which found me 2 of the sweetest ex-battery hens a girl could ever ask for.

We have 4 hens in total. Two of which are ex-battery and two black silkie/araucana crosses. We got the 2 black ones because they were small and unique; and, they were supposed to lay blue-shelled eggs. As of yet we’ve not seen a blue-shelled egg so, the joke is on us. The 2 rescues are the social girls of the bunch. They are starved for attention and food. The minute we go out with their dinner they start clucking and calling to us. It’s the absolute cutest thing.

On to the eggs- Wow! Talk about a party in my mouth. I’ve never had fresh eggs before so had no expectations. Our first egg was from Roxy (the black chook with red comb). We cooked it up along with a store bought free-ranged egg to compare, and oh my, the difference in flavour was remarkable. We are damaged goods.....

Please help by buying free-ranged eggs.

A tiny bit of OCD?

I’m only posting this because I’m having a laugh about myself. As most know, I am a well organised and tidy individual.... to a fault, some might say. I hate clutter and am not a hoarder. If I don’t use it in a year’s time, it’s out of here. I always donate the items that are thrown out because there is always someone else who can benefit from my rubbish.

Sometimes I take a photo of a room that I’m cleaning /organising to see what it looks like from a different perspective. If it looks messy or unorganised in the photo then I need to fix it. So, while cleaning my kitchen this afternoon, I took a photo of my pantry.


Not only do I think it’s perfect, I think I have a problem. What do you think?

How much wood can a woodchuck chuck?

The first sunny day in August and we get ourselves knee deep in landscaping. Let me assure you that Winter is not over, but, if we waited until late Spring/early Summer to get through all the work that needs to get done in our backyard, we would never get it done. We have a check list of things to complete before the arrival of my sister in late November, and then my Mom soon after. The list goes as follows (in no particular order):

• Landscape the pond area
  
• Extend raised garden bed
• Stain lower deck
• Build chicken coop (and get chooks!)

Someone (and it wasn’t Holming) had the bright idea of going to a landscaping warehouse to buy a trailer load of wood chips to fill an old pond area. That certain someone didn’t take into account that the only way to get from the front of our house down to the backyard is through the garage and down about 15 steep stairs. Teehee.

So, we ended up using 2 rubbish bins (one was 20 gallon/80L and the other was half that size) to haul the chips down to the backyard. Let me tell you, a 20 gallon bin of woodchips is not light! After about 2 hours of this abuse we decided to go get more woodchips as the first load didn’t cover the entire area. While waiting for the trailer to be filled, Einstein (once again not Holming) saw a man bringing in a bunch of cut down trees to dispose of at this place. It turns out that this place takes green waste at a very cheap rate. Since the trailer was on loan to us from this place at no extra charge, Einstein had the best idea of all ideas!!! She says “honey, why don’t you chop down as many bushes and trees as you can while I unload the second trailer by myself?” It took a bit of convincing and some much needed lunch, but he caved in.

About 8 hours later and 100 trips up and down the stairs while unloading the trailer then re-loading the trailer with tree branches and bushes, we are done!

Here is a picture from when we first moved in.

This photo was taken from the same spot, 2 years later, minus all the trees that Holming cut down.

This is the finished product.

Of note, we are making room further back for the chickens that we will soon start building for. Here is the photo for that.

The next day after completing this work, we could hardly move. Holming was better off than me. He got up and still made it to the gym. I, however stayed in bed till 8am, which for those that know me, know that is unheard of. We still have so much more to do but that’s the beauty of being a home owner. Till the next project!