I've been attempting to upload photo's of our current journey to an album on my profile, with no luck.
So I thought I may as well start a thread documenting our journey, to which I can continually upload my photo's to and tell my journey tales in.
Backstory:
We're on 90 acres in semi rural Western Australia, with bush land on our property and surrounding it too.
We've had the privilege of having chickens since we moved here 6 and a half years ago.
We started out with some older crossbreed bantams gifted to us, then we bought some Wyandotte's and some Orpington crosses at the local poultry club sale.
We then ventured into ducks and geese.
Over the years we lost some to foxes and dog attacks and the rest grew old that they barely laid anymore.
We learned about rooster to hen ratio when we took in 3 Pekin roosters a friend needed a temporary home for.
We learned about parasites, scale mite and stick fleas when we were gifted a pair of infested chickens.
We learned how to sprout grain to improve feed nutrition and we learned that a broody hen shouldn't be left to nest with a broody duck, because apparently ducks eat chicks whole.... Or so we were told when our hen's chicks went missing overnight without a trace and we asked why.
We rehomed the ducks because we couldn't supply them with enough water to satisfy their need to bathe in daily and we have no dam for them so they consistently messed up the goats water tubs. I do miss our ducks, they were such a pleasure to listen to singing.
We still have the geese that the fox or feral dog left us when it pinched our nesting geese. They seem rather content with a deep bucket of water and the occasional paddle pool of water, though I'd like to build them an IBC pond now that we have more rain water storage and a water carting truck (we're not connected to any source of mains water out here and our rainfall is lucky to hit a measly 400mm/year).
When egg production dropped so low that we weren't getting enough eggs to feed our growing family, we decided to venture into chicks to replenish our chook pen. First we tried day olds, who eventually moved into the older flock when they were big enough. This got us interested in poultry breeds and breeding and the possibility of one day maybe getting into poultry showing. We were hooked. Poultry enthusiasts in the making.
We decided on the two breeds we'd like to have and breed, based on what we previously and currently already had on the property.
The next thing was to research how to incubate, our chosen breeds' SOP, their genetics and how to establish a decent line with what we already had.
We bought an incubator and some cheap eggs to try our first incubation with, before venturing into buying quality eggs to incubate.
It was a success! Our first ever hatch was a 70% hatch rate.
We found a couple beautiful quality cockerels, one of each chosen breed and after their quarantine period, introduced them to their respective pens.
We were going well, or so we thought.
Things got weird. We started having somebody trespassing on our property.
I went out one night to see a couple torches flicker off down near our shed and heard the scrambling of somebody hurrying away in the dark.
As I stood there with a friend on the verandah, perplexed by what we had just witnessed, I heard desperate cheeping from my chick brooder. When I looked, I noticed that their light was off.
Thinking it had blown, my friend went to switch the extension lead off so I could replace the blown bulb, but it was unplugged.
Not just tripped over, or fallen out and onto the ground from the power point over a metre high up the wall. No.... unplugged and neatly laid on the bench top next to the power point.
Upon plugging it back in, the light turned back on. It hadn't blown, it had been unplugged.
In the following weeks, we found closed gates open in the morning. Plants were trampled and snapped in the gardens. Things were moved around to different places through the night. Subtle stuff that really messes with your mind and has you questioning if it really was someone trespassing, or did you actually remember things incorrectly..... Then we started finding the chook house door open in the morning after being securely shut and wedged with a golf club... And our chooks started dropping like flies.
Young and aged, new and old, we lost our whole flock. All the chicks in our brooder and all of the grown chooks up in the pen at night.
The only poultry to survive whatever onslaught was happening, were the free ranging geese who consistently were going off at something through the night. They were spooked enough to decide to sleep up the other side of the top paddock, instead of their usual spot near the house.
Now, I'm not saying for sure that someone was killing my chickens. I can't be certain of anything that happened without visual irrefutable evidence. It could have been disease, unchecked parasites, botulism.... Anything. Except in the case of my chicks, who were on a fermented feed, quarantined away from the rest and definitely not exposed to parasites in their brooder.
All I know is that I lost my whole flock and I was not ready to introduce more poultry until I had made some changes to prevent any further losses.
Around this time, my grandmother's cancer treatment journey took a turn for the worse and we eventually lost her. Everything I loved was dying around me. I felt terrible. I wasn't ready for starting my chicken journey again, so our plans were put aside until I was done grieving and ready to get back into life again.
So..... Here we are a year later, in the present moment and I'm ready.
These are the changes we've been making to prevent any possible causes happening again:
We borrowed a very big, loud, protective male dog for a few months and it seems that whoever was around did disappear for a while. There are signs that they may be back this past month, so we're in the market for a big dog to permanently adopt.
We've been gifted a farm cam, which will be set up in the big chook pen when my chickens are in there. This should capture any suspicious happenings, should they occur.
The geese have a new designated enclosure to be built behind the chook pen, so they will alert us to any intruders, human or animal and hopefully scare them off too.
The henhouse has undergone drastic changes, to improve air flow and ventilation.
The frame of the house itself will be sump oiled to smother any possible mite homes.
The old perches are gone, with new ones to be built in there soon.
The whole ground and floor have been covered in hay as we're going to try the traditional method of a burn cleanse, in an attempt to kill off any possible disease or parasites that may have survived the past year of poultry barrenness.
Our feeding regime will no longer be straight or soaked grains, but fermented feed as our trial of it last year was so successful and our chicks were thriving on it beautifully.
Our watering system is being changed from an auto-filling tub of water, to either poultry nipples or those poultry in-line cups. Not sure which yet, so would love people's opinion on both products.
Water conservation is a big concern here and I'm worried that the nipples may leak. This will prevent any water sitting stagnant, or being exposed to being polluted or poisoned.
We have sourced a locally produced liquid vitamin and mineral booster. Similar to putting a mineral pecking block in their pen but better in my opinion.
It's a fermented herbal liquid produced by a veterinarian who developed it with natural practises in mind. This will be used in conjunction with the garlic water we do for parasite prevention and fermented feed for nutrition consumption increase.
We disposed of our old brooder and my hubby lovingly built me a brand new one, to my personal specifications and needs. This brooder is inside our house this time. I'm not taking chances. We've done so much hard work and made such an effort, that I'm not losing my chicks to a preventable cause.
We're implementing a strict bio security regime for our property.
We'll only be bringing fertile eggs in and avoiding bringing live birds in where possible.
We'll be wearing bootie covers into the stock feed or places there are other poultry. Or washing our shoes afterwards if we haven't them on hand. We'll also ask visitors to wear them when exploring our property.
This will hopefully prevent possible soil, bacteria or dander contamination as much as possible.
I think I would like to get into poultry showing one day, but the risk of taking my birds off property, to exposed areas of other poultry makes me unsure I really want to risk it.
I however, am still more than interested in preserving my chosen breeds and improving them to their SOP's. Showing them is not my main goal, but continuing their breed, to their breeds' perfection is. I believe it to be as vital as keeping our heirloom seed lines going.
So here we are, ready to go again. Starting from scratch.....
(The story continues, as we've just hatched our first batch of chicks but I'll get there in another post, after I post some pictures of our changes)
So I thought I may as well start a thread documenting our journey, to which I can continually upload my photo's to and tell my journey tales in.
Backstory:
We're on 90 acres in semi rural Western Australia, with bush land on our property and surrounding it too.
We've had the privilege of having chickens since we moved here 6 and a half years ago.
We started out with some older crossbreed bantams gifted to us, then we bought some Wyandotte's and some Orpington crosses at the local poultry club sale.
We then ventured into ducks and geese.
Over the years we lost some to foxes and dog attacks and the rest grew old that they barely laid anymore.
We learned about rooster to hen ratio when we took in 3 Pekin roosters a friend needed a temporary home for.
We learned about parasites, scale mite and stick fleas when we were gifted a pair of infested chickens.
We learned how to sprout grain to improve feed nutrition and we learned that a broody hen shouldn't be left to nest with a broody duck, because apparently ducks eat chicks whole.... Or so we were told when our hen's chicks went missing overnight without a trace and we asked why.
We rehomed the ducks because we couldn't supply them with enough water to satisfy their need to bathe in daily and we have no dam for them so they consistently messed up the goats water tubs. I do miss our ducks, they were such a pleasure to listen to singing.
We still have the geese that the fox or feral dog left us when it pinched our nesting geese. They seem rather content with a deep bucket of water and the occasional paddle pool of water, though I'd like to build them an IBC pond now that we have more rain water storage and a water carting truck (we're not connected to any source of mains water out here and our rainfall is lucky to hit a measly 400mm/year).
When egg production dropped so low that we weren't getting enough eggs to feed our growing family, we decided to venture into chicks to replenish our chook pen. First we tried day olds, who eventually moved into the older flock when they were big enough. This got us interested in poultry breeds and breeding and the possibility of one day maybe getting into poultry showing. We were hooked. Poultry enthusiasts in the making.
We decided on the two breeds we'd like to have and breed, based on what we previously and currently already had on the property.
The next thing was to research how to incubate, our chosen breeds' SOP, their genetics and how to establish a decent line with what we already had.
We bought an incubator and some cheap eggs to try our first incubation with, before venturing into buying quality eggs to incubate.
It was a success! Our first ever hatch was a 70% hatch rate.
We found a couple beautiful quality cockerels, one of each chosen breed and after their quarantine period, introduced them to their respective pens.
We were going well, or so we thought.
Things got weird. We started having somebody trespassing on our property.
I went out one night to see a couple torches flicker off down near our shed and heard the scrambling of somebody hurrying away in the dark.
As I stood there with a friend on the verandah, perplexed by what we had just witnessed, I heard desperate cheeping from my chick brooder. When I looked, I noticed that their light was off.
Thinking it had blown, my friend went to switch the extension lead off so I could replace the blown bulb, but it was unplugged.
Not just tripped over, or fallen out and onto the ground from the power point over a metre high up the wall. No.... unplugged and neatly laid on the bench top next to the power point.
Upon plugging it back in, the light turned back on. It hadn't blown, it had been unplugged.
In the following weeks, we found closed gates open in the morning. Plants were trampled and snapped in the gardens. Things were moved around to different places through the night. Subtle stuff that really messes with your mind and has you questioning if it really was someone trespassing, or did you actually remember things incorrectly..... Then we started finding the chook house door open in the morning after being securely shut and wedged with a golf club... And our chooks started dropping like flies.
Young and aged, new and old, we lost our whole flock. All the chicks in our brooder and all of the grown chooks up in the pen at night.
The only poultry to survive whatever onslaught was happening, were the free ranging geese who consistently were going off at something through the night. They were spooked enough to decide to sleep up the other side of the top paddock, instead of their usual spot near the house.
Now, I'm not saying for sure that someone was killing my chickens. I can't be certain of anything that happened without visual irrefutable evidence. It could have been disease, unchecked parasites, botulism.... Anything. Except in the case of my chicks, who were on a fermented feed, quarantined away from the rest and definitely not exposed to parasites in their brooder.
All I know is that I lost my whole flock and I was not ready to introduce more poultry until I had made some changes to prevent any further losses.
Around this time, my grandmother's cancer treatment journey took a turn for the worse and we eventually lost her. Everything I loved was dying around me. I felt terrible. I wasn't ready for starting my chicken journey again, so our plans were put aside until I was done grieving and ready to get back into life again.
So..... Here we are a year later, in the present moment and I'm ready.
These are the changes we've been making to prevent any possible causes happening again:
We borrowed a very big, loud, protective male dog for a few months and it seems that whoever was around did disappear for a while. There are signs that they may be back this past month, so we're in the market for a big dog to permanently adopt.
We've been gifted a farm cam, which will be set up in the big chook pen when my chickens are in there. This should capture any suspicious happenings, should they occur.
The geese have a new designated enclosure to be built behind the chook pen, so they will alert us to any intruders, human or animal and hopefully scare them off too.
The henhouse has undergone drastic changes, to improve air flow and ventilation.
The frame of the house itself will be sump oiled to smother any possible mite homes.
The old perches are gone, with new ones to be built in there soon.
The whole ground and floor have been covered in hay as we're going to try the traditional method of a burn cleanse, in an attempt to kill off any possible disease or parasites that may have survived the past year of poultry barrenness.
Our feeding regime will no longer be straight or soaked grains, but fermented feed as our trial of it last year was so successful and our chicks were thriving on it beautifully.
Our watering system is being changed from an auto-filling tub of water, to either poultry nipples or those poultry in-line cups. Not sure which yet, so would love people's opinion on both products.
Water conservation is a big concern here and I'm worried that the nipples may leak. This will prevent any water sitting stagnant, or being exposed to being polluted or poisoned.
We have sourced a locally produced liquid vitamin and mineral booster. Similar to putting a mineral pecking block in their pen but better in my opinion.
It's a fermented herbal liquid produced by a veterinarian who developed it with natural practises in mind. This will be used in conjunction with the garlic water we do for parasite prevention and fermented feed for nutrition consumption increase.
We disposed of our old brooder and my hubby lovingly built me a brand new one, to my personal specifications and needs. This brooder is inside our house this time. I'm not taking chances. We've done so much hard work and made such an effort, that I'm not losing my chicks to a preventable cause.
We're implementing a strict bio security regime for our property.
We'll only be bringing fertile eggs in and avoiding bringing live birds in where possible.
We'll be wearing bootie covers into the stock feed or places there are other poultry. Or washing our shoes afterwards if we haven't them on hand. We'll also ask visitors to wear them when exploring our property.
This will hopefully prevent possible soil, bacteria or dander contamination as much as possible.
I think I would like to get into poultry showing one day, but the risk of taking my birds off property, to exposed areas of other poultry makes me unsure I really want to risk it.
I however, am still more than interested in preserving my chosen breeds and improving them to their SOP's. Showing them is not my main goal, but continuing their breed, to their breeds' perfection is. I believe it to be as vital as keeping our heirloom seed lines going.
So here we are, ready to go again. Starting from scratch.....
(The story continues, as we've just hatched our first batch of chicks but I'll get there in another post, after I post some pictures of our changes)
