Ghastly Moments in Gardening V: Red in Beak and Claw

Yesterday, the boys came rushing in to tell me that there was a mouse in the chook food bucket.  The bucket was nearly empty and the poor mouse, not a very large one, was unable to jump out.  I roused on the boys for leaving the lid off overnight and took the bucket outside.

There we were as I tipped the bucket slowly sideways to let the mouse out: the Geek, the Twig, the Sprig and the chooks wandering near us.  The mouse finally leapt out and bolted between my husband's feet, looking for safety in the grass nearby.

But too late!  One of our chooks saw the movement and tore after it.  To my surprise, she was able to snatch the mouse up in her beak -- it shrieked! -- and then all the chooks were after her.  The poor mouse was dropped and snatched up several times before one of the girls triumphantly carried off the now-lifeless body to a corner of the back yard.

I had no idea chickens would attack an animal as big as a mouse!

March Garden Update

It hasn't been a good summer for a gardener, and I'm a bit disheartened at the dreadful state of my garden (not helped by a number of family crises which reduced my gardening and blogging time considerably!). Here's a quick tour.

These are some of the few tomato flowers I've seen, on a "Broad Ripple Yellow Currant" that I planted in January. In November I planted "Brandywine" tomatoes and now there are two large but green fruits on one plant. That is all.


I've had a few cucumbers, but not anywhere near the number I expected. Hoping there are some still to come.


The frequent rain has kept my banana suckers happy, though!


The chicky-babes have grown up a lot. This was how they looked in mid-March, at a month old.


Ages ago I planted some Swamp Foxtail grass down the back of my garden, but it was overshadowed by a grevillea. Now the grevillea is senescent, we can finally see the grass which marks the end of the bed.

The Chickies Have Landed

We took a trip out to the western edge of Sydney today and came back with some new friends for our remaining chook, Lizzie. Annie, our White Leghorn, had been in declining health for some time and finally died two weeks ago.


These chicks are about five days old, and you can see their feathers are already growing in. Three are Rhode Island Reds; the others are Australorps. The latter are a distinct breed descended from the Black Orpington and other breeds, sturdy backyard birds known as great layers (250 eggs per year). The Rhode Island Red lays about 200 eggs per year and is also a hardy bird.


A the moment, they like to spend a fair bit of time in the feed bowl. One of the Rhodies seems very dominant, pecking all the others.

The Sprig is thrilled about the chicks and has taken charge of them. The Twig is on crutches after a soccer injury and can't do much at the moment.

Now for a moan abut the weather. This has been the Year Without a Summer as far as we are concerned, with only one beach trip taken during the entire summer holidays. We have had rain, rain, and more rain, including a thunderstorm today. Even though the kids are back at school, normally a precise sign of sunny days, only one day could be called swimming weather, and gardening has been near impossible on my waterlogged clay soil. Corn and bean seeds have just rotted, and I haven't had a single tomato! Woe is me!

Month	Mean Rainfall	Actual Rainfall	Mean Rain Days	Actual Rain Days
December 2011	68.2	133.2	7.2	12
January 2012	90.8	159.2	8.2	12
February 2012	106.4	83.4 (so far)	8.1	7 (so far)

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When You Have Chooks...

When you have chooks, they come to see what you're doing with the camera. And if you are holding a trowel, they will come and "help" you with your digging. Lizzie here was helping the Geek dig up weeds in the garden today. She was so comfortable working with him that she wiped her beak clean on his shorts.


When you have chooks, they leave some of their food behind, so you get surprise plants.


When you have chooks, they poo all over your patio.


When you have chooks, they hide their eggs in places that they think are secluded.


They are often wrong.

How Annoying!

It appears that the camera batteries are dead, so I can't take photos of my garden for you today. I'll have to leave you with a verbal snapshot:

• I poured boiling water on some bindies today. Yes, they do prefer compacted ground, so they've been easy to spot. Various other weeds are also colonising our patches of clay. Unfortunately, we've had some Cobbler's Pegs come in. Under the Hill's hoist. Of course.
• Our cool damp spring has even encouraged some grasses to begin sprouting.
• This year's vegetable patch will primarily be in my new herb bed. I have tomatoes, cucumber, and pumpkin in already with the herbs, and planted some beans today.
• My tomato seedlings (three colours of Zebra tomatoes, and 'Reisentraube' and 'Broad Ripple Yellow Currant') are up, but not yet the chillies, eggplant or capsicum.
• The choko has not been as aggressive as hoped -- yet. Nor have my 'Brandywine' tomatoes really taken off. I'm a bit worried as they won't set fruit once it gets very hot.
• Lizzie has been laying reliably.
• The guinea pigs have escaped and are living wild in the long grass at the end of the back yard. They appear quite happy until they see humans, whereupon they look noticeably guilty.
• The 'Iceberg' rose is flowering its heart out.
• We finally concreted in our new letterbox today. A pity the front yard is a disaster area!

Chook Dome Maintenance

After its five years of service, it was time to have a really good look at the chook dome. The UV-stabilised plastic twine I had used for bracing (following the original instructions in Linda Woodrow's book) had not worked well, as the chooks often tripped on it, and now it was starting to shred. When I untied it, I found that a couple of the joints had lost their wiring, so that was my first job. An intact joint is shown below.


The cross-bracing didn't seem to me to be necessary with my small-diameter dome, so I decided to just strengthen the upper joints with the good sections of twine.


I couldn't cover the lower joints without removing the netting, which seemed a bit much, as I wanted to move the girls in to their dome the same day.

What was the rush? I'd seen Annie sitting on wet ground. They only do this when they are afflicted with mites, to cool down their itchy undersides. While the girls had been mite-free for months, I think the butcher-bird I saw stealing their scraps a fortnight ago might have left them a return gift. After I had caught each girl and subjected her to the indignity of the spray-on parasite treatment, she was popped into the restored dome and set to work in my garden.


For more information on the structure and purpose of my chook dome, see this earlier post.

However, I am not the only creator of structures in the back yard. I suspect this is an artillery bunker, but the information is Classified.

Annie's Laying!

I really was wondering if Annie would ever lay again, having stopped for her annual moult about six weeks ago. In her first season, she often laid soft-shelled eggs, indicating a problem with her ability to form them. (It is also a sign of calcium deficiency, but with scratch mix always available and Lizzie's eggs always fine, I knew this was not our problem.) Lizzie has been laying daily for the last two weeks; before that, every second day for about a fortnight. On Friday, however, we found this:


Annie lays long chalk-white eggs that are noticeably smaller than Lizzie's. She has laid two so far, with a rest-day in between. I'm hoping that another egg will appear tomorrow.

I bought organic eggs during the moult, but I have to tell you that they still aren't as nice as a fresh, home-grown egg, even though the yolk is a better colour than you get with battery eggs.

Winter Evening

It's still early winter here, and all the plants seem sleepy in the evening light.

This reddish tint is not the light: it is Red Pak Choy, just about ready for stir-fry.















Broad beans coming up with celery and parsley -- a typical scene in my deliberately disordered vegetable patch.


I am not sure what to do with my Brandywines -- they're still flowering, but I doubt even the big fruit will have a chance to ripen. Should I pull them, hang up the vines and wait? Or turn them into fried green tomatoes?






Lizzie and Annie have been escaping from their winter quarters, so I had to improve the security today. Turned out that Lizzie was squeezing through a gap in the netting -- that's where the board is.












My husband had to cut the wattle back (to the right you can see one of the Parramatta Wattles which grew bigger than expected) so that it wasn't blocking quite so much light to the solar hot water system.













Cutting back the wattle led to cutting back the mulberry tree. We are planning to make a teepee or something with the branches, once the leaves fall off.


















Thyme and sage in the 1950s fake log trough (including frog) which I found in the garden when we moved here. So much of my life in the background: the washing, the chook dome...

How to Deal with a Broody Chook

Lizzie has gone broody again. She has taken to fluffing herself up and holding her wings out, so she looks like a big clucky chestnut ball. If not pushed out, she sits in the 'nesting box' all day and growls when you get too close (yes, a growling chicken is as funny as you think). She has even pecked the Geek. Yesterday I heard a weird squawking. I think Annie had managed to lay an egg, proclaimed this feat in the usual manner, and Lizzie had immediately hopped up to boot her out!

The current nesting box is the top of a bag of sugar cane mulch.

In nature, a chook lays a clutch of eggs, then sits on them (the eggs will stay in suspended animation until she starts sitting). She will sit as long as it takes for the eggs to hatch, with only the odd trip to forage, drink and poo, neglecting her own health in the process. She won't lay during this time, either, and in due course the brood of chicks will hatch.

Humans alter this process a bit to suit themselves. If you remove your hen's eggs every day, she never gets a clutch together to sit on. Many breeds are less inclined to broodiness, because we don't need it and we prefer our hens to put their energies into laying most of the year rather than sitting.

Broodiness ought to be discouraged when there are no fertilised eggs to sit on. Hens aren't very bright, and they will sit until they get a result. They can starve themselves or attract parasites, and of course they don't lay while brooding. In our case, the weather can be very hot, and I'm worried about dehydration. You can see that Lizzie is panting in the picture; it's not even 25 C today.

The solution is to isolate the broody hen in an airy, cool spot with no nesting site or material available. In our case, it's the chook dome, as it's not in use at the moment. We've put it under a shady tree and Lizzie is sulking inside it. Poor Annie, bereft of a companion, hangs disconsolately around nearby.

Lizzie had an attack of broodiness in early December and it only took a few days to break the habit. Unfortunately, she's becoming better at getting around the shadecloth door on the dome... not a good habit for her to have!

How to Move a Chook Dome

It was time to move the chook dome today. Here's a step-by step guide:

1. Check new site and remove anything you want to keep or eat yourself.
2. Remove feed and water containers.
3. Remove eggs.
4. Remove laying box (ie, old mower-catcher). It's a good time to clean it well and dry it in the sun.
5. Step inside dome.
6. Take perch out of its loops and leave on ground.
7. Grab two opposing ribs and lift the dome about 15cm off the ground. This is low enough to keep the chooks in but high enough to clear small obstacles. Make use of any handy children to shoo the chooks in the right direction.
8. Move dome to the new location (ideally, right next to the previous one -- no need to exhaust yourself!). Lift the side if necessary to clear any large obstacles.
9. Place dome on new site and step out.
10. Check that there are no hollows where a chook might escape under the dome. Bricks are useful to cover any gaps.
11. Replace feed and water containers, perch, nesting box.

Gosh, that was a tiring ten minutes, wasn't it?


Actually, my move took a bit longer than that, because I spent extra time at step 1. Here's the harvest from the new site right before moving the chooks in:

650g beetroot (one large, the rest small)
550g parsnips
handful dill
2 small heads celery
1 head silver beet

I was astonished by the number of snails I found, but the girls were pretty pleased. The rest of the bed is mainly warrigal greens and flowering chervil.

Last week's Good Living had a recipe (not online) that is actually useful right now: a salad of grilled goat's cheese-on-toast, roast beetroot, hazelnuts and broad beans. My garden has supplied me with the fresh young broad beans as well as the beetroot, so I made it for dinner. Rather fiddly for a weeknight, and not exactly frugal, but it tasted great.

Eggs and Wattle

I must show you some of the new produce from the Back Yard. These offerings formed part of our lunch today. I hard-boiled them, but they were too fresh (up to a week old) to peel well. Annie's eggs are white (she's a White Leghorn) and Lizzie's (she's a Rhode Island Red) are the pale brown. The Sprig described them as "pink"! Being only four, he has not encountered the word "puce" yet.


Annie and Lizzie seem to be quite reliable layers.I should also report that they are doing a great job at clearing kikuyu from under the lemon tree, to the extent that they are desperate for more green food. It is amazing to see the quantity of green pick that hens will put away; no wonder battery eggs don't taste or look very good. Our eggs have yolks about the same colour as the nasturtium.

I have a workmate of Italian descent, who was telling me about the pasta sauces which are thickened with raw egg. I only knew of Pasta Carbonara, but there are a number of others. My colleague had tried to make them at home, but somehow they tasted wrong. Inedibly wrong. I suspect that the egg has to be very fresh to work well in such a sauce.

I shall put aside the smugness of the chook owner quickly, because I know this isn't a great photograph. This one corner of my back yard, as it appeared at sunset today.


No matter how I fiddle with the settings, I can't quite reproduce the stunning brightness of the wattle in my garden at the moment. If you haven't seen wattle but have seen a group of laburnums in flower, you might be able to imagine what my back yard is like -- except that laburnums are a stronger yellow and coarse in comparison: a marching band, while wattles are a corps de ballet.

The Twig isn't just included for scale. He's included because he needs to put that ball away. Yes, over there. It's been outside for a week. Now! And those other toys you've left lying around too! No, you can't do it 'later'! Nor can you pack up with a book under your arm! Give it to me and I'll put it on the table while you put those things away!

In Which We Meet Lizzie, and Learn More About Chooks

Lizzie has been named after a bluff elderly steam lorry in Thomas the Tank Engine. Unfortunately, while she looked reasonably sure of herself at the hatchery (she pecked the Sprig!), she is being thoroughly bullied by Annie. It's called the 'pecking order' for a reason, and 10,000 years of domestication has not civilised it yet.

If you are thinking that Lizzie looks more like an oversize quail than a respectable bird at point-of-lay, that's because there was an outbreak of feather-picking in this group of pullets. It's a more aggressive manifestation of the pecking order, and is caused by boredom. I'm satisfied that the hatchery is as good as they get, but a hatchery isn't a place for grown-up hens to live. The feathers will grow back.

I had better explain that any bird past about 18 weeks is considered at point of lay, though most won't lay until at least 21 weeks, often later, depending on breed and conditions. People have told me that if a layer is already present, younger birds will reach point of lay earlier. I hope it's true of our new girl! Annie lays 4-5 eggs a week, which isn't quite enough for us, especially as the Sprig's favourite food is "dippy egg with soldiers". I'm pretty partial to boiled eggs myself!

There's a mystery there, though: Annie's eggs weigh under 50g, but take longer than three minutes to become a "three-minute egg" (ie, firm white, soft yolk). I wonder if this is something to do with the very low proportion of thin albumen in fresh eggs.

If you look at Lizzie's picture, you will see a small pale-pink comb and undeveloped wattles, not much larger or darker than Annie's looked at 10 weeks. A sexually mature bird develops a red comb and wattles, which then grow larger remarkably quickly. Annie has been laying for about 8 weeks now:


I rather like her red bonnet!

Garden Roundup

It has been a quiet couple of weeks in the garden. First, we had the hot weather. Too hot to do much work in the garden when it's still 30 C in the late afternoon! It's a matter of keeping plants alive -- and I lost most of my seedlings, though my recent purchases of native plants survived.

Now we have rain. We have had nearly 80mm since Tuesday; half of it fell yesterday. Again, it's too wet to do much gardening, though we need the rain... but like most of Sydney, I'd send it to Victoria if I could. Today, the number of confirmed deaths from the terrible bushfires is 181, but that number is expected to rise. 1800 homes have been lost, and that number is also expected to rise. Overseas readers may wish to view the photos at the ABC website for a better understanding. It may help to know that our previous worst fire event, the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983, took fewer than 80 lives across a much larger area.

This afternoon the rain let up enough for me to replace some of the old rusty chook-wire on the chook dome with nice new chook-wire, and position the dome in my vegetable garden. At dusk, we caught the girls and popped them onto their perch. Penny has never been keen to share her sleeping quarters; she's never really been convinced that Annie and Clarabel are part of her flock. It was entertaining to hear the three of them complaining together about the indignity of being caught and carried, then arguing about who got which bit of the perch! There's plenty of room; the issue is precedence. I wonder how they'll get on tomorrow?

Pets in My Garden: a Multi-Meme

This month's Garden Bloggers’ Design Workshop asks: Have you made any design changes to your garden to accommodate your pets? Care to share how you use their manure in your garden? Have you designed part of your garden specifically for your fuzzy or feathered companions? Care to share your strategies for keeping your pets out of places you don’t want them to be?

I also thought I'd answer some questions from my Backyard Chook Primer post here, as promised. But I'll start with my guinea pigs.

Guinea pigs are, as most people know, small quiet herbivores. In Sydney, they can live outside (with shelter, and protection from dogs and cats) all year round. Ours live inside at night and on wet/hot days. They love hiding in long grass, so pen them in the unweeded wilder parts of your garden. I use a very simple corral of one-inch mesh, about 50cm high, with bricks to cover any holes, and a simple weather-shelter. This photo shows Lilac in the corral eating sweet-corn husks.
Occasionally, when the chooks are elsewhere, I'll put the piggies into the chook dome.

The handy thing about guinea pigs is that they eat quite a wide variety of food, from fruit and vegetable scraps to most grasses. As long as other food is ample and varied, guinea pigs do not need the prepared food from pet shops. As a matter of fact, the prepared pet food is harmful: it usually contains a lot of lucerne, which can cause kidney stones. Their chief diet is and should be grass. Being small, an escaped guinea pig is unlikely to cause enormous damage even if it does escape into the vegie patch for a night, so I have not altered my garden much for their sake.

Whatever the guinea pigs don't eat can be offered to your chooks. In fact, I put all the used piggie bedding (grass, hay, uneaten scraps, and piggie poos) into the chook dome for the chooks to scratch in. Spoilt fruit should not be given to guinea pigs, but your chooks will eat it happily. So these are two animals that complement each other. Children like chooks, especially friendly, hand-reared pullets, like the Isabrown the Twig is holding. It isn't one of ours: Penny is an adult Isabrown, and our pullets, now about 17 weeks old (almost point of lay), are a White Leghorn and an Australorp.

Unlike guinea pigs, chooks will wreak havoc in a vegetable garden in a very short time. Their strong legs will scratch up shallow-rooted plants, and they have a good appetite for seeds and seedlings. Any new plantings will need protection. My vegie patch is surrounded by star pickets and one-inch mesh a metre high, to keep out my free-ranging girls. I'd like something a bit more attractive, but slightly loose mesh is something that a chook can't perch on. A permanent fence would need to be much higher, too.

I use the chook dome (described in the Primer) in the vegie patch for about half the year, so the poo is used where it falls. The other half of the time, I let the chooks free-range and fertilise my other plantings. Much of my garden is pretty low-maintenance, and autumn, our main planting time for perennials, is when the chooks are in their dome. So I can't say that I've done much altering of my garden for my birds. I suspect my children have driven my planting choices as much as the animals have!

Home Handymum wanted to know what the chooks' feed containers look like. They are made from two-litre milk bottles. The handle is on one corner, so I cut a hole from the opposite corner. There needs to be plenty of room to get the feed or water in easily, without causing the bottle to rip or collapse.

It's easier to have a hook than a tie: trying to tie on a full water container is an exercise in frustration. The hook is made from fencing wire. There is a hook at one end and the wire is doubled back on itself at the other. Flatten the handle of the bottle and slip it into the doubled-back section. Hope the pictures help make sense of this description.

A Backyard Chook Primer

This post is part of the Down to Earth Biggest Kitchen Table discussion on keeping chickens.

The domestic chicken is descended from a tropical forest bird, with the Malaysian Jungle Fowl probably being as close as we can get to the ancestral species. The birds got around in small flocks, scratching up the leaf-litter to obtain grubs, insects, worms, carrion, fallen fruit, herbs, grasses and seeds, as well as the small stones required for their crops. They had plenty of water and shade. At sunset, the birds would fly up to a branch to sleep, in order to avoid predators. Nests would be made on the ground, in a quiet inconspicuous place. The social structure was linear, with each bird knowing its exact place in the "pecking order".

Now if this is the animal we are dealing with, it should be obvious that a battery cage is a very bad thing -- but it should also be obvious that the old-fashioned chook run, with its hard-packed floor and absence of shade and greenery, is not much better. So what do we and chooks need to live happily ever after?

• A social group (say a flock of 2-15 birds)
• Plenty of room to walk around, with soft flooring for scratching
• A place to dust-bathe (they particularly like ashes, probably to discourage parasites)
• A mixed diet with a high protein content, because without sufficient protein they won't lay -- meat, legumes and insects should be included, not just grain
• Shell-grit -- this provides both content for the crop and the calcium required to form eggshell
• Access to "green pick", such as grass, lettuce, sorrel etc
• Free access to water
• Shade
• A roost, preferably at a slight angle, as they sleep in pecking order. The dominant bird gets the highest (=safest) spot.
• Safe sleeping quarters, protected from foxes, snakes etc. They actually sleep very soundly and are easy to grab after dark.
• A secluded place to lay eggs, preferably easily accessible by humans
• No sudden changes to chook society (which is why there is an extensive online literature about introducing new birds to your flock)
• Your chooks will produce nitrogenous manure, excellent for plant growth
  

There are a number of ways to deal with these "inputs and outputs". Some people allow their chooks to range freely at all times, but this has its drawbacks. On a beautiful morning, you step out your back door, and immediately discover a little drawback, squishy and smelly and stuck to your bare foot. More little deposits are found all over your garden furniture. And they've hidden their eggs again. On the other hand, confining your chooks means that you have to fetch and carry all their food, water and manure, and you risk the run turning into an unhealthy dust-bowl.

Now wouldn't it be good if we could organise the chooks to eat the pests and weeds in the vegetable garden, and shovel their poo onto the garden beds for us? Enter the Chook Tractor.

A Chook Tractor is a movable run which you can put over a vegie bed to allow your chooks to do your weeding, digging, fertilising and pest-killing, thus saving you from performing arduous tasks you don't like and giving them to the chooks, who do. It's easy to make and use a Chook Tractor, as long as all your vegie beds are the same size and shape -- look online for ideas.

I use a Chook Dome, based on the plan from Linda Woodrow's excellent book, The Permaculture Home Garden. Obviously, this is suitable for the keyhole beds beloved of permies. My dome is about 2m in diameter (PVC conduit is sold in 6m lengths, and I used one length for the base). The framework is PVC pipe, drilled and wired together, covered with scavenged chook netting and reinforced with synthetic garden twine. It has lasted for four years but now requires maintenance: replacement of the rusty old mesh and tightening of the twine reinforcement. It also helps if your kids are not using it for chicken games!

Inside the dome I hang a roost. One section of the frame above the bar is not covered with mesh -- that's the door. Over this I have a piece of shadecloth, to which I've added eyelets and ties. I ensure the door faces solar north, to provide some shade. Over the top I tie a small tarpaulin (not shown), to provide shelter from rain. The nesting box is a grass-catcher from a defunct lawn-mower. Food and water containers, made from plastic milk cartons, are hung on the netting. A dome this size is suitable for 2-4 chooks. Throw in kitchen scraps, weeds, lawn clippings etc, and a fertile vegetable bed will appear like magic in a couple of weeks.

I rotate the dome from one bed to the next, ahead of the winter and summer growing seasons. When I run out of beds, the chooks are relocated to a run under our lemon tree, or another under the quince tree. Over summer, my chooks are allowed to range freely, because these runs, and the vegie patch, are on the exposed side of the back yard. This system has worked well for a number of years.

Jeepers Creepers...

We have some peepers!


We tend to call them the eep-eeps, and we've had them about two weeks. Annie is a White Leghorn and Clarabel is an Australorp. We also also bought Henrietta, a Rhode Island Red, but we found her dead in the coop one morning last week, after a few cold days. There are now two pyramids under the lemon tree.

The supplier is a chook breeder at Luddenham, so it's not as long a trip as I was imagining. I have right of return if the pullets turn out to be cockerels.

Penny has been rather confused about the little ones, as they are too young to be allowed to free-range without supervision. Sometimes she calls to them, and sometimes tries to peck them. I am not too worried about this: she has been debeaked, but these little ones haven't, so they'll soon be able to stand up for themselves.


Speaking of Penny: she still has gurgly lungs, which you can hear if you put an ear to her side. I gave her chlortetracycline in her water for about ten days, and she does seem better. Her tail has approached upright, and she is eating a lot (she really likes the chick starter food!) and is more energetic. On the negative side, her vent is still dirty and, of course, she still gurgles. Here's hoping.

Another $100 Chook

After Rusty's death, I began to notice Penny behaving peculiarly. She seemed to be breathing deeply, standing with her legs wide apart, and bearing down. Sometimes, she'd sit for a while and bear down. Her poos were runny, so she had dirty rear feathers. Oh dear, could she be egg-bound? The symptoms matched. The only peculiarity was that Penny seemed quite alert and was eating and drinking a little; egg-bound birds deteriorate very rapidly. She has lost condition -- always rather a skinny chook, her keel feels like it could cut your hand now.

Last night I gave Penny a nice hot bath, the kind that water-births occur in (only hotter, because chooks have a higher body temperature than we do). She seemed to like it, but the only result was a fart and some green goo which landed on my foot. I left her with a heat pack overnight. While she was no worse this morning, she was no better, either.

The forecast was for 33 C today, and I was worried that she'd die from the added heat stress, so off I went to the vet instead of church. It turns out that Penny has a respiratory infection -- chook pneumonia -- and that the other behaviours are related to keeping her lungs open. I had considered respiratory infection, but discarded it as I couldn't hear her breathing or see any discharge. She looks reasonably well, and we're hopeful she'll pull through. I really don't want to conduct two chook funerals in a week!

Funeral

On Thursday, Rusty the $100 Chook looked broody -- she kept heading to her nest to just sit, and she wasn't eating much. To break broodiness, you need to put the bird in a coolish spot with no nesting material, so that's what I did. Our chook dome was sitting on the freshly-mowed lawn, so I popped her in there with food and water but no nesting material.

Unfortunately, she wasn't broody. Yesterday morning she was sitting where I'd left her, but with her head on the ground and her eyes closed. She was too far gone to eat or drink. I warned the Twig and the Sprig that she would die that day (the Twig was very sober on his walk to school, the Geek told me) and settled her on a comfortable bed of dry lawn clippings in shade. We had to go out, but I doubt she lasted the morning -- she was stiff when I popped home at 2:30. In retrospect, she had probably been a bit off-colour for a few days, but she had no particular symptoms.

Rusty became our $100 chook a few years ago, after she began to suffer diarrhoea. It turned out that an egg had broken internally. The shell was removed by our vet and she had to go on antibiotics, hence the sobriquet.

The Geek is now digging a burial site selected by the Twig, under our lemon tree. The Twig has been watching a DVD about Ancient Egypt and plans to build a pyramid over Rusty's grave.

Penny, our remaining chook, looks rather lonely. I have been trying for a while to find some chooks to add to the flock, but it has been a bit more difficult than I thought. Isa Browns are easy to obtain, but not long-lived (as we have seen) and most heritage breeders live outside the Sydney basin. We'll have to take a day trip somewhere soon.

Ghastly Moments in Gardening II and III

Alas, I have had two Ghastly Moments in the past week. Someone tell me that I'm not the only one that has them!

Ghastly Moment II

Penny the chook knows that food comes from our house. She is also quite happy to walk in and ask for it. And our back door flies open easily.

The rest of us were in various part of the house, and the first we heard was the sound of a chicken fluttering. When we came into the kitchen, there was Penny at the table, as if she'd come for dinner! So of course I caught her to take her out. Now the usual way you hold a chook is around the body, holding the wings so they don't flap. I thought I had a good grip on her as I swung past the table to take her out, but then I thought I saw something moving on her feathers. I turned her sideways to get a better look and she got a wing free.

Flap--snap. Her wing hit my arm at an odd angle, and the top bone shattered. I feel sick just remembering the noise.

On the bright side, she's holding it fairly normally, and the vet thinks that she will be OK although she probably won't be able to fly properly. That isn't a huge problem for a back yard chook; flying means "goes over fences and meets a dog" in suburbia.

Ghastly Moment III

It was a large family, but a happy one. The children looked clean and well-fed, though the parents were absent when we looked into their house. The house was much tidier than mine: not a speck of dirt to be seen. Those sweet little children played with each other happily as we watched. And I realised I had to kill them.

I thought drowning was the kindest method as it's quick. They were climbing over each other's plump little bodies one minute, and next they were trying vainly to climb out of the water --- a horrid symmetry. It took five minutes at most. I still feel guilty, ending the lives of a dozen sweet babies. But what else can you do when you find a rat's nest?

Mid-February Vegie Guilds

Today I moved the chooks back into their dome on the vegie patch. They will be in the one place for a couple of weeks, eating insects and plants, scratching up weeds, and manuring and turning over the soil. This is permaculture in action: with minimal use of (my) energy, but good use of a biological resource, the various natural behaviours of the chooks lead to improvement in my vegie patch.

I'll use glyphosate on any remaining grass after that, before I plant. I have tried to plant straight after moving the dome, but the result wasn't good!

In my Guild 1 spot, of the seeds I sowed a fortnight ago I can now see:

• a few French beans
• purple carrots
• dill
• Florence fennel
• 5 plants dwarf snow peas
• a row of radish "French Breakfast"

The Welsh onions and silverbeet have not come up. They might be slow germinators, but I think I will put them in punnets in future. I suspect the other peas and beans have probably rotted; we've had 170mm since I planted those seeds! I will plant some more in the gaps tomorrow.

My punnets have done quite well. The only seedlings not up are the lettuces -- and I was trying to use up old seed.