Poultry Management
One of my jobs here has been to let the ducks into their sleeping quarters in the evenings, where they are safe from foxes. They wait in the same spot (most afternoons!) waiting to go in. They just need to be encouraged a bit, as they know where to go.
There are a few different types of poultry here – ducks, chickens, geese and emus. The emus are very friendly and hassle you for pats, however they are also useful for eating some of the weeds common around here. The chickens free range in the orchard and also everywhere outside the fences, they are excluded from the seedling nursery, the area around the house and the seed veggie garden in Winter.
A couple of retired people live here in a very comfortable caravan, where they spend time painting and doing art. They also help out around the property doing numerous jobs suuch as watering, weeding, looking after the poultry and collecting the eggs each day.
The eggs are wonderful – the most yellow yolks I’ve ever seen. Over a dozen a day are being collected at the moment, so we’ve been eating a lot of omelettes, quiche, homemade pasta, mayonnaise – yum!
To collect the eggs you have to do a lot of searching, and really just get to know the spots they lay. Apparently they will change spots all the time, and won’t lay again in one for a while if they think you are onto them.
One trick to outwit chickens is to leave one egg in the ‘nest’. A bad egg can be used for this, marked with a pen and left in the nest. (To test if any eggs are bad, you immerse them in water, eggs which are good stay on the bottom and don’t float.)
The conditions here are so harsh in Summer that they grow their veggies only in Winter. Once the veggies and veggie seeds have been harvested, the chickens are run in the gardens to eat any remaining greens, forage for and eat weed seeds and grubs, and fertilise the ground with their manure.
They are thinking of using ducks in the veggie garden at the end of the season rather then chickens. Chickens scratch up the ground and mix the mulch in with the soil. Whereas ducks dibble in under the surface for slaters and don’t scratch up the soil.
Geese are useful as watch animals, they sound the alarm when anyone walks past. Whenever you walk past them they honk loudly, they’re a dead giveaway. These particluar geese are pretty mean at the moment, as it’s mating season. I’m glad I wear boots as I’ve needed them to protect myself from attacking geese once or twice. Here’s a picture of them I’ve bravely taken from the other side of a fence!
