March Memeness: chooks

Tell me what drew you to keeping chooks? from senmut

I really blame Australian permaculturist Linda Woodrow and her book The Permaculture Kitchen Garden which I borrowed from a friend, read over and over and over, then handed back and bought my own copy to pore over. She described how chooks are multi-functional in the garden - not just laying eggs, but also scratching up the soil, making mulch, depositing manure, eating weeds and seeds and bugs, and providing entertainment - and I was sold!

These days, in most cases, chickens are easier to till the soil than breaking my back trying to do the job. They deal with the snails and slugs and bugs, with the fruit-fly-infested fruit, and any grasshoppers or earwigs or grubs they turn up in the garden. They don't really lay all that much, and they tend to dustbathe in the most inconvenient places. But they are heaps of fun, and such quirky personalities, and I love mine.

The two in the icon are our first flock - the Original Recipe: Honey Soy (Isa Brown) and Hainan (Leghorn). They died a few years back, but were very much Personalities.

Since then we have had:
- Sussy (a beautiful Milleflora Sussex) and Tja-Tse (Hyline): killed by a fox
- "the Banquet" - Shantung (might have been a Hyline, might have been an Isa Brown) and Cold Dish (a leghorn): died of old age
- "the babies" - Siyao (Barnavelder) and Goongbao (Wyandotte)
- "the little girls" - Carambah and Chouquette (both Quambys)

We're down to three chooks right now after Chouquette was put down earlier this year, and looking at getting a couple more, but first some work needs to be done on the chook yard. Which will hopefully happen today while I have some 'hired help' for the yard.