Duck, Duck, Chicken...?

Up until now we have been enjoying the warm (most of the time) introduction into Autumn, meanwhile the poor chickens are going through their moult and going off laying.  We are still getting a couple of eggs a day but we use them ourselves at the moment so there will be a period of none on the stall.  If you haven’t heard them already, we do have 6 new friends of the feathered variety on the job of clearing away slugs and snails in the flower garden.  Of course, I am talking about the 2 pekin and 4 runner ducks.  They are quite funny and their quacks make me smile.  My son and daughter-in-law of Ballarook Working Kelpie Stud, use ducks to train their dogs.  I have to laugh though because the ducks get so friendly I think it will only be a matter of time before they start following the dogs around – now that would be confusing.   The ducks will also provide us with some eggs next season, so keep an eye out for them on the Stall.

The poor chicken’s are looking naked.  All of the chickens that are over a year old will stop laying over the autumn/winter period.  This is why we always try to ensure we have new chickens coming through each year.  Chickens stop laying over this period for a variety of reasons but the main one is they need 12 hours of light to form an egg.  We could provide artificial light to ensure that the chickens continued to lay over the winter period, but we think they do enough work during the season and that this is a well earned break for them.  The girls start to loose their feathers and their combs go pink instead of the lovely red they usually have.  To ensure that the girls are in the best of health while going through this transformation and growing new feathers, we feed them a higher protein diet with a lot of extra greens as well.  By the time you see the girls in Spring, they will be looking bright and cheery again.  Luckily for us we always have a couple of the new pullets each year and they will lay through the winter. 

It is a good time to have a clean out of the coop to make it nice and warm and clean for winter. We use a commercial wormer to keep the girls as healthy as possible.  This is the best time to do this as when they are wormed we can’t eat the eggs for a period of time.  During the season we use pumpkin seeds as a way to do this.

The last few days have reminded us that it is getting close to Winter. We have had the fire lit and boy- oh-boy has it been a nippy wind outside in the garden. I have been taking the time to get back into my office, working on some of the long lost projects that I have been wanting to do and getting all the preserving done.