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mccnmatt

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April 25, 2014

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Anthropomorphism, Backyard chickens, Brush turkeys, pecking order

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Cliff hanger on Chicken TV

“Who are these people? And why are they eating my breakfast?”

Last night we moved the young’uns out of the veggie garden and into the chicken run. At dusk, I found them wandering disconsolately around the spot where the coop had been the day before, scratching out symbols in the mulch in an attempt to reverse the invisibility spell that had obviously been performed on their living quarters. Having sorted out that problem, I made a late breaking decision to grab Snowball from her highly exposed roost and throw her in with the others.

Public holiday sleep-in abandoned, I was up at dawn to watch the next gripping episode of “Chicken TV”. Who would be new Top Chook: Andy Ninja or the feisty contender, Treasure the Light Sussex? How would Snowball react after her night sleeping with strangers? Could there be peace between the two clans, or would blood be spilled?

Major turn-up in the pecking-order stakes: Treasure not only monstered little Snowball, but had Andy on the backfoot as well. The two veterans, driven together in a “spirit of the blitz”, paced up and down while the two most brazen of the new girls muscled in on brekkie. We took 2 weeks to train the older chooks to use the foot-pedal feeder: it took Shyla the Australorp about 10 minutes.

So much for getting the new birds for Andy’s mental health – she spent much of the afternoon in her usual haunts in the front garden, on her own or in the company of one of the brush turkeys. Snowball hung with the young team for a while, but it looks like it was a one-night stand in the coop – she’s back on her “fox appetiser” roost this evening. So I guess Chicken TV is the poultry Home and Away: mostly about the triumphs of good looking teenagers.

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mccnmatt

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March 29, 2014

Posted under

Brush turkeys, Climate change, Exclusion pest control, Gardening, Plants and what I know about them, Seasons

Cherry blossom in autumn

What’s the difference between a good gardener and a bad gardener?

Two weeks.

That’s me, at least two weeks late with everything. Most of the autumn planting happened today, in delicious sunshine after three days of deep, seeping rain. Peter Cundall says my newly sown carrots (should they germinate, always rather unlikely – I got one solitary seedling out of the batch sown a month or so ago) will be pale and thin. Gothic carrots. Hopefully the spindly survivors will be the purple ones: seems more appropriate somehow.

I’m not very optimistic about my garlic either. In previous years I reaped, almost to the clove, an identical amount of garlic to the quantity I planted six months before (I have a similar success rate with potatoes). However, I live in hope that all that will change in 2014: “The Year of Lime”. I have been very slapdash with soil preparation in the past, hoping that cow manure and lucerne-and-straw mulch, with the odd splash of comfrey tea will do for pretty much everything. This year I’ve taken the same approach to dolomite on my leeks and garlic, that the Scottish other half takes to salt on his dinner: more is more. Hopefully it will make a difference. I’ve also put in not just the usual Italian White but also a day-length neutral type, Glen. Perhaps its not me that is harshing my garlic, but my latitude. Now I have a controlled experiment to settle it.

Having discovered the implausible passion of brush turkeys for the allium family, I’ve gone for a belt and braces approach to protecting seeds and seedlings. This year I’ve draped my usual little hoops of wire fencing with vege nets, partly to keep out the beasties and partly to shade the newbies in what’s been an unusually warm March. My home grown brassica and fennel seedlings are working with that same goth aesthetic and I fear that one sunny day might be the end of them. The nets have done sterling service with the beans, which are up and cropping well.

So since we’re in the dying days of March, it may be that my celery and rainbow chard, broccoli, kale and fennel are destined to spend the next six months in suspended animation waiting for the sun to hoist itself above the trees and get things going again on our chilly south-west facing slope. But then, I noticed only a few days back that the little pot-grown cherry tree that has, for the last five years stubbornly refused to flower or fruit, has spluttered into bloom at this most inpropitious time, and that the strawberries beneath the custard apple have sprung little white petals and even greenish fruits. I’m not sure what all this portends: the unnatural beginnings of climate change or just the confused reaction of temperate plants to subtropical seasons. Either way I’m hoping for a harvest.

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mccnmatt

Posted on

March 25, 2014

Posted under

Animal pests, Brush turkeys, Death, Native animals, Plants and what I know about them, Possums, Uncategorized

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An inexpert Anglo’s guide to identifying bush foods in the garden

Step 1. Come up with a list of possibilities through the interweb or other trusted source.

Step 2. Purchase, potentially with some difficulty, from a suitable vendor of native plants.

Step 3. Bring finds home and situate them carefully in the garden, giving appropriate thought to aspect and drainage.

Step 4. Wait. If, after some time, you find a patch of thoroughly excavated soil or even a few macerated fragments of greenery where your precious purchase was previously located, congratulations! With the help of your hungry non-human assistants, you have identified an edible native plant!

Okay, it doesn’t always work that way, but I’m feeling slightly embittered since a second generation of bulbine lily has bitten the dust courtesy of the advanced culinary sensibilities of our trusty flock of brush turkeys. Thanks, guys!

The apple berry vine was, I think, cleaned up by the possums. The chocolate lily has suspiciously vanished from its new spot sheltered in the fringes of the prolific and obviously insipid tasting blue flax lily. Dormant in summer, perhaps it will pop up again next year, but after reading descriptions of its “delectable” aroma and tubers that are edible both raw and roasted, I am not optimistic. I have a strong suspicion, based solely on the fact that the regularly nibbled growing tips of the specimen outside my kitchen, that the Fraser Island creeper may also have some undocumented uses as a pot herb. Don’t try this at home, though… unless you are a brush turkey, in which case, help yourself.

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mccnmatt

Posted on

March 17, 2014

Posted under

Animal pests, Backyard chickens, Brush turkeys, Death, Microbiome, Native animals

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What lurks in brush turkey bellies?

This is my other flock, the brush turkeys. I think there are about six of them using our place as a recreation area and take-away just now. Teenagers and youngsters, I think, none of the absurdly young yet unattended chicks at the moment – the hatching season must be over.

Our fences are not so much boundary markers, more convenient perching sites and high level walkways, attractive and arboreal, a little like New York’s famous High Line. When we bought our vermin proof chicken feeder (made by Grandpa, it seems) we were warned not to train the chooks how to use it in front of cockatoos. Though individually cockies are not heavy enough to step onto the foot pedal and trigger the lifting of the feeder lid, apparently they are quite capable of learning to saunter on mob-handed and get a feed that way. It took the chooks a few weeks to get used to the clanging as the pedal went down and the feeder opened. The learning curve for the brush turkeys was pretty steep it seems. They are casual snackers at this stage.

So I’ve spent a lot of the last few weeks thinking about the contents of brush turkey guts and the parasitic load of brush turkey ordure. We lost another chick (Turbo… sniff) and I’m blaming the turkeys rather than myself. Viral and bacterial vectors, flapping and crapping all round the yard. We couldn’t leave little Shyla to join the big chickens all on our own, so we went back to the hatchery and got some older and hopefully more robust pullets. But now the veil of naivete has been drawn back and I’m expecting more deaths, despite Sulfa3, cider vinegar, natural yoghurt snacks and regular anxious visits to the bottom of the yard where the young ‘uns are segregated in their chook dome from bigger fowl. I’m not sure I can bear to lose any more, at least not yet.

So I’m going for a chemical blitz, on new chicks and the old. Still thinking through which antibiotics I should have in the cupboard for the inevitable emergency. And when I’m dosing up the chickens, I’ll also be dosing up the brush turkeys, our involuntary companion animals.

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mccnmatt

Posted on

March 1, 2014

Posted under

Backyard chickens, Brassicas, Brush turkeys, Gardening, Native animals, Predators, raising chickens, Recycling, Vernacular architecture

A grand day out

Time to get the fully feathered chicks – all of 6 weeks old – out of the brooder in the kids’ bedroom. To my amazement the new coop, which weighs the same as a gas giant, does actually fit under the chook dome. After Donna’s departure, I’m a bit worried about plunging the peepers straight into the fowl-and-brush-turkey-ordure-rich environment of the run, so we’ll give them a few weeks in the chicken tractor, getting a garden bed ready for brassicas. They had a first scratch around this afternoon, ready for the big move tomorrow.

Andy is looking very miffed by these developments. I caught her lurking in the new coop – I think she envisages it as her own personal quarters. She was transfixed by the sudden appearance of the new girls, so I was able to grab her and turf her out before any argy-bargy. However, Snowball and Andy have been using the top of the dome as a perch, so they were wandering around the run at something of a loss at sundown tonight. They have a whole series of dry places to sleep – under the granny flat, in the wood-shed – but since they seemed to favour a spot underneath the neighbour’s horrible coral tree, we leaned a ladder (a previous craft project) against the outside of the woodshed, exactly where the chicken dome used to be. I tried to give Andy the idea but she wasn’t having it. Hope they are somewhere out of the rain tonight….