After 26+ years of living in places including Brisbane, Mackay and Bundaberg I decided to move back to the family farmlet in early 2022. This farmlet is where I grew up. [More about that story another day perhaps.]
This blog post is dedicated to our first chicken. This is the first chicken that has lived here on this farmlet since I was a kid. He/she was born here in early May.
Here’s a quick backstory:
I purchased 8x ’10-week-old chickens’ in late 2022. I asked for 2 Roosters and 6 hens. Ended up with 3 Roosters and 5 hens. Unfortunately in early 2023 Foxes (I think) took 2 of the Roosters and 2 of the hens. The 3rd Rooster was injured but never recovered.
I then purchased a nice big young Rooster from a friend (he is in the below pics).
I really like my chooks. They are good company and they feel like pets, though I feel they see me more ‘as their pet’ and ‘provider of the food’… which is totally ok with me… and probably more accurate 🙂 . They free-range and seem to have a good time.
The chooks started laying once they reached about 18 weeks. I was happily collecting their eggs… BUT then there seemed to be no more eggs. I wondered if maybe they were laying them in a hidden spot. I went searching and sure enough, I found a big pile of eggs that my black chook was sitting on.
The eggs were different colours, so there was speculation that maybe more than one chook had contributed.
The same week I found the eggs, a Fox took yet another one of my chooks. I was now down to 2 chooks and one rooster.
I gather it takes around 20 to 26 days for a chook egg to hatch. I built an enclosure around the nest to keep the Foxes away. The black chook stayed on the nest most of the time. Often I would feed it at the nest.
In early May a baby chicken arrived! 🙂 (pics below).
He/ she is going great! The black cook is super-protective (and a great Mum!). The Rooster is protective too. I watched him ‘defend his family’ the other day from a few Crows. A ‘good bloke’ (family man) he is! 🙂
Anyway, just a short blog post today about the new chicken. I will post more blogs on this website very soon. A fair bit has been going on.
Side notes:
Big shout-out and thank you to my Uncle and Aunty who feed my chooks at times when I am away (usually related to work).
I feed the baby chicken ‘Chicken Starter’. I’ll take a photo of the product packaging soon and add it to this blog post. If I did not have access to this pre-prepared food I am still not sure what I would feed a baby chicken. For the sake of ‘being prepared,’ I will need to do some research.
None of the other eggs in the nest hatched. Next time I see a pile of eggs I might put them in an Egg Incubator (I better go buy one).
