Chook love!

Our three new family members are fluffy, tiny, busy little balls of feathers named Dolly, Sweetpea and Lacey.  Pekin Bantams are incredibly popular as pets / backyard chooks, and for good reason.  They are exceptionally friendly, curious, engaging, gentle and hilarious - every time we glance out the window, they are up to something gorgeous or funny.

Pekin Bantams are also a feather-footed breed, which means (as well as having very little feet, due to being a miniature chicken breed) their feet are covered in splayed feathery 'spats', so you cannot see their feet at all - they appear to be shuffling around just on feathers!  This also means that they are much less of a menace in the garden - they just don't get in there and dig up things anywhere near as much as a standard, normal chook.

Weighing in at about 500g, they appear to be about 1/3 the size of a regular chook, and much rounder!  They are so fluffy, they look like a large pom-pom with a head, and another tail pom-pom stuck on the back.

Can you tell I'm in love?!

They were a birthday present to me from my parents.  I've always wanted chooks, since I was, oh, around Tabitha's age, so when we moved house and could accommodate them, they were first on my To Do list.

Here are the babies when we first got them - around 12 weeks old, quite small, and shaped more like pigeons than hens.  We brought them inside to sleep each night, in a box lined with straw, for the first month or so we had them, because it was very cold overnight.  It was also a nice way to get to know them, handling them in the evenings when they were drowsy and agreeable.  Here they are sitting with The Daddy on the kitchen floor:

And having a bedtime snack with Tabitha, also ready for her bedtime:

We bought them through the fantastic Book-A-Chook company, which provides rental and sales chooks and houses to families and schools all over Melbourne.  The package I got included a beautiful, solid wood house.  If you are interested in seeing if chooks would work for you, you can rent a pair for a couple of weeks - and I believe that similar companies exist in other states of Australia.

Although the eggs are small, I think that the payoff, so to speak, is pretty good - the eggs are around half the size of regular chook eggs BUT the chooks themselves are much smaller, requiring less food, and do much less damage to gardens.  Also, the eggs have a greater proportion of yolk to those of regular eggs - and I love yolk!

The girls began to lay eggs about 10 days ago now, and after finding the first egg, there was no stopping them - we collected more than a dozen in the first week.  I believe (though could be wrong!) that all three girls are laying.  I think that Lacey is laying every day, and I think that Sweetpea and Dolly are laying every couple of days each.  I think this because there seem to be three types of eggs - a medium brown one every day, and then larger brown eggs on most days (which I am sure that Sweetpea is laying, because she carries on like you wouldn't believe after laying her eggs - dancing around, singing like a flock of magpies, tapping on the windows etc) and then there is the odd smaller, pale egg with white mottles on it, appearing every 2-3 days, which I suspect Dolly is responsible for.

Here are the first five eggs we got, collected over the first two or three days:

Here is nearly a week's worth of eggs:

The Daddy found the first egg, and rushed it inside with excitement.  Then later, he said he felt a bit bad because he hadn't stopped to acknowledge the chooks or say thank you before running off with their egg!  It got me thinking, and now I make a point of stopping to pat and chat to the chooks when they lay an egg, and I also try to give them some yummy food scraps when I collect their eggs too.

Tabitha is very excited about the eggs, and we've had to monitor her with them, as she wants to carry them all over the house, which I know would lead to quite a few broken eggs!  So we have a look at each egg when we collect them, a quick feel, and then they get tucked away safely in a bowl on the bench.  She tells people that "Dolly and the chooks are making eggs!  Outta their bottoms!"  I thought it was quite sweet, the other day, when she tried to carry the eggs outside to the chooks.  I asked her what she was doing, and she looked at me strangely and replied "I giving the eggs to the chooks!  The chooks made the eggs, these are their eggs!"  I realised that she found it quite strange that we take the eggs away from the chickens and don't give them back!  I wonder if we have a vegan in the makings... It did make me stop and think about it, though, and reinforced my practice of giving the chooks plenty of praise and treats in return for their eggs.

Strangely, I initially found the idea of actually eating the eggs to be quite confronting.  I am a big egg eater, so this really surprised me.  I just felt a little squeamish about the idea, to begin with.  Perhaps because they are smaller, they don't look exactly like 'regular' chook eggs, so I couldn't separate them in my head from the funny little feather-balls in the backyard.  I wonder if other people find this when they first get chooks?

We ate the first dozen or so soft-boiled on beautiful Pane Toscano toast with salted butter, and plenty of salt and pepper.  I test-boiled an egg first, as I had no idea how long to boil these small eggs for, to achieve a nice soft yolk.  The eggs we had were all between 18g - 25g, and I found that lowering them into boiling water (room temperature eggs) and boiling for exactly three minutes was spot on.  They were surprisingly easy to peel, considering how fresh they were, and the yolks were a really glorious, golden colour.  Two bantam eggs is about right for one piece of toast.

I have been told - and have observed for myself, through my aunt's chooks - that plenty of green leafy vegetables make for beautifully rich, golden yolks.  So I try to give them lots of bok choi and parsley and rocket etc.  

What else do they eat?  Well, the main staple of their diet is 'layer mash' which is a mixed, bought food that includes all the essential nutrients and minerals that laying chooks require.  You can feed this dry, or mix it with some warm water or warm milk.  I have sourced a feed that I'm really happy with - it's certified organic, soy-free, from a company called Country Heritage.  It's just their 'certified organic soy-free layer mash' and is available at some of the larger pet supply stores, and several stock feed stores.  My local place was happy to order it in for me.  It just looks and smells really nice, and the hens seem to love it.

Apart from their layer mash (which is available to them at all times - and they seem to eat a lot of it), they get a mixture of kitchen scraps every day, throughout the day.  Basically, whenever I have something that I think they might like, I walk over and give it to them through the back door.  So they have learnt to come running whenever they hear me coming out!  They will mob anyone who goes outside, hoping for something delicious, and usually they are in luck.

Here they are this afternoon, working on their avocado:

They didn't have a huge interest in kitchen scraps when they were younger, but I'd say from about a month before they started laying, their appetites for fresh food increased, and now they demolish scraps all day.  Green leafy veggies are great, as are cooked root vegetables, and natural yoghurt (excellent for their gut health).  A typical day (yesterday) might include:  some warm porridge with whole milk, coconut and pecans (leftover from Tabitha's breakfast), some bits of bok choi, garlic and snow peas from last night's dinner, some watermelon and half a soft pear, some leftover natural yoghurt with LSA and seed topping, the leftover bits of an avocado (they adore avocado and will pick the skins completely clean), some roast pumpkin, some peas and corn (they much prefer the corn to the peas!), some parsley scraps and some cheeky crumbs from a lemon poppyseed cake.

Overall I avoid giving them bread, except for the odd scrap of nice grainy bread as a treat, because it's a bit like 'chook junk food' apparently, and they sure do squabble over it!  I also avoid too much asparagus, broccoli, cabbage etc. as I've been told it can lend a slight sulfurous flavour to eggs.  Salt is a no-no, so things like bacon, baked beans or processed foods are best avoided, and likewise treats such as pancakes, date scones, cake etc. are saved for a small treat, just once or twice a week.  I can't quite bring myself to ban these delicious snacks altogether, after witnessing the sheer joy that a leftover pancake or half scone brings!

The chooks also need a source of calcium, which can come from either bought 'fine shell grit' or you can give them crumbled-up, cooked eggshells (e.g. from boiled eggs or roast the raw eggshells in an oven for a bit).  You need to crumble them up until they don't resemble eggs anymore, otherwise you risk the birds becoming 'egg eaters' who will try and eat freshly laid eggs.

Chooks also need a constant supply of fresh, cook water - it's best to hang their water up, so they don't tread in it and fill it with junk.  If the weather is very hot, the water might need to be changed a couple of times a day, and it's worth popping some big chunks of ice in it to keep it cool.  One of the biggest killers of backyard chooks, apparently, is heat and dehydration.  On a terribly hot day, I've been instructed that I should plan on bringing them inside or at least into the garage.

Of course, chickens do not have teeth - like all birds, instead, they grind food up internally, using bits of grit and small stones that they eat.  I've noticed the chooks running down the side of the house to an area with gravel, where they spend a few minutes each day picking through the stones, eating small ones!

Apart from this, I also worm them (once every three months, or the start of each new season to make things easy) and sprinkle some 'derris dust' over their perches and nesting area, to keep away mites and pests.  I also add a little apple cider vinegar and fresh garlic to their water sometimes, as these are good natural worming methods.  So far, no trouble with any pests.

It's also nice to provide chooks with somewhere to dust-bathe.  They like to wriggle themselves right down into dry, dusty soil or sand, then groom it off their bodies, as a way of keeping clean and pest-free.  They have claimed a large terracotta pot (which used to house rhubarb before they decimated it) and spend quite a bit of time each day bathing in the dirt.

Speaking of rhubarb, the chooks have eaten two complete plants of it.  Leaves, stalks and roots.  Now, it was my understanding that the leaves were highly toxic, but the girls love them, and have stripped them completely with no ill effects at all.  So there you go!  Likewise, I've always been told that avocado is toxic for birds, but Jackie French's brilliant 'The Chook Book' dispelled this myth for me - her chooks eat avocadoes in massive quantities, as the main protein source in their diet, and my chooks only wish they were so lucky, instead making do with about 1/4 of an avocado each day.

Without any real effort, the chooks are incredibly tame and friendly.  Part of this is certainly the breed (Pekin Bantams are generally known to be tame and friendly birds by nature) but I think that a major factor has been their proximity to the house and our family - our garden and decking are very small, and are adjacent to the main living areas of the house (living room, dining area and kitchen) through around 8m or so of glass bi-fold doors.  So all day, the chooks are just meters away from our family as we go about our business.  They spend lots of the day watching us through the glass - in fact, as I'm sitting here at the dining table typing, they are just on the other side of the glass from me, peering at me (probably hoping for scraps!)  As such, they are completely used to our movements, voices etc. and are not at all fazed when we go outside or handle them.

Tabitha is generally pretty good with the chooks, however occasionally she gets over-excited and a bit rough.  So I always supervise her, and if there is any roughness, she comes inside straight away.  Overall she's getting much more reliable though, and I think that by Summer, she'll be fine to be outside playing with them on her own - which will be a fantastic way to keep her amused while I tend to the new baby!  She likes to pick them up, and unfortunately the easiest way (for her size) is to grab them by their two wings, so we've had to be very firm about this.  We have a 'no picking up, only patting' rule that we have to enforce quite a bit - but as I mentioned, she is definitely improving with age and experience.  She will happily spend a good hour outside with them, chasing them around (they are not fussed by this, as she doesn't run very fast!), patting them, trying to get them to eat out of her hands and just chatting to them.

Here is Tabitha trying to coax them out of their dust-bathing pot, to eat some scraps in a bowl:

Officially, Dolly (the smallest, white one) is Tabitha's pet, Lacey is my little sister's, and Sweetpea is 'mine'.  Lacey is certainly the top of the pecking order, and Dolly is firmly on the bottom, standing back and waiting her turn when any scraps are offered.  She is also the easiest to pick up and the calmest.

Lacey and Sweetpea are similar in appearance (both mottled black/grey/white) but we can easily tell them apart at a glance, even from a distance.  Lacey is larger, more 'solid' and Sweetpea has a golden/brown band of feathers around her neck, a larger comb, and is also sleeker in shape.

I look forward to writing more about the chooks (like all chook owners I've met, I've become impossibly boorish on the subject of poultry!) and sharing more photos.  Unfortunately (perhaps due to the eyes?) chooks don't seem to photograph well in my opinion.  You can't seem to capture any of the personality and gentle natures of them in photos.  But I will continue to try!

Oh and as a final note - the two books I've found absolutely essential have been Jackie French's The Chook Book (a wonderful read even if you don't have chooks, I think!) and also Backyard Poultry Naturally (which has lots of great information about medicinal herbs etc for chickens and ducks).  Both books are Australian, both are available at Readings bookstores and from various online retailers.

Look at those beautiful pom-pom tails!