New Veggie Patch

Our youngest daughter has been on at me for a while now to do something with our veggie patch. Like most veggie patches, ours is in an inconvenient location that has no other use. The land slopes badly and it is in a spot that makes mowing difficult. The old patch was basically a sloping area that was set aside for vegetables, but not very practical.

My wife and I were at the hardware store and we saw some raised bed kits that were, basically, some bits of corrugated iron with corners and an edge to protect the user from sharp corrugated iron. The metal was all painted and they looked pretty good. My wife and I looked at the price tag (for a decent size they were > $200) and we looked at each other. I was thinking, “I could make something just like that with some of the scrap that we have on our property”, my lovely wife was probably thinking “Aw, crap … another project that will never get finished”.

Later that day, we dragged down two long pieces of roofing iron from the top paddock (about 3m long by 1m wide). We went to the tip shop and bought some 1m x 1m lengths of recycled corrugated iron and then the lot went into the feed shed for later.

I had some old framing studs sitting in the feed shed from previous projects, so I set to cutting the timber up into 1m lengths. The long pieces of iron were screwed to 5 x 1m lengths (to give the iron some stability) and the 1m pieces had 2 1m lengths of timber attached. These were then screwed together to make a box 3m x 1m x 1m.

Next I had to dig out the old veggie patch. Now these old veggie patches had been in continuous usage (more or less) for about 20 years and had had enormous amounts of compost, sheep poo, chicken poo, horse poo, etc. added to the soil throughout that period. I was very surprised to find that the soil was so very poor after only about 1 foot down. After that it was very poor sandy soil followed by clay. I dug all of the “soil” out so that the raised bed would be level. That meant that I had to dig down about 2’ at the high end, and about 4” at the shallow end. Next, we carried the raised bed over and plonked it into the hole.

We filled the bottom 6” with brick rubble and then filled it in with some of the very poor soil (to about 8” deep). Over this, I put down a sheet of weed matting, screwed to the inside of the raised bed to keep some very adventurous black wattle out of our veggie patch. Then we put in more soil to about 12” and put down a couple of inches of decomposed chook poo.

The chore now is to fill the rest of the veggie bed with more soil, compost, newspaper, soiled goat bedding, etc. After that, the veggie patch will need to be “rested-in” that is, allow the weeds to grow and blast them with glyphosate.

I still have some more sheets of roofing iron left over, so I will make some more compost bins. The goats make more compost than our current composting arrangement allows for.

The Flock Expands

I am looking into getting a pair of ewes to add to the Green Home Farm. Having looked into sheep a little, we’ve decided that we would like to get some sheep that shed their wool.

The main factors around shedding sheep are:

1. They don’t need to be mulesed;

2. They don’t need their tails docked;

3. They don’t get flystrike (or at least, they are MUCH less likely to); and

4. We don’t have to get a shearer in to shear them.

There is a very good article about Wiltipoll sheep on the Animals Australia website that makes a very good case for shedding sheep.

We’ll be getting sheep to serve two main functions on the farm: Provision of meat for the table, and grazing to reduce grass and improve the soil (with sheep poo).

Our daughters are a bit put off by the idea of raising sheep for slaughter, but it is an important means of reducing our food bill. A pair of ewes will produce lambs annually for us, and the offspring will be sent off-site for slaughter. This should reduce our meat bill quite profoundly.

Additionally, it means that we will know exactly how our food is treated before slaughter. For me personally, I think that it is ethically better to be responsible for the raising of the food for the family’s table.

The ideal sheep for our farm is a Wiltipoll. These sheep are bread from Wiltshire sheep and have been bread for shedding their wool. The wool is a secondary issue for us. We are not going to be spinning the wool, so it is no great loss that the wool produced by the Wiltipoll has no commercial value. The picture here is of ewes with their summer coat (image from Kars Wiltipoll - http://www.wiltipoll.com.au/). The good thing about the Wiltipoll is that we are not sacrificing quality meat for the benefits of sheep that shed.

I remember having a sheep when I was a young lad in suburban Laverton (in Victoria). Her name was “Sheep”. One day, Sheep disappeared and later in the month, we had lots of meat in the fridge. I can’t say that I remember being upset about Sheep, or even noticing (I was about 3 I think).

Still, I need to learn more about how they shed and how to manage the wool that they shed.

All Quiet on the Western Front

The goats are pretty happy and doing well. Holly is getting quite portly and is shaping up to be a very handsome doe. Minnie is still a little underweight, but I expect that has a lot to do with Holly being queen doe and getting all of the choice food.

Holly butts Minnie when Minnie looks like she is trying to get some food that Holly wants, or is getting some pats that Holly wants … or just because. However, Minnie isn’t averse to butting Holly right back. Just normal goatish behaviour really. I believe that when there are more goats in the herd that Minnie and Holly will get along with less butting, but I could be wrong.

Not long to go now until we have kids … I plan to have the goats serviced in late autumn so that I can have kids in spring.

Later next month I will be doing some more clearing in the top paddock in preparation for the goats moving up there. There is still a load of rubbish that needs to be cleared and the fence still needs to be goat-proofed, but that will progress as time permits.

Hen Pecked and Rooster Ruffled

Since introducing Raj to the flock, a number of the chickens have started to get quite bald backs. Mostly this is due to Raj mounting the chickens and being a bit rough. Early on, the chickens also had bloody combs from Raj holding them down.

Mostly, this appears to happen with the older hens, apparently, Raj’s favourite chicks (pardon the pun). I have seen a couple of other chicken keepers make jackets for their hens when this happens. Although, my chickens aren’t in any kind of distress from their loss of feathers, I expect that they will be getting pretty cold as it is coming into winter here in Tasmania.

Above is a picture of our own MF-Junior. He is the son of MF (munt-foot). You can see that he has quite severe toe curl, however, the condition certainly doesn’t affect his performance as a junior rooster, he protects the girls and gets the occasional sneaky “alone time” with the hens that Raj isn’t watching.

I will be making some simple chicken jackets for my hens so that they can be protected from the cold. I had better make some extras so that I can wash them periodically.

One Brown Egg

Our plan to cross the White Leghorn chickens with the Rhode Island Red rooster with a view to producing brown eggs is starting to pay off. One of our chickens is now laying brown eggs! Yay!

There is absolutely no difference in the quality or flavour of a brown egg compared with a white egg. It is purely a matter of preference.

The chicks from our second successful brood are a mixture of first and second cross. One of the survivors of the second brood is obviously a second cross White Leghorn/Rhode Island Red. She is kind of sandy in colouring, but essentially looks the same as the parent hens. The 1^st cross chickens tend to be white with the occasional black spot or “smut” whereas the 2^nd cross chickens are more uniform in colour, it is just a sandy colouration.

The ears and legs of the 1^st cross chickens are white and yellow respectively, whereas the ears and legs of the 2^nd cross seem to be more of a buff colour.

My lovely wife did some comparisons with the eggs from the supermarket the other day, and the XX-Large eggs that the supermarket was selling weighed in at 48 grams each, whereas our chickens lay eggs that average 65 grams (with the occasional monster egg, one of which was 90 grams). The largest egg that our Isa Brown chickens laid was 95 grams.

Our other observations regarding the quality of the eggs that we produce are that: the yolks of our eggs are much darker in colour, tending toward orange rather than yellow; the albumen tends to have distinctive layers with the albumen layer closest to the yolk more viscous than store bought eggs; the egg-shell tends to be harder; and, our eggs are eaten much closer to their laying date.

I would expect that the albumen consistency could be a consequence of the consumption time, given that albumen is mostly water; that may normalise in the egg over time. However, the colour of the yolk indicates that the chickens are getting a good level of protein in their diet. The hardness of the egg shell would indicate that the chickens are getting enough calcium in their diet, and in a form that the chickens can readily use, to lay down enough calcium on the egg shell without having to strip their bones of calcium.

The Run of the Coop

The cock from our first brood of chickens has now grown up to be a handsome chap indeed. The Rooster “Raj” is definitely the head of the run, but the sneaky leghorn cock “MF Junior”, manages to have clandestine trysts with the ladies whenever Raj isn’t looking.

When a rooster is displaying for a hen, he will vocalise and shake his wattles for the hen and then he will step back to show the hen a morsel that he has for her. The hen will then eat the morsel and allow the rooster to mount her (if his display is manly enough). Of course, the rooster is always looking for this behaviour in others as well because he doesn’t like competition.

The younger cock can’t afford to vocalise or put on big shows for the girls … but he doesn’t have to be celibate either. The main problem for the younger cock is that he isn’t as big as the head rooster. Any showy displays for the girls will get him beaten up. So what he must do is to be covert in his pursuit of companionship.

In our flock, MF Junior will only display for the hens if Raj is looking the other way. The displays are not as flamboyant as the head Rooster but he seems to be having his evil way with the hens.

Our main problem with MF Junior is that, being the second cock in the chicken run, he seems to be more aggressive toward our youngest daughter. Raj doesn’t give the girls a second glance, but MF Junior will attack our youngest when she goes into the coop to feed the rabbit and guinea pig and to collect the eggs. Our youngest is very petite and she is quite intimidated by MF Junior … it’s time that our youngest got some lessons in asserting herself.