The Pros and Cons of Keeping Chickens

Rhode Island Red Bantam Chick about six weeks old

 

Pros

 

Having had chickens in my life for many decades, naturally I am going to think of more pros than cons.

 

The obvious benefit of having chickens is that they will lay you eggs. Have you ever seen hens in laying cages by the thousand? Not a pretty site. The poor hens are so stressed out. They often have few feathers. They can barely move and are often pecked by the other stressed out hens in their tiny wire cage - wire floor as well. They cannot roost or sleep comfortably.

 

If you keep your own chickens you can really pamper them or just plain look after them. They will have a much better life than hens in commercial egg laying facilities and you are not subsidising caged birds by buying their eggs.

 

Chickens will provide you with fertilizer for your garden. They will also eat all your table scraps with relish.

 

Chickens will help control insects in your garden. They love to snap at flying insects, or peck up earwigs and bugs.

 

Chickens will help control weeds in the garden and willingly do lots of the digging for you. If you have a bed that needs turning over, just start it off and the chickens will bring it to a fine tilth. They are very good at that.

 

Chickens are also much better than dogs on New Year's eve. Many dogs can get very frightened by all the firecrackers going off and demand lots of attention inside the house. Chickens will sleep right through the noise.

 

These wonderful two legged creatures are happy to be outside. They don't 'need' company from humans. So long as all their needs are met they make no other demands.

 

And you don't need to take them for a walk.

 

My flock of chicks and hens provide me with lots of enjoyment - just standing watching them can put a smile on my face. They love to have a talk back also.

 

Today I heard one of my neighbours clucking and talking to the hens over the back fence and later in the day another four year old neighbour was calling out to the hens - 'Hey Rooster' over and over. He loves them too. He and his sister love to receive gifts of an egg occasionally or some feathers and a real treat is to come and visit the hens.

 

If you are going away for a week or so you can leave enough food and water for them. Just get a neighbour to collect the eggs every couple of days and everybody will be happy.

Cons

Well, I can't think of many.

 

Oh yes, those occasions when I have to clean out their cage.

 

And on the long summer evenings, I have to go out three or four times to locks the hens in because they just won't go to bed. They love the garden too much.

 

You do have to watch where you walk in the garden because they do leave little blobs of fertilizer around the place. If there are too many of these, just let them out for an hour or so in the evenings. You don't have to let them out at all if it doesn't suit.

 

Well, looking at the arguments set out above, it looks as though its a good idea to keep chickens.

 

I do have lots more pros tucked up my sleeve.

 

 

 

 



Visitors to My Back Door

There are some new flowers flowering in the garden at the moment as it's springtime here in Australia.

I try to keep a photographic record of all my flowers but sometimes miss a few. Here are my latest.

A fuchsia, lobelia and buddleia. They are all looking lovely at the moment.

Fuchsia

 

Lobelia

 

Buddleia

 

The butterflies like the buddleia. Each year we get more butterflies.

 

Visitors to My Back Door

Yesterday when I opened the back door a butterfly flew right in and in the evening as I came back from feeding the chickens I spied a sparrow flying out the back door. He must have been having a look around as I keep the daily food in there, all sealed. So he missed out on some easy tucker.  

 

Every afternoon my little bantam hens come visiting about four o'clock. They must be feeling a bit peckish. They get a handful each of corn or seeds then off they go for a couple of hours until it's time for their evening meal when they come back again.

Rose Design to use in your Folk Art Painting

A Rose Just for You

Here is a rose drawing you could use in your Folk Art designs. It's a delicate rosebud just like the bud in the header of my blog.

The rose in the header of my blog is a photo from my garden as are the other two photos there. let me  know how it turns out for you.

I hope Santa comes your way soon. Happy Christmas.

House Painting

We have just had the painters in for nearly two weeks. The outside of our house had not been painted for a long time. It's amazing how the walls get dirty from the rain and garden soil, insects and spider webs.

I have a very busy garden and many, many plants had to be cut back severely to allow the painters to get to the walls. Lots of the remaining plants came off the worst for wear as well.

But I can't complain too much because the house needed to be painted. Now it looks fresh and clean. I console myself in the thought that in twelve months the plants will have grown back. It will also give me the chance to remove some and replant with something new.

Sorry to disappoint you if you think the above picture is my home. It's not.

You may like to see some photos of my garden.

Changes and Holidays

Well, they do say a change is as good as a holiday, don't they?

I haven't been on a holiday, so I'll just have to have a change.
I was hanging out in some other blog and found this great info by another blogger. It was all about different templates and new headers. I thought I'd give it a go.

Megan and Keren from shabbyblogs.com/ have some lovely ways for you to have that change. I hope my change has worked.



shabbyblogs.com

I've installed a different template - thanks girls, Then they showed me where to go for another freebie to make a great header from some of my favourite photos. Try it out here FotoFlexer.com. You can really do some stunning things with your photos.

Next, I went into the back blocks of the Layout pages of Blogger and added a few things and da-da!!!
Here's the result.

I'll probably change it again sometime because I like playing around with the design of web pages and blogs.

Check out my other web pages - www.allergiesandcfs.com. There is also a blog on there all about health called Let's Talk Health. It's about using natural therapies and remedies and plain old common sense to stay healthy or get healthy, whichever you need. Don't we all need good health?

Another of my web pages is www.mygardentreasures.com.au. Here I chat on about my garden and my chickens that live in the garden. There are two blogs on this site. One is a Garden Blog
www.mygardentreasures.com.au/garden-blog.html and the other is about my chickens.
www.mygardentreasures.com.au/the-bantam-blog.html

I hope you have time to drop by and say Hello there too.

The photos in my header are some flowers from my garden. Isn't it great what you can do with them?

Greedy Bullies

I have been having very anxious days recently. I am worried. I am very worried about my chickens.

In over forty years I have never had full size hens, I have always had bantam hens. Bantam hens are like miniature full size hens.

This year I had two lots of chickens, one bantam and the others will turn into full size hens. When the youngest chickens were five weeks old we placed the two lots of chickens together. The younger ones were as big if not bigger than the older ones.

Instantly they met the younger chicks started to bully the older chicks. I was flabbergasted. In my life I like everyone to get along. All the creatures in my yard MUST get on or I am unhappy.

Bantam chicks hiding in the corner
 

Two of the younger chicks, beautiful Wyandotte roosters are absolutely greedy bullies. When their food is put out three times a day I give some to each group of chickens. The young roosters immediately leave their full tray of food and go to steal the food from the bantam chicks. The bantam chicks end up retreating to their cave in the nesting box and going without food.

I really don't like it.

We had to leave for a couple days and let the chicks fend for themselves. There was plenty food and water left for them. I was really worried. What would I find when I came home?

I returned to find all food and water disappeared and all bowls upturned. All chicks had their fill of fresh food and water. Those naughty Wyandottes tried all the time to dart into the inner sanctum to steal the food of the smaller chicks. Why? when they have plenty of their own?

Tonight I crept out with a torch to see where they were all sleeping. Lo and behold those bully chicks had invaded the nesting box as well. There were two camps of chicks asleep, one in each corner!

I just hope that in another week, when I creep out to check on them again one night, I will find them all cuddled up together. Then I will have a good night too!

The Power of Yellow

Chakras

Chakras are energy centres in the body. They cannot be detected by medical machinery of Western medicine. They cannot be seen by the naked eye. They cannot be felt physically. But millions of people around the world believe that our body has these energy centres.

There are seven major energy centres in the body. Everybody has them. There is no getting away with not having them even if you don't believe in them. They are just there. You need somewhere in your energetic body to send energy around your physical body just to keep it going. Just think of it as the electricity of your body.

Now, these energy centres have been attributed with the colours of the rainbow, an upside down rainbow. Seven major energy centres, seven colours of the rainbow.

The Colours of the Rainbow

At the top of the arc of a rainbow the colour is red, blending into orange, then yellow. These are the warm colours of the rainbow. Next we get into the cooler colours of the rainbow - green, blue, indigo and violet.

When these colours are attributed to the chakras you can see, in the picture below, that red is now on the bottom and violet at the top.

Here's how the colours of the rainbow are generally applied to the body. The energy centres are situated along the length of the spine but in the body along the spine. The colours on the body show the areas affected by each energy centre.

Yellow

The chakra influencing the stomach area is called the solar plexus. You have probably heard of it even if you know nothing about the chakras. Yellow influences the bile - which is yellow, the stomach, liver and the other major organs in this area.

When something is wrong with your liver or gall bladder your urine turns bright yellow.

The solar plexus is the area of the Will. You can determine to do something and be strong or you can be weak and spineless.

Today I am posting some yellow images. Taking in the energy of the colour you are low in through your eyes can help strengthen your energy centre.

Jonquils

 

Yellow rose

 

Day Lily

Chicken Merger

After having bantams hens for over forty years, this season we hatched out two lots of chicks, one set of bantams and one set of standard size chicks.

Early this week our oldest chickens reached seven weeks old. They still had their mother looking after them but she was anxious to get out into the garden as she really loved that freedom.

Each time I went into the shed to feed the chickens the young mother hen tried to escape out the door.

After a couple of days of the chicks being on their own we thought we would merge the two lots of chickens. We were worried that the younger chicks might be bullied by the older ones who were two weeks older.


Bantam chicks sheltering off the floor in the nest box


How wrong we were. As soon as we placed the younger chicks in the cage with their older cousins they started to chase the older and smaller chicks. The older chicks are bantams, that is small birds, much smaller than normal size hens.



Bantams get a short sprint into the outside pen

This is the largest of the younger chicks. She is a coloured Orpington and just huge.

Now the younger chicks rule the outside pen and will not let the smaller chicks out there. The bantam chicks have taken to spending all their time hiding in the nesting box which is up above floor level. They only come down to eat when I come into their shed.

Hopefully in a couple of weeks all the chicks will be one big happy family.

A Visit to China

China is a place to be visited. Although we have not visited the big cities like Shanghai or Beijing, we have been lucky enough to visit some other areas in the country and some smaller cities in the south east of China.

The smaller cities in China are not what we would call small but are the size of our major cities here in Australia.

We visited many temples. They are very beautiful and have such wonderful architecture.

A temple in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, China

It still feels incredible that I was standing in this temple to take this photo in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province.

Fujian Province is on the eastern coast of China. Taiwan is just across the sea from there. Fuzhou City is the capital city of Fujian Province.

We took planes, long train rides, many taxis and buses in our journey. The train rides varied from the fast train between Fuzhou City and Xiamen in a brand new fast train going at 200km an hour to a long ten hour ride in and out of the mountains. There would be a few seconds of sunlight then we were back inside a mountain again and again and again.

A train ride is certainly a way to see the countryside in China, passing through the cities, country towns and farmlands. It is a big country.

Although Fuzhou is a large city of 5 million people, it is not a place where international visitors frequent and we were the subject of many photos - like thousands.

If you get the chance to visit this wonderful place, take the opportunity. We were lucky enough to be taken there by a good friend who comes from this city and is used to travelling in the country and so we saw the real China.

We ate in the streets with the people, we bought local food from the ladies who plied their food on the buses when they stopped and we ate fish balls out of an old steaming tin can off the back of a bicycle in the city.

We visited the back alleys, had foot massages, a hair wash and cut at 5pm on a Sunday afternoon (oh, so different to home). We ate at countless restaurants from the flash and expensive to lavish meals at 10am to McDonalds - again, so different to home.

After four and a half weeks we were ready to return home with lots of good memories.

Creepy Crawlies, Slugs, Snails and Spiders

What are little boys made of?

What are little boys made of?

What are little boys made of?

 

Slugs and snails

And puppy-dogs' tails,

 

That's what little boys are made of.

What are little girls made of?

What are little girls made of?

Sugar and spice

And everything nice,

That's what little girls are made of.

^{(with thanks to Wikipedia)}

Leopard slug

 

Leopard Slugs

Slugs and snails have been plentiful in my gardens over the years. The slug pictured above is called a Leopard slug because of the markings on its body and head. I first saw these slugs when they would visit the area where my little dog was fed each night. Ruby was a black and tan Australian Terrier.

 

Ruby, our little Australian terrier

 

These slugs lived under and around Ruby's kennel in the garden.

 

Dear, difficult little Ruby is no longer with us but we still have her kennel. It was put to use recently as a little coop for some chickens and their mother. They stayed warm and cosy in there.

 

However, one evening when I was feeding the chicks I saw one of these slugs again. Oh, so you are still around, I thought.

 

After the chicks moved out to a new and larger home, I turned the kennel over and found some Leopard slugs living under it.

 

Late last night, about 11.30pm, I was on my way to bed and decided to check on the chicks as it was drizzling rain. As I went outside with my little LED torch, there were three leopard slugs heading for the new chicken shed, charging across the damp grass.

 

These slugs were about 8-10cm long (3-4in). They can reach up to 20cm (8in) in length.

 

So today the kennel was removed further down the yard. It was turned on its side and the last I saw, our two fluffy silkie hens were eyeing off all the spiders, snails and slugs on its base.

 

When I went down the yard to put the hens away this evening, all the creatures were gone from the kennel.

Free Wallpaper for your Laptop

I have just added two more photos you may like to download to use as wallpaper on your laptop. These are free.

Red Geranium

Red zonal geranium. Wallpaper for a laptop. 1920 x 1080 pixels


It is difficult to get a camera to take true red photos. Red is a very dominant colour and is the first colour the eye can see. It has the lowest frequency. Violet, on the other hand is the highest frequency.

My Dad liked these red flowers. So try it on your laptop. Here's the link. so you can download it.

 

Australian Country Road at Dusk

Here is another piece of wallpaper that you may like.

Australian country road at dusk. Wallpaper for a laptop. 1920 x 1080 pixels

Here is the link for this sunset. We were driving along the Australian country road at dusk with a car coming towards us. Follow the link to Flickr to download it.

I like taking photos from the car window. Speed does different things to the photos. This one came out looking like a pastel painting, all fuzzy. I quite liked it.

Catching up with the News

Today I thought I'd just let you know about the other blogs I write.

As a Natural Therapist, I have a great interest in health. I like to use natural methods to stay healthy or to get healthy if you are ill. This blog has seen going for quite some time and has a lot of information about health.

Just think - Sugar, Inflammation, Asthma, Arthritis, Brain health, Anxiety and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and lots more.

Let's Talk Health

Because I have been having lots of fun with my chickens lately, I thought I would write about them a bit more and show some photos of their progress, so you can see more photos.

Bantam Blog

I hope you join me on these other blogs as well.

Cheers



Moving House

It is said by those in the know that moving house is one of the most stressful times in our lives.

Well there has been a lot of moving house in our garden this springtime.

Let me start by saying that we have had two separate lots of chickens born this spring, two weeks apart. The first lot had a mother, the second lot had doting parents, an incubator for gestation and a heat lamp for warmth afterwards.

 

 

The first lot started in the garden under the hollyhock plant then moved to a recycled little cubby,  (an old dog kennel).

 

 

 

 

From here they moved into a posh new pen with upstairs and downstairs.

 

 

Just as mother hen and her young chicks were outgrowing this we had another even posher henhouse built which will withstand any gale. So they have moved yet again.

 

 

 

Our younger set of chicks started off in an incubator

 

Then lived in a large cardboard box with a red lamp in the side of it for heat.

 

When they reached about three weeks old they spent the day outside in another box, just for a change, then went back inside at night.

 

They are just about to spend their second night outside in the posh upstairs/downstairs cubby.

 

In a couple of weeks mother hen will move out from her chicks, leaving them to fend for themselves and the younger chicks will move in with the older ones.

 

 Ahh, what a busy few weeks we have had moving house!

 

Gardening in Spring

Our gardens are always at their best in spring time. All the flowers seem to enjoy the sunshine coming their way and the warmer days. My garden is awash with flowers.




Deep Orange Arctosis

There is a lovely small bunch of orange Arctosis,

Apricot/pink ball of flowers on a zonal pelargonium

another orangey/reddish beautiful Pelargonium,

 

and always my favourite rose, this beautiful Mary Rose with its lovely soft dusty pink flowers.

 

 

 

 

This is my favourite Nasturtium flower from childhood. I loved it when these flowers grew up a trellis in our garden in the spring in my Mum's garden.

 

Last year, all my Nasturtium flowers were a deep orange, almost a red. There were only 6 yellow blooms. This year they have surprised me and nearly all the flowers are yellow with only a few orange. I even saw a few apricot flowers as well.

 

When the flowers changed colours from year to year, my Mum used to always say 'It must be the bees'. End of story. I do like this rich golden yellow flower.

 

Nasturtiums seemed to be a favourite flower to adorn vintage seed packets too so they have been popular for a long time. Do you grow nasturtiums too?

The Searcher for Perfection

Perfection

Paul Keating, former Prime Minister of Australia, has always searched for perfection, whether it was in music, that is classical music, in beauty, in decoration, in the arts. He fell in love with classical music as an early teenager.

He had an ever inquisitive mind and formulated the idea that if you wanted to know something you went to the top person who had the information.

 

The Repositories of Knowledge

As a result of this search for knowledge and wisdom, he searched out older men who were the keepers of the knowledge. He calls these older men 'congealed wisdom'.

I like this idea - congealed wisdom. Older people are so important to society. Older people have learnt so much in their lives, they have learnt the morals of the society they were brought up in, they know how so many things work.

Whatever our journey in life we can all search for perfection whether it is in the way we live our life, the natural beauty around us or the flowers in the garden.

 

Queen of Flowers

The rose is considered the Queen of flowers just as the lion is considered the King of the jungle. We can search for perfection in so many places.

To find perfection we must be prepared to look, listen and learn. Without these three things throughout our life, our search for perfection will fail. This search should go on our entire life.



Each rosebud hold the possibility of the most perfect rose ever.

 

 



Tree Lace

Have you ever looked, really looked, at trees when they have lost all their leaves? I was sixteen when I came out of school one grey wintery day.

The girl's college was on one side of the road and the boy's college was on the other side of the road. The boy's college was a poshy private school and had the buildings, grounds and trees to prove it.

The trees had all lost their leaves and I saw for the first time, while waiting for the bus, the beauty of a tree without leaves. Tree lace.

Patrick White, the great Australian Author and Poet noticed it too and wrote about it in his poem 'The swan flies over the lace corals of the trees'.

John Updike, the American poet, also wrote in his poem 'January' about 'The trees’ black lace.'

Blue Lace

Recently I looked up into the winter sky again to see Blue Lace.

Blue Lace Silver Birch Tree

 

 We are used to seeing bare trees against a grey sky, but here was my lovely silver birch tree giving me a delightful display of blue lace.

Flowers on Pinterest

New-fangled Technology

Last night it was difficult to sleep so I had fun pinning photos of the flowers in my garden on Pinterest.

I'm still working out how to use all these new-fangled internet programs - there's Facebook, Twitter, Pintereset and Blogger. There are business pages on Facebook and different pages of Pinterest.

Then there is the trouble of trying to get your photos to do just what you want them to do and be the size you want them to be,

How would you find my page if you weren't me? Really, I don't know, but I suppose you could put in my name somewhere and I would pop up. Is that how it goes?

Anyway, I put lots of photos of the beautiful flowers in my back garden and a few from my front garden. The front garden still needs a lot of work and is about to get a revamp.

Lily

Here are a couple of flowers from my front garden. Can any one tell me anything about this unusual lily? I have not seen it anywhere else but in my flower garden.



An unusual lily

 

 

Rosebud

Rose buds are always a delight. This one has such a red shade yet when it opens it is a yellow rose. Ahh, the glories of nature.

 

 

Artwork

I also pinned some of my artwork to my board so you might like to see it.

 

Cheers till next time.

Managing Your Photos for Free

 

My Favourite Photo Editor

At the moment my favourite photo editor is PicMonkey. Look at the lovely way you can manage your photos.

I had fun sitting in my backyard the other day. It is filled with spring flowers. My two Silkie bantams were wandering around and came to peck some organic feed mix out of the earthenware mosaic bowl. This bowl took all my attention a while ago as I sat for hours placing the tiny pieces of brightly coloured tiles around the inside of the bowl.

This bowl sat for some time under the tap in the front garden providing a watering place for the local birds. Now it has a new use, that of a place to provide treats for my hens.

Chickens

Our young mother hen and her six chicks are in the photo on the right. Her chickens have grown considerably and have now sprouted wings. The wing feathers are the first real feather a chicken grows. They are now getting feathers on their shoulders.

The chickens have outgrown their first cage and are in a new cage bought especially for them. They live out in the garden with flowers surrounding them. They will be there for a few more weeks until they progress to their next cage.

My Garden Treasures

The central photo is from my web site. There I have more news about the poultry in my garden and all the flowers in it. My Garden Treasures

Musings of a Folk Artist

I have always loved painting ever since I was a little girl. Crafty things and children kept me occupied for many years.

Then along came Folk Art Painting and I really fell in love. Acrylics had arrived and along with them the ease and the colour and the timing.

Acrylic Folk Art Paint

Acrylic paint for folk artists was a blessing. There were plenty of beautiful colours - I'm in love with colour. The paints came in small quantities so you could afford to buy some lovely colours. Artists brushes had become cheaper - yippee! although the first brush I purchased for folk art (sable hair) cast 4 times what brushes cost today.

Time was a Premium

Above all, acrylic paints dried so quickly. Now time was very important for me. I had five children and lived on a farm forty minutes from the nearest town. You could say I was BUSY. I didn't have time to wait around for oil paints to dry or to do all the preparation for water colour painting. I needed something quick to do in my very short bursts of stolen time.

Acrylic paints and folk art were a godsend. It wasn't long before I was squeezing more and more breaks into my day to do a bit of painting. It was easy to do some base coat painting and sanding in between a bit of housework. And the beauty of it all was that the paint was all dry in half an hour and could be put away to make room for the children at the table.

However, it soon became a case of fitting in a bit of housework between the painting.

I started off doing small things

 

and gradually painted larger items.

 

We had lovely old panel doors in our farmhouse.

This is part of a panel I painted on one of the doors.

 

 

And eventually I wrote two books about Bavarian Folk Art.

 

This is part of a project from one of them.

 

 

 

The books can be found at http://www.allergiesandcfs.com/folk-art-books.html or

http://www.mygardentreasures.com.au/folk-art.html. Some more of my painting can be seen here.

Crazy Patchwork Folk Art

One of my favourite sewing pastimes is crazy patchwork. I love all the little bits of different material. different embroidery stitches and beading on it.

 

Beginner's Patchwork Design

I decided to do a patchwork design for Folk Art painting or Tole painting. This is an easy beginner's piece. When you are a beginner at painting you know some easy designs but perhaps they are not large enough to embrace your piece of work all on their own. However, if put together, they look quite stunning.

Patchwork Tray in Folk Art

Here is a design to use all those easy painting skills you have. Full details can be seen in my book
Companion to Getting Started in Bavarian Folk Art.

This book and its partner Getting Started in Bavarian Folk Art can be found at http://www.allergiesandcfs.com/folk-art-books.html or http://www.mygardentreasures.com.au/folk-art.html

Experiment in Photoshop Elements

Use Photoshop Elements to Change the Atmosphere of your Photos

I love experimenting and Photoshop Elements is a good place to do it.

Look at the bar on the right hand side. You will see Edit, Create and Share.

Underneath that you will see Full, Quick and Guided.

Underneath that you will see Effects and Content.

Underneath that you will see Artistic with a little down arrow. This is where all the exciting things are. This gives you the power to change your photos.  

For my photos today, I used Edit, Full, Effects and changed through a couple of Artistic and Sketch items.

Original photo

Change your Photos by Experimenting

 

Select the little white hand from the left hand side of the Photoshop screen.

Use it to grab the element you wish to experiment with. Grab the Chalk and Charcoal or the Halftone and pull it above your photo.

 

The photo will change after a couple of seconds. If you like the result save your photo in File, Save as. Save it as a .jpg and place it in the folder you wish to save it to.

 

If you don't like what you see and wish to try another element, just press Control/Z and you will be back to your original photo.

 

Have fun.