The circle of life ...

There are two important climate phenomena affect Australia’s weather patterns, the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). The ENSO is a recurring climate pattern involving changes in the temperature of waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (warm = El Nino, cold = La Nina) while the IOD involves sea surface temperature changes in the Indian Ocean. This year the two phenomena have been in phase with a La Nina event combining with a negative IOD to make things unpleasantly wet, windy and cold in southern Tasmania.  Despite the inclement weather, there have been some important developments on Cracroft farm over the course of spring. 

Driven primarily by the cost of purchasing a laying hen and the short time frame during which they are productive, we decided to try and hatch our own chickens. So it was that in late September we bought 12 fertile chicken eggs and an egg incubator and started the long process of raising chickens. Just before I returned from my stint in Brisbane at the end of October, 8 of the 12 eggs hatched!

Loading the incubator and marking the eggs

The chicks at about a week old

After hatching, the chicks were housed in the living room inside in a large container fitted with a heat plate to keep them warm. They survived despite the constant attention from our two apex predators, who appeared to set aside any personal animosity in the pursuit of an even greater reward.

Pepper and Gracie on a stakeout

Once the chicks were about a month old they started to get a run outside during daylight in a specially constructed chicken run. At this point one of the predators lost interest (walking on wet grass was far too much to ask of the cat) but Pepper remained absolutely enthralled.  She soon came to understand the word "chicks" and any mention of the word sends her rushing off to check on them.

The first adventures outdoors

But, of course, the temporary run quickly became far too small to contain the rapidly growing chicks and a permanent home was desperately needed. In a leap of faith that had every divorce lawyer in the district sitting up to take notice, Cath ordered a "flat pack" hen house. What followed, however, was teamwork of the highest order. After laying out the pieces of the jigsaw in something approaching the correct state, in no time at all and without a cross word exchanged we had the chicks new home assembled.

Ordered chaos

Voilá!

For a few days we persisted in having the chicks out during the day and then putting them back in the shed at night because of the cold. But as the chicks grew, so did their sense of independence and getting them from the run into their overnight crate became more and more tiresome. As we chased our feathered friends around the garden the immortal words of Farmer Tweedy in the movie Chicken Run ("No chicken escapes from Tweedie's Farm") were repeated more than once -- usually followed by gales of laughter and another escaping chick.  

 Even with Pepper's assistance - the collie breeding finally asserted itself and she has proved to be both surprisingly gentle with the chicks and also a useful herder - it all became too much.  Eventually we decided to leave them outside for the first time on what we thought was going to be a reasonably warm night. Needless to say, we got it very wrong and during the night it got very cold, with wind and rain thrown in for good measure. Come morning we were scared to look, fearing that the may have succumbed. In fact they have thrived since being left outside and their home has now been relocated to the orchard to join Maverick and Goose.

While all this excitement with the chicks was going down, Goose got broody and started to sit on about 6 eggs. Mother Nature sure asks a lot of female geese. Poor of Goose seemed to sit on these eggs for a month, seemingly completely immobile. We only saw her get up to have some water and food about twice in all this time. She seemed to lose a lot of condition and we feared a little for her. Finally, last weekend a single gosling emerged as a beautiful little ball of yellow fluff.

A little yellow gosling on mother's back

It has been fascinating watching how Maverick's behaviour has changed. During the incubation he wandered around aimlessly, seemingly uninterested. But when the gosling emerged he immediately became attentive, staying close to Goose and gently leading the little gosling around on a few exploratory missions. Both Cath and I were surprised at just how strong his paternal instincts are and how fiercely he protects the little one. Goose is still sitting on the remaining eggs but is starting to be less concerned with them now. We don't want to be too hasty, but they will have to be removed at some stage. So far the chicks and the gosling have remained at opposite ends of the orchard, but hopefully the gosling will grow up with them and take on a guardian role.

While our little collection of animals is steadily growing, so too is our productive capacity. We are waiting to get some work done to level out the area we have chosen for our veggie patch, but in the meanwhile Cath has turned the area behind the shed into a real little nursery. Yesterday we constructed a raised veggie bed out of some roof metal and timber we had lying around. It was quite good fun to whip something up with material that was already available to us and already some lettuces and spinach grown from seed have found a good home. 

A new veggie bed

The nursery

So all is well at Cracroft farm and today has been an absolute corker with bright sunshine and no wind. A great way to start the festive season ...