The Rooster is dead, Long live the Rooster!!!

Sad news as a f##king fox has taken poor Russell (our handsome Rooster) and B1 (our best layer). We have seen a fox about early in the morning up the road, but the one night Charles forgets to lock the gate and Russell decides to go for a walk past the shed and an opportune fox grabs him and at about 5 Kgs I hope he put up a good fight... Charles found a pile of feathers a few days later, so we know it was a fox and not him just running away from home chasing more hens!

Then a couple of days later B1 goes missing in the middle of the afternoon, so we have penned them up for awhile (no free ranging) till we think the fox has gone elsewhere before we let them roam again during the day.

Good news tho' as it appears that one of the new chicks is a rooster, so son of Russell will live on! we know this to be true because he's constantly humping B2 and one of his sisters.

The rooster is dead, long live the Rooster!

Name to be decided... any suggestions?

Not the Great Wall, it is Chickenopolis

Rather than build a rammed earth home and make some very costly, structural and down right ugly mistakes, we have decided to go with a chicken coup that will survive a cyclone!

200mm thick earth walls have been constructed using a mixture of 'road base,' our own clay soil and approx 5% cement. mixed together and rammed into the formwork.

In the process of ramming we discovered just how much force is generated by the average person ramming down on the 100mm square surface area. some of the moulds we placed in the formwork to create the doorways from the house to the veggie gardens has buckled, one entire section has shifted nearly 15mm to the side as the section between the two corners was added.

This learning process is OK for the chickens as they won't complain (if they do then its the pot for them anyway!!!) but we hope we learn by this experiment so that the house is much smoother and structurally sound, not that the chookhouse won't be, but you know what councils are like!

Who needs a gym when in just a couple of weeks of ramming (just like the Great Wall builders) we have developed muscles that I thought didn't exist and Charles had forgotten he had!!!

Next Project Started!

The foundations have been dug and filled with concrete for our chookhouse which we have named after Hugh Fearnley whittingstall's 'CHICKENOPOLIS'.

This will be our test for the building of the main house in Pise (or rammed earth) and will incorporate 4 vegegardens which we can rotate and allow the chooks to scratch around in at the same time.

more later! cheers!!