Other insects that you want in your garden include:
assassin bugs
lacewings
parasitic wasps and predator wasps like paper wasps and mud daubers
many spiders
dragonflies
praying mantises
hoverflies
robber flies
lady beetles, but not the 28-spot beetle that looks like a lady beetle – they eat plants.
If you have children, be careful if you have wasps visiting. Our rule of thumb here is that if wasps start building a nest close to where we are, we carefully remove the nest. Otherwise, they stay. If you see the occasional wasp in your garden, it is nothing to worry about; it’s a healthy sign. Predatory and parasitic wasps are not aggressive (despite their name) and will only sting if you disturb their nest or attack them.
Now you know which bugs you want in your garden, how do you get them there? Flowers! The insects will come if you plant the flowers they love. Almost any flower will be suitable, but there are a group of flowers that attract beneficial insects. Those flowers include:
cosmos
daisies, including echinacea, feverfew, chrysanthemums, gerberas and chamomile
red clover
Queen Anne’s lace
carrot flowers
dill flowers
marigolds
alyssum
nasturtiums
yarrow.
Most insects need water, so put out a small container, off the ground, full of pebbles or stones so the insects can land and leave the water safely. It would be best placed in a protected area, like under a tree, or close to some herbs. That would be an excellent project for the children. It would get them involved in the garden and it could be their job to refill the water container, keep it clean and make sure there is the right amount of water and pebbles.
Gardening, particularly organic gardening, is not just planting seeds and watering; it’s more involved than that. It’s all these little things that make the difference between a garden and a productive, healthy garden. And the thing about gardening is you learn something new every year. You never know it all, but even in those first few years, it gives rewards and pleasures that will bring you back year after year.
If you’re living in a suburban or rural location you can probably keep chickens. You should give this a lot of thought first, because although chickens don’t require a lot of time, you will be responsible for them for their entire lives. That means providing safe accommodation, feeding, fresh water, and maintenance in the form of checking for lice and cleaning out the coop. In return, the chickens will give you the freshest eggs and many a laugh as you watch them go about their daily business in your backyard.
Chicken housing
Chickens need a place where they feel safe and can lay their eggs. There are a lot of predators around: dogs, foxes, feral cats, snakes and other wildlife will wander in under the shadow of darkness. Their coop should have a door that you can close, and having separate areas for times when you want to quarantine a sick or new chicken is very good. You’ll need nests, which should be in the quietest and darkest part of the hen house. One nest per five chooks is about right, but you often find that all the chickens want to lay in one or two nests. We have four nests here with twelve chickens, but we usually have at least one broody chicken taking up a nest all the time. If the nests are high off the ground, you’ll need to provide a little ladder or steps for the chooks to reach them.
Your ladies will sleep on a roost, which is basically a horizontal bar. Using dried, stripped tree branches as roosts is better than buying dowelling or other material.
Cleaning the coop
If you have a dedicated henhouse, it will need to be cleaned out at least every week, depending on the number of chickens you have. If it is rainy and the henhouse is wet, it might smell. Laying straw on the floor will help with the smell, and this straw can be placed on the compost heap after a couple of weeks. Don’t expect your coop to be sparkling clean every day – it is outside and in a natural setting where wind will blow dust in and spiders will spin webs. It does need to be fairly clean and not smelly, but it’s not your kitchen.
Buying chickens
Local regulations
Most local authorities will have a by-law about keeping chickens. We can have up to twenty chooks where we live, and the chicken coop must not touch a neighbour’s fence. We can’t keep roosters. Phone your local shire or council to ask about their regulations before you buy your chickens, or look it up online.
How old should they be?
The vast majority of chickens are hatched in spring and summer. Day-old chicks are often available for sale but when I’m getting new chooks, I usually go for point-of-lay pullets that are eighteen to twenty-two weeks old. They will start laying a couple of weeks after you buy them. Point-of-lay pullets will have been checked by a chicken sexer and grouped as either male or female, and you’ll get only hens. Day-old chicks won’t have been sex checked, and you’ll get approximately half hens and half roosters.
Pure-breed chickens
Pure-breed chickens are similar to heirloom seeds: unless we buy them, they will die out and we’ll lose more genetic diversity. Isa Browns, the small red chooks, are bred for the caged-egg industry. They’ve been bred to be good layers and often don’t go broody. Chooks have a natural rest when they are broody because they stop laying eggs and try to reproduce, even when there are no roosters around. This is when they replenish their calcium levels and set themselves up for another year of egg production.
When you buy your chickens, please give some thought to pure breeds like Orpingtons, Rhode Island Reds and Sussex – all good dual-purpose birds for meat and eggs – or lighter breeds like Wyandottes, Faverolles or Pekin bantams for eggs alone. The pure breeds and the caged poultry cost about the same, but you’ll help the gene pool survive if you choose any of the pure-breed chickens.
How many chickens should you buy?
The smallest number should be two. Solo chickens are sad birds, as they need to be part of a flock. There will be times when you have to isolate your chooks and keep them on their own, but generally chickens prefer to be with other chickens. Your chooks will know the other chooks by sight and when you introduce new chooks, the older ones will give them a hard time.
Get the number of chickens you have room for. Our twelve give us about eight eggs a day because we have a couple of older hens that lay infrequently. A little flock of three to five girls will give enough eggs for a family of four or six.
Bringing chickens home
When you bring your girls home, lock the gate on their coop and leave them to settle in. Don’t let them out to free range for at least a week – during that time they will learn that the coop is their home. When chooks know their home, they will come home to roost when the daylight starts to fade, and usually you don’t have to go looking for them.
Introducing new chooks
If you already have chickens, isolate any new birds you bring home, but put them where they can see and be seen by the other chooks. Keep them isolated for a few days. This will help them assimilate and when you let them out together, there will be less pecking. Isolating new chickens might also help you identify if the new girls are sick. If they are, take them back to the breeder.
Pecking order
Pecking each other to establish pecking order is natural behaviour for chickens. Don’t intervene unless you can see an open wound or blood. Then you’ll have to remove that chicken until she has healed. The higher up the chicken is when they go to sleep, the higher up in the pecking order they usually are. Generally your top chook will be up on the highest roost at night.
Lifespan
From my experience, a chicken’s lifespan is about ten years. Cross-breed chooks generally live for eight years. They will continue to lay eggs up until they die, but when they’re very old you will only get about one egg every few months.
We have found over th
e years that if you get a flock of about eight or ten girls, in five years you’ll have maybe six or seven left. Some chickens get sick and die, and often you don’t know why. If any of your chooks are obviously sick, isolate them – but make sure they still have good shelter and access to food and water.
Broody hens
Most pure-breed chooks and some hybrids will go broody at some point. They want to hatch eggs and become mothers, but unless you have a rooster, that will not happen. (Hens don’t need a rooster to lay eggs but they need a rooster to fertilise the eggs.) When our chickens go broody, we let them, unless they sit there for too long – over a month – and start losing weight. Generally they’ll sit for a couple of weeks in the darkest nest, hoping you don’t see them. Just put your hand in and collect the eggs every day as you normally would. If you don’t want the chook to sit on the nest, you’ll have to lock her out of the nesting area, but even then, she might find another dark place in long grass or in the hay bales and keep sitting. They do no harm sitting, so we feel it’s best to just let them sit.
Keeping chickens healthy
Food and water
Chooks must have clean water all the time. Get into the habit of giving them clean water every second day, or daily if they drink a lot. Chickens are omnivores; they eat meat, grains and vegetables. They love cheese, yoghurt, whey, sour milk and milk. If you have small chicks, they’ll need chicken starter crumbles. If you have point-of-lays they’ll need laying pellets or laying mash (a combination of grains).
Chickens rarely overeat so it’s fine for you to fill up a feed hopper (available at the produce store) and let them feed themselves when they feel like it. This will save work for you because if you buy a large hopper and fill it up with pellets or mash, you’ll only have to refill the hopper every few days.
It’s a great idea to supplement their diet with greens from the garden or kitchen scraps. Start this early as they get picky later and will stay with what they know. They need a high-protein diet to produce eggs constantly, so if you have chickens that aren’t laying, give them a boost with some day-old bread soaked in milk, or warm porridge made with milk. They will love this and the milk will boost their protein level.
If you have grain like wheat or barley, sprouting it for the chickens gives them a good nutritional boost. Simply soak the grains in water for a couple of hours in a large, flat container, or upturned bin lid, pour off the excess water and keep the container in the shade, covered with a cloth. Wet and rinse the grains every day and drain off the excess water. When the grains sprout, feed them to the chooks.
Free range
Your chickens will be healthier and will give you better eggs if you let them free range sometimes. When chooks eat grass, they will have omega-3 and -6 oils in their eggs, which is a great bonus for anyone eating the eggs.
Eggshells
Eggshells are a good natural supplement to help keep the hens’ calcium levels at a healthy level. They need that to produce eggshells. Keep the shells of the eggs you use and wash them out so they don’t smell. When you have quite a few, put them in the oven, on a medium setting, for 10 minutes to dry out. When they’re cool, put them in a blender and blitz them, or crush them inside a tea towel with your rolling pin. Store them in a jar. The crushed shell powder can be added to a small dish left in the coop so the chickens can help themselves if they need extra calcium. Keep the dish off the ground so the chickens don’t kick dirt into it.
Grit
Chickens need grit to help them digest the food they eat. As you know, chickens have no teeth, so food is passed into their system whole, partially digested by acids and enzymes in the oesophagus and then moves on to the gizzard. Grit accumulates in the gizzard and, by a grinding action, helps break down the food. If your chickens free range regularly, they will probably pick up enough grit by pecking in the backyard. If they’re kept in a henhouse, they’ll need a grit supplement. You can buy it at the produce store in the form of crushed oyster shells, which are high in calcium. Add them to the same dish you have the ground eggshells in.
Raspberry cordial
Another little thing that keeps your chooks healthy is adding some ‘real’ raspberry cordial, with at least 25 per cent real juice, or squashed frozen raspberries or jam to their water every so often. This is also a good treatment for diarrhoea in chickens and is commonly given as a tonic by bird keepers. Here are the ingredients for a homemade cordial:
2 cups crushed fresh or frozen raspberries
juice of 1 lemon
1½ cups sugar syrup
8 cups water.
Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Cool, then decant to clean plastic bottles. Store in the fridge for up to 2 months or freeze.
Add about 2 tablespoons to a bucket of water when you notice any sick-looking chooks, or when you want to boost them with a tonic.
Lice
If your chickens have lice – and it will happen from time to time – get some good-quality diatomaceous earth from the produce store or nursery and rub it all over the chooks. Make sure you rub under their wings and around their combs and wattles (the red bits on their faces). This will get rid of the lice. If you can’t catch the chooks, sprinkle diatomaceous earth in the area where they have their dust baths. They’ll roll in the dust and take on some of the diatomaceous earth as well.
Eggs
Hens start laying eggs when they’re twenty to twenty-two weeks old. You will know your ladies are maturing and getting ready to lay when their combs and wattles get larger and redder. Depending on the weather, each hen will lay about five eggs a week in the first year. It will decrease slowly after that. They will stop laying when it is very hot or very cold and when they’re moulting (replacing their feathers). When your girls first start laying, they might lay an egg with no shell or an egg with two yolks. The eggs usually start off small and get bigger as the hen matures. When the hen’s hormones have settled down, you will get single-yolk eggs with the shell intact.
Your girls will usually lay in the morning. Collect the eggs once a day. If you let the eggs stay in the nests it might encourage the hens to start pecking at them. When a hen starts eating the eggs, you have a real problem. Don’t wash the eggs, as that will remove a protective layer on the shell. If the egg is dirty, rub it with a cloth and remove as much dirt as you can. If you still need to wash it, do so – but use that egg next. Don’t let it sit in the fridge.
Eggs should be stored in the fridge, in an egg holder so they don’t roll around. There are regulations for selling eggs in most places, but eggs are excellent bartering produce. See if someone in the neighbourhood wants to barter eggs for honey or fruit.
What is compost?
Composting is an ideal activity for those of us who live simply. It reduces household waste and helps us use what we have to its fullest extent – from new, right through until it decomposes and returns to the earth. It helps us see waste in a more productive way, instead of giving it to someone else to take care of. It encourages us to look for natural products that will be compostable in a few years’ time instead of buying plastic or polyester. But most of all, I love composting because it allows me to take full responsibility for what I buy. If it comes here, I want it to stay here and not be part of the growing problem of landfill.
Compost is the end result of organic matter that breaks down and decomposes. Organic matter, in this context, is anything that was once alive: vegetable scraps, lawn clippings, newspaper and cardboard, outer leaves of vegetables, leaves, hair, straw, and so on. You can also include tea bags, tea leaves and coffee grounds.
Just about any leafy product can go into compost, but never include diseased leaves, as that will just keep that disease in your garden and spread it around. Other things to avoid including are meat, fish, bones, dairy products, citrus and onions.
How to make compost
Compost can be made on bare earth in a sheltered area of your garden. It doesn’t want too much sun or wind because it will d
ry out too quickly. If you have fussy neighbours, it might be a good idea to keep it away from their fence as well. Good compost shouldn’t smell but it might look unsightly.
There are many different ways of making compost. The purists make sure their compost heap is a certain size to ensure it heats up – that encourages decomposition and kills some weed seeds. Other people use bins that are enclosed at the top and open at the bottom. This type of composting relies on anaerobic organisms. I have found that using one of these bins to make compost generally results in a very wet mix, so it needs more brown material (such as straw and newspapers) than green material.
There are three requirements for making compost: nitrogen, carbon and aeration. Your compost will need about three parts carbon to one part nitrogen. It sounds complicated, doesn’t it? Well, it can be, but it is easy if you get your mix right.
Nitrogen is wet green vegetable waste, scraps, fruit peels, lawn clippings and old vegetables. It’s the stuff that’s still juicy or slimy – all that waste that hasn’t yet dried out. Nitrogen comes from the fresh kitchen scraps you’ll have most days. All the ingredients should be as small as possible. If you have big pieces of cabbage or pumpkin, cut them into smaller pieces with your spade.
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