The Alternative Lifestyle Site

Transition Project #2: The Chook (Chicken) Project – part 1

Transition Projects are those steps we have taken to help up move to a more sustainable lifestyle. Some of them are idealogical, some of them are practical and some of them are just dreams to be acted on in the future. Here we share some of our steps with you in the hope you will become inspire to adopt and adapt some of them to suit your circumstances.

We’ve been here on our property for about two and a half years now and the very first thing we did (after lighting a fire because we were freezing!) was construct a house and yard for our fine feathered friends.

We have both Chooks (chickens) and Ducks and they give us fantastic eggs, manure and garden maintenance services as well as lots of entertainment with their antics.

You can probably tell by now that we just love them.

They spent their first week or so living in our box trailer (with a mesh cage fitted to the top) and a tarpaulin and plywood on the top. They didn’t seem to mind too much and were happy to free range all over the place during the day.

As a ‘quick’ fix we purchased a flat pack steel garden shed and set them up a weather and fox proof home. It works OK but we would prefer to provide them with first class accommodations as they provide us with such first class companionship and services.

We built them a small holding yard from timber posts, welded “dog” mesh and corrugated iron. The iron goes all the way around the bottom of the enclosure and is dug into the ground to deter foxes digging underneath and also to help keep snakes out of their pen. We have some shade-cloth over the top to provide them with some shade and protection from the elements. I’ve planted a grapevine that will eventually grow up and over the yard and give them the kind of environment that they really love.

Chooks are originally forest floor birds and prefer a good cover overhead so the grapevine will give them shade, cover and even some fallen grapes which they will adore.

Our birds are only put into this yard (so they have access to their shed) in the evenings at feeding time. We let them out in the mornings and they range freely all over the property all day long.

This has proved a fairly successful strategy as they clean up all sorts of bugs in the garden, eat fallen fruit in the orchard and dig around in the fallen leaves all winter looking for tasty morsels.

Ducks on the other hand don’t really seem to mind. What they do like though is water. Now we don’t have a dam or a pond but they will find water wherever it is – as you can see from this photo. What we have done is rescue an old bathtub from the tip (rubbish dump) and dig it into the ground just outside the chook (and duck) yard.

We have lost two ducks to foxes since we arrived here but both of those were taken during the day. No chooks were taken at all so it appears our local foxes have a preference in what type of fowl they eat! Hopefully we will prevent any further losses as we now have some gorgeous dogs who also roam around during the day and this may deter the foxes. Sure hope so.

This post is Part One of the Chook Project because we’ve now decided that we would like to upgrade the housing for these wonderful animals who share our lives and we are in the planning stages for new and improved chicken coop building and perhaps an expanded holding yard just so that they have some extra room for those times when we need to have them contained.

There will be follow up posts giving you the low down on where we are up to, so keep an eye out for updates. Everyone can take Transition Steps To Sustainable Living and we’d love to hear about some of your Transition Projects – so leave us a comment.