A sad day :(

Today is a sad day at Gryphon's Landing. We've lost our rooster Rocky :(

 

RIP Rocky

You were a grand rooster and we will miss you dearly.

Babies!

A nice surprise last night - 2 baby chickens :) John saw a broken egg shell outside the nesting box and was sure there was a chick. When he lifted the hen I couldn't see a chick but he was convinced he could hear one so he lifted the hen again and a chick dropped out of her undercarriage!

This time we are removing the chicks and putting them in a box to make sure they survive and by the time we'd got a makeshift box ready another egg started to hatch and now we have two chicks - too cute!

Last night

This morning

Doh!

Two unfortunate events have occurred in the last week :(

First we lost our chick, don't know what happened it just disappeared and this led to Floss abandoning the nest :( Luckily another chicken has stepped in but we haven't had anymore hatchings yet....

Secondly, we went from this

to this

after a huge deluge of rain. 1100 litres down the drain :(

Very disappointed...

It would seem that the culprit was the middle support post which sunk into the ground! John had used the sledgehammer to put it in and it was solid but the volume of rain obviously softened the ground so much that the support post sunk.

It would seem that where the location of the dog shed is the main runoff route across the property.

Oh well, lesson learnt! It's just a shame about the tank and the water....

This is how much rain we had, it's like this all over the block...

The chicks are hatching!!

Very excited!

Our first chicks have hatched :) Floss is now the proud mother of a little yellow bundle of joy.

She has very patiently sat on her eggs and has been rewarded with a beautiful healthy chick.

We did have a mid incubation scare when Floss was pushed off the nest by another chicken and the eggs got cold but they've pushed on and come up trumps :)

Did I mention that I'm very excited!!! Can't wait to see what today brings :)

The road is complete and the chickens are sitting

The road is finally (almost) complete and the chickens have decided to make more chickens are are sitting on eggs! Unfortunately 3 out of 5 hens are sitting so egg production has gone to 5 a week if I'm lucky. At least Penelope is still contributing a duck egg a day :) If there are no chicks by next week, there will be no more sitting!

It dried out enough for Aaron to put the rocks down and now we are waiting for it to settle.

Straight after Aaron finished putting the last of the stones down it rained, and rained, and rained again. Now we're back to a quagmire :(

We've also been busy getting the fencing ready to keep the chickens in the back of the property. We have removed some fencing, put in a pedestrian gate and started to paint the posts white - just so they look pretty :)

Aaron had to dig a spoon drain in one of the paddocks to drain the water away...

 

We have also removed the yards that were in front of the shed as they were pony sized and were of no use to horses.

To celebrate I painted the door green :) 

 

I'm still deciding whether all of the doors should be green... apparently not everyone likes green :P

We're capitalising on the abundance of water by installing guttering and water tanks on the dog run shed and also the chicken house and installing automatic drinkers to service them.

 

Gotta love a man who can build stuff!

Everyone seems pretty happy :)

But it did rain again....

Now we have ducks and a pond....

We saw an advertisement in the newspaper advertising ducks, chickens, turkeys and geese for sale at a local service station (only between 10am and 11am!) and we thought we wouldn't mind some ducks to go with our chickens so off we went to see what sort of birds Mobil had to offer!

To my surprise there were lots of people all eager to purchase their choice of fowl. There were all varieties of ducks and chickens, some geese and the odd turkey all in tip top condition and the farmer was obviously a poultry man taking great pride in his stock. All the birds were well covered, had glossy feathers, were outgoing and outspoken! Not being a duck connoisseur (yet) I just chose the ones I thought were pretty - I might regret that in the long term...

Welcome Milton and Penelope :)

Now those familiar with our property might be asking where the pond came from. We commissioned Aaron who lives next door to build us a road next to the riding arena which will become the main access path to the stables which are being built at the end of the arena. Aaron started the earthworks and then it rained, and rained, and rained and now we have a pond.

BTW, it rained again....

Milton and Penelope think it is the best thing ever and I think they will be very disappointed when we drain it to continue the road making. Penelope has been popping out an egg almost everyday and I was hoping that she would sit on them but it doesn't appear as though she is going to so John bought an incubator and Alice is currently chief in charge of egg hatching. We have 17 eggs that are fertilised (Milton is quite active *blush*) and currently being nurtured. Here they are prior to being incubated (it's not all of them)

Fingers crossed that we can make more ducks from them!
The rooster now has a name! His name is Rocky as he is quite the pugilist and Buddy (the dog), Milton and I often end up on the wrong end of his temper! Can't complain though he's a very good guardian for the ladies who are now producing between 22 and 30 eggs a week. You go girls!

Here is a picture of Rocky overseeing some ladies at the beauty salon and a restaurant.

The chickens have arrived!

The chickens actually arrived over a week ago but I had my wisdom teeth out and totally underestimated the recovery required and haven't really felt like doing anything much...

Here are the last lot of before chicken photos:

John did a super job :) My friend Miranda thinks that it is Cluckingham Palace - ha ha ha

Here come the chickens!





First Eggs! Very Happy :)

We were given the chickens by John's grandfather and I think that they are Columbian Wyandotte's but I'm happy to be corrected if they're not... We have a rooster and 5 laying hens.

We are averaging 3 eggs a day at the moment so are producing ample eggs for our current needs. I am putting horse manure into the pen roughly every second day and the chickens are loving it - well they look happy to my novice chicken eye - ha ha ha

Cheers,
Trish and John