Pimp My Egg Carton

I really love my chooks or as I often refer to them, "the Divas". They are such a funny bunch of little personalities AND the bonus is, they lay me eggs. They're the easiest pets too. They don't need walking and they eat all the scraps! That said, in years gone by I've had a few little hiccups. When we moved into our new house the local peacock kept letting them out of their coop (yes we have a roaming flock of peacocks that terrorise the neighbourhood). I had to door knock many a time to track them down and then last year, a quoll killed my whole diva family. I was devastated. Since then, life in the backyard has settled. The coup has a door with a strong lock on it and that has kept both peacock and quoll at bay.

With a yard full of mainly young hens, I haven't had an egg for months so with great delight, one by one, they have started laying. In celebration of that, I've created myself some special stickers for the tops of my egg cartons.

Such a simple thing but I'm ridiculously excited by them! 

If you're interested in doing something similar I found a store on Madeit.com.au called Under The Owl Tree who makes these. For twelve large stickers it's cost me $6.60 however the more you buy the cheaper it is and you can get all different sizes.

Today I'm having a quiet day with the kids. Kai is napping and Ewan is reading books whilst I type (ahhh, bliss). Tomorrow will be another story though as I'll be back to dealing with our bomb site (otherwise known as the renovation from hell!) I hope you have a more fun weekend planned than I do!

Roosters Better Beware

Ok so this one's a bit weird but I felt like I needed to do a bit of explaining. Last post I mentioned that I had killed, plucked and butchered a couple roosters for my freezer. It's all part of my 'live more simply" thing that I'm doing.

I have chooks and every year I usually raise some chickens. Unfortunately, I only need the chickens and if any are roosters, they usually get plumped up and given away to someone that will eat them. Recently it occurred to me that it was silly to give them to someone else to eat, so I asked my father in law to teach me how to do it myself.

I don't want to do the killing myself (and I can't see this ever changing), but once they were dead, I had no problems with plucking, gutting and butchering them. This was the result, lovely, free range, no hormone chicken for my family and I to enjoy.

They look a lot different to a bought chicken which is because those chickens are a different breed that is so fat by 7 weeks old that they can barely walk. These roosters were over 6 months old and a lot leaner. Their fat and flesh is therefore a lot darker.

When chatting to others who kill their own birds, the consensus seemed to be that they aren't great roasted but better slow cooked, in risottos, soups etc. I therefore decided to chop my full chickens into "bits". Once done, they looked quite normal and very edible.

I don't feel weird about it at all which has surprised me. So far I've made chicken stock and the most magnificent chicken and corn soup. 

Well...I don't feel weird about it until I remember they once looked like this. Cuuuttttee!

What's New At My House - Hatching Chickens

Yay, after 21 sleeps my new chickens are finally here! I have one hen (Brittany) who like clockwork goes broody twice a year over the warmer months and in the last two years I've used her to hatch fertilised chook eggs into chickens.

It's been a learning curve and I'm not always terribly successful. I was only able to put six eggs under her this time and four hatched. Still, four is better than none and if I'm lucky, at least two might be hens. I'm needing more hens, I have a bit of a motley crew of "divas" at the moment and eggs are a bit few and far between.

Every few hours I rush down to the pen and do a quick head count. My heart is in my throat as I count "one, two, three and four." So far so good, they're all looking robust and they are such cute little balls of yellow fluff.

Welcome to the world little "one, two, three and four"!