I've just added four more chooks to the family menagerie in the hope of getting some actual eggs from the beasts.
I've owned chooks quite often, and given them up just as often, but the latest attempt has been ongoing for about four years, since hubby bought me a chooktractor for my birthday.
I was actually hoping for jewellery, but when I saw the chook tractor I just had to have it.
Now ... there will be those of you wondering what chooks need a tractor for, and how do they drive one when they don't have arms. Others will be slightly horrified, wondering what I'm doing to the poor chooks, that requires a tractor.
It's neither of the above. A chook tractor is just a chook-house on wheels, so you can move it about and give the chooks access to fresh grass each day, while still keeping them nicely contained and out of the neighbour's garden. And house. And kitchen.
Yes they did, and they were, and it was embarrassing
"The chook tractor is quite heavy," said the woman selling it and so it was. We could have done with a second, non-chook tractor, to lift it on to the ute.
Once home I tractored the thing into position in my overgrown should-be-vege garden and we went off to procure chooks.
That was the easy part - a local egg farm would sell me four fine feathered creatures, all I had to do was BYO cardboard carry-box, and "shell" out the cash.
The resulting four hens eventually got over the trauma of being stuffed in a tractor and driven around the vege patch enough to pop out two or three eggs a day.
Working out the cost of the housing, hen purchase and weekly feed, we reckoned those first few eggs cost us about $163 each.
My intention was to transition the hens to free-range, letting them out of their house every morning to scratch and peck, then putting them away safely at night.
Earlier attempts at free range hens had resulted in one bunch finding the cat-door and having parties in my house when I was out.
These involved eating all the cat biscuits, chasing the chihuahuas, roosting on the furniture and once I even found a chook in my shower.
I need more eggs
Those hens got given away, but the next lot found my neighbour's cat door and she was equally unimpressed when she came home to find her laundry full of chickens and her cat cowering in fear on top of the washing machine.
Ever the optimist, I had high hopes that the new batch of chooks would be more sedate and less exploratory.
The first day I let them out it was obvious these lot were not as bright as their predecessors. Well, one in particular. She must have been hiding behind the chookhouse door when tiny, chickeny brains were handed out.
When I left for work all four hens were scratching and clucking in the appropriate manner. When I came home one of them was floating in the horse trough in a very inappropriate way.
Hens can't swim. This one in particular had made a very bad job of it and hadn't survived to pass on her newly gained insight.
Now there were three.
Another managed to stand where a horse also wanted to stand. She was still there when the horse's hoof landed and ended up with a limp to remind her to get out of the way next time.
She got very limpy and sad recently so I treated her foot with all manner of purple sprays and yellow potions and she was getting about much better ... until I got up a few mornings later and she was thoroughly and ungratefully deceased.
Two chooks after that.
But only the occasional egg. After spotting some broken shells it dawned on me. One of my remaining two was laying her own breakfast. She was eating her eggs as fast as she could lay them. I decided to dispose of her and re-stock.
So I went to the local eggery and purchased four shiny new hens.
Then I didn't have the heart to dispose of my egg-eating feathered friend so I liberated her and her longtime companion into the paddock, and put the four new ones in the chook tractor.
"You four," I told the newbies, "are to stay in, as it's a dangerous world out there."
I have stuck to my guns so far and the new chooks are quite happy being chauffeured around the paddock twice a day.
The two renegades are charging about the paddock chasing dogs, scratching holes for me to trip in and pinching food out of the horses' feed bins.
I've told them I'm fine with that so long as they stay away from anything that looks like a cat door.
