A bitter sweet tale to end the week

We get very few visitors.  It’s not that we don’t have friends on neighbours to call it’s just so darn far for most people to come and for our neighbours they are engrossed in their own piece of paradise to be bothered with us. Imagine the excitement when someone who I don’t know came visiting.  [...]

Grave dangers of chicken keeping

Keeping chickens can be a dangerous game.  I didn’t realise how much until I experienced rooster rage this week.  I can tell you being pecked by a rooster that seems to grow bigger every day is not what you want before you’ve had your breakfast in the morning. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand [...]

The power of blogging – you simply must believe me!

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Just over an hour ago I posted a blog entry that has change the world I live in.  I don’t mean in an earthshattering way – Oh OK, I do. You simply must believe what happened – I’m an honest girl, honest! To find out the power of blogging you must read my earlier post [...]

It sucks being a chicken

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Look an egg in our chickens’ nesting box.    Ha, had you fooled eh?! I’m not fooling the chickens either.  This is one of the “pretend” eggs that we’ve put in to try and persuade them to produce something similar.  We wouldn’t want anything identical because these are made of plastic and won’t bake a cake [...]

It sucks being a chicken (part 2)

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UPDATE – UPDATE – UPDATE Around half an hour after I posted part one of this blog you’ve never heard such a commotion in the chicken run.  It made the dogs go crazy, even the dogs in the neighbours barking too.  On investigation I found George strutting around the chicken run and the hens taking [...]

Chicken spring cleaning!

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With all the rotten weather the chickens deserved a treat.  To make them feel better about the wet and cold I did chicken house spring cleaning today.  This involves a fair amount of effort to make sure all the waste is removed and the inside of the chicken house brushed out. You wouldn’t believe how [...]

Clear and crisp and freezing

A freezing blast has hit Kaitoke. It was -1 degrees on the car temperature this morning. The irony is that whilst we’re freezing here the ski fields of New Zealand are closed because the weather is not cold enough. Apparently that’s set to change this weekend with snow in the high mountains so that the [...]

Chickens take fright

A terrible thing happened this evening. The Wellington wind blew the chicken house door shut prematurely stopping our chooks from returning home to roost at dusk. By the time I got home (a little after dusk) they were huddled in the corner of the pen seeking refuge from the wind. Or I thought. As I [...]

Doing chickens is all the rave

It seems that chickens are all the rave with poms here in NZ. Here’s some pics of my friend’s chooks and their feline admirers. These belong to Nicole who arrived in NZ shortly after us and after cruising NZ for a while stayed in Whangarai where she found love (for a while at least). Now [...]

New hill billy house

Yesterday was a special day for our chickens – George, Charlotte, Anne and Bess (named after king and queens) – their exchanged their hill billy shack for a hill billy house. It arrived on the back of Al’s truck designed and prefabricated for swift installation in wind and rain. It was truly unpleasant weather to [...]