Chook house pride

You will notice corrugated iron was used in the
construction the chook house - just not the corrugated
iron I salvaged from the school dumpster!

 Hallelujah! The chooks are finally housed. Many, many weeks after purchasing our six Isa brown pullets, Jamie has completed the construction of their new, permanent, fox proof, movable-by-tractor home. Silly me thought it would take next to no time or money to build a simple chook house. I am a child of middle class suburbia. My step-father could proudly make anything mum needed for the house or garden out of things salvaged from a Sunday morning family outing to the local tip.  Jamie, on the other hand, is the child of an architect of considerable note, and the mere suggestion that something could be "bunged up" in an afternoon out of old bits and pieces with no consideration of design or detail is repugnant to him. Of course, I knew this about Jamie, but it did not stop me enthusiastically raiding a dumpster outside the children's school, under the cover of darkness, to take possession of a number of sheets of perfectly good corrugated iron used in the construction of the new school hall (my bit to ensure minimal wastage during the Australian Government's controversial Building the Education Revolution). Jamie was not impressed and the corrugated iron was added to our pile of farmyard-junk-which-might-be-useful-one-day. And here is precisely where I take issue - Jamie is a terrible hoarder. We have so much "don't throw that out it might be useful one day" stuff taking up space I am frightened of becoming like one of those overweight Americans trapped in their own home. I would have thought that old corrugated iron, wire, star pickets, pieces of wood and pipe etc have only one possible purpose on the planet - that being to go into the construction of a wonky backyard chook-house. Left to me, I would have happily dodgied up a simple lean-to with a few sheets of rusty corrugate and a bit of twine fashioned from wheat stalks.

Angus made the stairs

But it's just as well it wasn't left to me. Despite the inordinate degree of time and frustration that went into the project, we now have a pretty clever chook house. Designed to be moved around the vineyard onto fresh, green pastures every few weeks (with the aid of the tractor), and made fox proof by securing 20cm wide chicken wire around the perimeter, (foxes will dig down but not tunnel far under), our new chook house, I must admit, is uber-cool enviro-chic, and no doubt the envy of chooks throughout the district. Features include a nifty back flap to allow for easy-cleaning of nesting boxes and collection of eggs and a cooling vent in the roof which can be closed in inclement weather.

As it turns out, Jamie's chook-house has cost us a reasonable amount of money in steel, wire and plywood. Add to that the cost of chicken feed (ironically, not "chicken-feed") and it would probably have been cheaper to buy eggs at the supermarket. However, given the appalling conditions of commercial egg laying chickens in this country, including those described as "barn laid", we think the only ethical thing to do is produce your own eggs if it is at all possible.

So, although not a financial success in the short term, our chickens are most certainly - if I remember to feed them - an ethical triumph. If all goes to plan our six brown chooks will be supplying the family with healthy, organic, cruelty free eggs by mid spring. In fact, it looks like I may have over estimated the number of chickens needed to feed a family of four, so I will be all bountiful benevolence, with baskets of fresh eggs available in the cellar door and frittatas and quiches aplenty.