It must be love
Costa and the team on why they can’t live without their chooks
Costa Georgiadis (host)
My chickens are like flatmates. Actually, that’s short-changing them a bit. They’re family. We all live together, except they have a room out the back. They’re perfect housemates because they are predictable with their needs but unpredictable with their excitement levels and tooling around on a day-to-day basis.
It’s easy to say how valuable my chooks are as converters of food scraps and weeds into manure for soil building and garden growing. And the eggs are a bonus. But the real deal is their companionship. You get to know them and their individual ways. They’re excited to see me, and once they’ve eaten, they follow me around, even when I’m gardening out on my nature strip.
Talking to children about chickens – their anatomy, walking techniques and varieties – is the most fun, and emulating their syncopation is a joy every time I do it: scratch, scratch, peck. They are like a big master key to nature that I can use to open conversations about the wonder of the world around us.
Millie Ross (Victorian presenter)
I find it hard to imagine my garden without chickens. I brought my first girls home from primary school after an Easter hatching in the classroom. We had eagerly watched the chicks emerge, then the teacher asked if anyone would like to take them home for the holidays. My hand couldn’t have shot up more quickly! Every evening, I climbed the tree the girls chose to roost in, and relocated them to safe lodgings for the night. I was hooked!
As a gardener (and a grown-up), my enthusiasm for backyard birds is no less, and I’ve kept some in every appropriate garden. Gardening in rental properties, I built coops from furniture, made them on wheels, and even built a little hutch to fit on the back of my ute. I moved the ute-hutch around for nearly a decade, and now, with modification, it finally has a permanent home in the chook run I share with my neighbours. (See how the run came together at abc.net.au/gardening/factsheets/chook-run/9825504.) While the girls live on our shared driveway, a little gate gives them access to my own garden. The garden and the house are currently undergoing a major renovation, and the girls are all chipping in to clear the grass and prepare the soil.
I have a mixed flock of heirloom breeds (and a couple of mongrels) acquired at the local poultry club auction, and from members. Among them are Araucana, which lays blue eggs, the Italian breed Ancona, and my favourite, Barnevelder. They are friendly, medium-sized birds who lay well and are hardy in a cool climate. My oldest girl, Enid, is nearly 10 years old.
She stopped laying years ago, but I still really value her other contributions – creating nutrients, aerating soil, controlling weeds and maintaining social order!