Food

Obviously your local produce store can supply you with grain or laying mash, but your chooks will also appreciate some of your kitchen scraps.

But chooks are fussier than you night think - they love veges, and grains like left over rice.  But they are not at all keen on citrus or meat and they don't do a great job with very liquid scraps.

Here's an interesting site with info on feeding chickens using grains and store bought pellets etc.

Of course the best part of having a chook tractor is that your chooks will have plenty of green pick and bugs to eat which are their natural diet anyway.

Northside Produce

Andrew from Northside Produce supplied all our chooks and has done for years. Andrew can advise you on which chooks to buy and what to feed them.

His chooks have always been healthy and good layers - in fact one of Kim's chooks bought from Andrew is now six years old and still laying a few eggs every week.

 The store is worth a visit anytime for its array of beautiful birds, and other desperately cute produce - there are often piglets and ducklings - they even have fish and aquarium supplies.

Northside Produce is at 563 Albany Creek Road, Bridgeman Downs and you can contact them by phone on 07 3264 5100 or 0458 666 177.

Which chooks should I get?

The possibilities are endless - and really depend on what you want from your chooks.

If you want lots of eggs then Australorp or Rhode Island Reds - or a hybrid - are your best bets.

But you could also make your chook tractor into a beauty contest and try out Aruacanas (they'll give blue eggs too) or Buff Orpingtons or try looking through this chart of different breeds to see which breed suits you best.

Better eggs by a mile.

Of course the main reason to use a chook tractor is to get some great eggs.  Eggs from pastured chooks - that is chooks who eat fresh green pick and forage for bugs etc - are different in almost every way.  The colour is spectacular - bright and orange.  The whites are firm - great for poaching.  (But do let them get a bit older to boil them - boiled eggs will peel more easily the older they are.)

But best of all they are healthier - have a look at this Mother Earth News table showing the nutritional value of pastured eggs compared to conventional eggs (even conventional 'free range' eggs).

The column marked free range average is what we call pastured eggs - the conventional column includes all large scale production eggs.

So pastured eggs have less of what is bad for you - 1/3 less cholesterol and 1/4 less saturated fat.

And they have more of what is good for you - 2/3 more vitamin A, 2 times the omega-3 fatty acids, 3 time the vitamin E and 7 times the beta-carotene.

And then there's the taste!

Spaghetti Carbonara

One sure fire way to use up a surplus of eggs is to invite some friends for a dinner of spaghetti carbonara with pavlova for dessert.

I make pretty much everything in quantities for 10 -12 and this will feed at least that many.

1 kg good spaghetti
1 dozen home grown egg yolks
1 -2 cups grated parmesen cheese
about 500 ml single or double cream
800 gms bacon - chopped
1 chopped onion

Cook the spaghetti.  While it's cooking fry the bacon with the onion.  Then mix the egg yolks, cheese and cream in a bowl.

Drain the spaghetti and quickly return to the pot.  Add the bacon then pour over the egg yolk mixture and stir thoroughly.  Serve quickly with a garden salad.

Then make a very large 12 egg white pavlova and everyone will be happy!

Why use a chook tractor?

The way I see it there are 3 main advantages to using a chook tractor over a conventional chicken run.

First - it's portable - this means you can move it around your yard or paddock which takes advantage of the fertilising and digging your chooks will do for you.   It also means you can dig your next vege garden directly on ground that your chooks have already fertilised for you.  If you have a small yard you can move them out of the way for an afternoon or longer - and you can move them all over the yard so no one area gets too 'chooky'.

Second - it's clean.  Left too long in one spot a chook pen can get a bit smelly.  With one of our chook tractors you can move the whole pen to a new clean spot.  Since we have the nesting box on the outside it is also easy to clean out the nesting box once in a while and add new grass clippings or hay.

Third - it looks good.  Having a few chooks running around a chook tractor is pretty for a backyard - and with a chook tractor you don't have to let your chooks out into the rest of the garden unless you want to.  That means you can grow anything else - anywhere else - without having to worrying about your chooks making a feast of your lettuce.