Keeping Chickens - Feeding and Maintenance

This blog is the second part of my chicken series and focuses on what to do with your chickens when you bring them home and they are safely in your coop.

It's not very complicated though - in short make sure they have food and water and clean the coop regularly.

But I do have some tips to minimise the workload and fit them into your busy life without them becoming a burden.

Keeping Chickens - The Coop

Shortly after I got married my wife made a joke one evening that we should get chickens. That weekend we had an old aviary filled with four chickens. We've now had them for almost 7 years (on our 4th group  now) and we've rarely been without chickens.

Collecting your own eggs is extremely satisfying and the golden yoke that oozes out of a freshly poached egg can not be beaten, Together with some freshly cut spinach from the veggie patch sauteed with some of our own garlic over a piece of toast is now a regular weekend breakfast. Not your average breakfast!

So I would like to share some of my learning's about keeping chickens and managing them in an efficient way so that they are relatively low maintenance.

It all starts with the coop which if set up right will make life much easier for you and make for happy chickens. This blog entry focuses on the coop itself which provides shelter and safety for them. I will do another entry that will focus on managing the chickens and a final entry might happen in a few months when we need to change them for some new ones. The reality here is that the chickens need to be killed and cleaned and I will go through that with you as well.

But for now my current lot of chickens are still laying productively so they will be spared for a bit longer.

I designed and built this chicken coop myself and while there are plenty of designs out there - some very impressive chicken palaces as well - this blog entry will focus on the logic behind some of the design features.

Bacon Explosion

Well this is one I can tick off my bucket list! A bacon explosion. After all, last week was bacon week so I felt I owed it to myself and to bacon to do something special.

I can't take credit for this concoction of brilliance as it makes an appearance on few BBQ websites and forums but as far as I can tell most credit goes to BBQ Addicts as the originators.

In short it is a bacon weave stuffed with sausage meat stuffed with crispy bacon and smoked with a BBQ sauce glaze for good measure. I know, what dreams are made of.

Surprisingly it was actually really easy to make and a lot of fun. There's plenty of recipes out there and videos on youtube showing exactly how to make this but if you want my step by step guide, read on.

Espalier Quince Tree

So you think you haven’t got enough room for fruit trees. Think again! Espaliering a tree might be your answer. I’m currently growing a very productive quince tree, but this technique could be applied to almost anything. Apples and pears will take particularly well to this style so if you got a spare section along your boundary give this a try.

This was my first attempt at an Espalier and while I would have done a few things differently if I started over, it still produces quite well and visually, looks very nice if I do say so myself.

The Pig Weekend - Capocollo and Pancetta

Well this is third and final part of the Pig Weekend series and I’ve saved the best for last. The prime cuts from the pig are saved to make capocollo using the pork collars (neck muscle) and the pork loins and the pancetta is made from the pork belly.

 

As is typical in most of these Italian traditions there are many methods in making these and everyone thinks theirs are the best. This is just the way we do it which of course is the best!

 

The Pig Weekend - Bacon Bones and Lard

In our effort to use every last bit of the pig (and my new found passion for smoking meats) we decided to try a couple new things this year.

No not together, that would be gross, but if you don't have a passion for home made goodness and pork you might find this post a little gross anyway.

We used the "good" bones for smoking and made lard with the excess trimmings.

The Pig Weekend - Making Sausages

The pig weekend is one of the food highlights of the year for me which is why I wanted this to be my first official entry. 

Every year we dedicate a weekend to making Italian sausages which we dry cure along with capocollo, pancetta and a number of other delicacies all from the pig. I will detail some of those other processes in other entries and just focus on the sausages in this one.