The Chook Story: Part 1

As I stated in my first Blog, one of the joys of living on a large block of rural land is that we can have chooks, and those chooks can wander all over the place, during daylight hours.

But of course, as Malcolm Fraser said "there's no such thing as a free lunch", and of course there are downsides of chook-freedom. Downsides for them. Downsides for us. Let's just discuss one in this blog.

For them:  Easy dinner for chicken-loving predators.

As you learnt from the essential reading list of your pre-school days, specifically "Henny Penny", foxes love chickens.  These introduced pests usually hunt at night, invading the hen-house to then have their fill of chicken a la rural.

The eastern quoll, an Australian native marsupial, (Dasyurus viverrinus) about as big as a small cat, also loves to dine on chickens. They can scale the chook-house fence. They can dig under it.

So after losing innumerable sets of chooks to these carnivores, we have a predator-proof night spot for our chooks. Sure, there's not much room in it.....just a roost, and a feed bowl, but so far they're still surviving nights. Rather like a chicken prison cell!

Before our construction of a chook-safe night-spot, one of our sets of chooks had an excellent strategy for surviving nights. They flew up into the mulberry tree, which grows in their large chook pen.
In the photo you can see them, roosting happily in the tree. They disdained to use the roost provided.
None of our other chooks flew anywhere.
Yes, chooks are birds with the usual bird accroutrements of beaks, feathers, wings etc. But fly like "proper" birds??  We'd never seen such behaviour before. We were intrigued and amused by their nocturnal flying.

And this lot survived predators for months, until it was decided to clip their wings. Why clip? Don't ask me. I was not the wing-clipper.!
Then, of course, you can predict the outcome.
Yes, once grounded, our  flight-deprived, beautiful brown chickens were eaten one night. All three met the same fate on the same night.  Very sad. But that's a part of nature. You have to be pragmatic in such cases.
Next set of chooks please?