There’s an old saying that if a man (or woman) doesn’t have
a pig, they need to do the work of a pig.
Well I don’t have a pig but I’ve got a lot of roosters. Those of you
with chooks - and by that I mean chooks and a rooster - will know that when
there are chickens, the law of probability is almost always in favour of most
of them being roosters. But you won’t know that for several weeks as you enjoy
and feed and nurture the cute little blighters. The day will come when you
start to realise the legs are looking particularly strong, the little ruff
around the neck starts to become more pronounced and then like young’uns
everywhere – they start little playfights with each other. Then of course the final straw is when you
hear this dreadful broken sounding screech as they start to practice their
crowing and you realise that yes: definitely roosters.
Last autumn I rescued 7 gorgeous chicks and along with their
mum, took them to my mother’s where they were safe from the predators on our
land. They did all of the above and
sure enough, out of 7 chickens? Five
roosters. And they’ve got to go. This
year I decided to put them to work as, I’m sure you will be aware when they do manage
to get into your garden, they are very efficient at a spot of rotovating. Those big rooster feet would be just right
to help dig over my garden beds.
I don’t get much time in the garden these days now I have a
“proper job” but it is still the thing I love to do the most. With limited time on my hands and determined not
to use weed killer it can be a bit frustrating not having the time to do what I
need to do. We also made this garden
straight from paddock. In hindsight I would have done my best to get rid of the
grass first as I find grass is the worst weed.
So I am dealing with big paddock weeds still such as couch grass and California
thistle and doing my best to get it all out by the roots. I reckon if I keep
going year after year in each bed I”ll get there in the end. Time to get those
pesky roosters on the job.
Now that's a particularly nice crop of weeds. With some help from a strong man we got most most of the worst of the weeds pulled out and then onto the fire. Then to finish it off, I let the roosters do the work.
We got one of the little hutches and shut 3 young
roosters in, making a run within the garden bed. They did and have been doing a great job of
cleaning up. Get that chicken tractor
going I say! Keep an eye on them though as the two black ones ganged up on the
pretty coloured one, so out he came and popped back in with the original mob.
So two lovely big black chooks, now named Roto and Vater are happily digging up
garden beds for me. I find that once
they have dug it over an eaten everything green, I can then go in and dig it
over and it is such a headstart on what was otherwise a very daunting overgrown
garden bed.
This bed has been particularly bad and I haven’t been able to properly garden in it. Once they boys got it down and have been
moved onto the next patch, I have followed on with a heavy garden fork and
getting out tons of long racemes of couch root.
Its very dry at the moment so I can do this even though it is the middle
of winter. As always, if the bed is wet, don’t work it. So here is a before and
after.
