First came flora, now comes fauna ;)

"Pip-Squeek" one of my baby Lavender Belgian D'Uccles

Hey Everyone,

Sadly in February, a 12 foot long Carpet Python got into our chook pen and proceeded to kill a total of nine of our hens, over the span of a few nights.  Our chook pen is usually filled with a bunch of menopausal old broilers, all of which have their own names, whom we love dearly, and are allowed to live out their "Golden Years" just being chooks. So it was really sad when during the week I found three of them on different days that had died unexpectedly during the night.  When I found the first two I thought it had just been a coincidence, and that they had died of old age, however when I found the third, I got worried.

The night after I found the third hen I took my sister down to the chook pen to show her my new rooster that my neighbours had given me.  But when we walked into the pen, with the little light on my iPhone we both pooped ourselves because hanging down from the rafters of the pen was 3 gigantic big coils, presumably part of a snake.  So we both bolted up to the house to get mum, who would know what to do.

Long story short.

We came back down, snake was gone.

Later that night (10:30pm) I was in the house and all of a sudden the chooks started squaking loudly so I race down to the pen, grabbed mum en route, to find my favourite hen being hung from the roof in the coils of a carpet python.... yeah, we weren't happy.

In the process of getting it out of the rafters and into the feed bin, we saw that the blighted had killed a total of six hens before we'd run down, mum got bitted, and the snake NEARLY got it's head chopped off with a shovel....

Once we got it in the bin, we chucked it in the ute and took it for a drive down the road to the nature reserve.  The next day dad and I fixed the chook pen up like fort knox, so now hopefully a snake/fox wont get in.

Understandably mum and I were really upset by this, so we have now proceeded to go a tad crazy, and have bought quite a few more chooks since then, including Belgian D'Uccles (Mine), Pekin Bantams (Mums), Hatched and bought roughly 22 Quail chicks, 4 Indian Runner Ducks (Mums), and 2 Buff Orpington Ducks (Mine).  Most of which come in all different colours.

While I'm on holidays I'm going to try and get a nice photo of each of the chooks, so that I can post them up on here to show you my babies, and also so that I can show my other friends.

But I guess for now, I'll just have to show you the photos that I've already got, and I'll go into detail more about each of the chooks, and their stories in other posts because this one is starting to get a bit long, and I've got to go to bed because I've been gardening all day today, and have work tomorrow.

Some of Mum's Pekin Bantams

My Blue/Gold Mottle Belgian D'Uccle pair

One of Mum's Silver Laced Wyandottes

Well, I'm off to bed, and until next time,
Happy Gardening,
Michael