Living Better July

We talked a lot of chicken on Thursday night at our meet up.

We even talked some turkey too!

Unfortunately our speaker on coccidiosis had to cancel at the last minute but he will be back to us next month and he will cover more in depth about poultry health and coop cleanliness.

Above are some of the books we resourced for discussion and photo references and all are highly recommended.

We had a great discussion as one of the group is wanting to get chickens for the first time and everyone was able to have some input to the discussion whether they were new-timers or old-timers.

Our second speaker brought along a "show and tell" which got us all excited.

It's a poultry feeder that excludes other marauding wild birds.

This particular feeder holds about 4kg of feed in the tube which is slowly reduced through the bottom. His left hand is resting on the weather strip that screws on to the top of that semicircular piece at the bottom to keep out really driving rain. The construction around the feed hole means that birds like sparrows etc cannot alight or hover because their wing span cannot be accommodated.

There are a couple of mounting hooks on the back of the tube so that it can be easily mounted onto walls or fences. This would even give you flexibility to mount it so that you could fill without even entering the coop (remembering that this is weather-proof) and you can special order to have those hooks placed on the front if it would suit your purposes better that way.

It's called the "Dine-A-Chook" and is Australian made.

Here is the web site.

They also have water feeders with a nipple system too.

We were all very impressed. 

We also talked about this book that I have acquired which is especially for Australian foraging and has lots of great photos and drawings and I'm sure will be a great resource. 

We also talked knitting and we were all interested in these dish cloths/ face cloths/ duster squares that Katherine has been knitting with a yarn (100% polyester) called "Giggle". They knit up quickly as Katherine is using about a 5mm needle. She has also toyed with the idea of going bigger and fitting one to her floor sweeper.

Pat at "Hooks and Books" has a post here about giggle yarn cloths too and also a post at "Retired Two-Lula" here

Our meeting sped by in a flash and before we knew it we were 30 mins over time!

Such a great night and lots of things to learn.

Remember it's free and you can join us every month on the last Thursday of the month from 7-9.

(Only a few more says to enter the draw for the meat cookery book too.)