Poultry

We started out as chicken farmers soon after our arrival at Mpetukop Farm and straight after I discovered that my father has extensive experience with chickens and bantams and was therefore the perfect person to get things started.

We began with a little flock of local Xhosa chickens but have battled to keep them all alive due to predators. We are now on our second chicken coop and are managing to sustain the flock much better as a result.

We recently bought a new cockerel, named Joe, who is awfully big and handsome. From the chicks that hatched at the beginning of September, we hope to see the results of his gene injection into the flock.

As well as the chickens, of which we now have around 20, we also have one little bantam cock, named Fred, who is wonderful! He was bought as half of the pair but, sadly, his partner fell prey to some marauding carnivore so he is left trying to breed with the hens while Joe’s not looking! He’s not terribly successful, although we do have one chick with fluffy feet so presumably he made it that time. We do hope to buy another female bantam in the future and will then create a bantam zone which bullies like Joe can’t access.

Waddling around the garden with all these are our seven Muscovite ducks who we all love even if they won’t go and live on the dam like normal ducks! They are laying around two to three eggs a day so, while we have no male to breed, we are getting some great food out of them!

All our birds live a free-range lifestyle and are then put in the coop at night for their own protection. We feed only yellow maize and then leftovers from the kitchen and the pigs so they have an organic diet.