Regular readers will recall that the Bushwhacked Group of Companies has gone into the chook industry in a very big way. Yep, we have four, count them, four, young chooks. They would all have names if only they didn’t look so alike and keep on moving all the time.

For the nonce, they are referred to as The Chicky Babes.

Apart from already having noted that some experts say such ventures should be seen through a morality and a sustainability prism (yes, seriously) the journey so far has had many more twisty turny things in it than an ordinary person would expect.

Apparently we should have done considerable research before we went ripping out and buying the feathered beauties. But that would have been against the Bushwhacked Way, which is to rush at something like the proverbial bull and then do the research to find out what went wrong.

Mrs Whacked tells me it is also The Blokes’ Way. (She claims I have never read the instructions sheet ever? As if.)

Anyway, we have now done the research on this chicken raising malarkey and I can reliably inform you it is difficult. 

We have obtained two books on the subject, the most impressive being Mr Chris Graham’s hefty volume Wisdom for Hen Keepers: 500 Tips for Keeping Chickens (again, yes, seriously).

Its title alone carries the greatest surprise: that there are 500 tips to be known about chooks. 

It’s like when you see a lovely little blue wren in the garden and you wonder how on earth God packed a full set of functioning organs into such a tiny, delicate body.

Anyway, the point is that The Chicky Babes are absolutely bursting with facts and interesting tips.

Here are a couple of Mr Graham’s pearls.

Tip 48: socialise with other hen keepers. And here, I am assuming we humans are the ones to socialise, not the chooks.

Tip 21 should have come after tip 48: be realistic about capacity. Yes, one bottle of red is about right, I’d think.

Tip 297: don’t expect to make vast profits. Check. Done.

Tip 446 should also have come after the tip about socialising. It says floor laying should be discouraged.

On and on we go, until the final, 500th bit of chooky advice. Tip 500: integration with existing birds needs a gentle touch. Mrs Whacked would have some opinions on that of her own, I suspect.

In all seriousness, it’s an informative book and confirms that yet again, the Bushwhacked ability to get things all cack-handed is alive and well.

Apparently I should have known that setting up the Chicky Babes’domain was going to be expensive. I called it our procurement investment, an up-front fiscal liability designed to enhance  economic and gastronomic performance capabilities down stream … err … moving forward.

We stopped calculating how much we’d spent after a couple of weeks when I had calculated that the poor, hard-pressed Chicky Babes were going to have to lay about 5,709 dozen eggs before we recovered costs.

But that’s not the point is it? The Chicky Babes are our livestock. When they start laying they will be our lovingly raised eggs and they will be delicious on toast.

And we will continue to be guided by Tip 404: in the nastiest cases, you can actually smell trouble.

WAYNE GREGSON