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Natural Handmade Soaps

Hi, I'm Liz, welcome to Eight Acres. I live on a small farm in Kumbia, Australia, with my husband, Pete, and our dogs Taz and Gus. This website started off as a blog for sharing all the things we make and grow on our small farm. We keep a small herd of beef cattle and a few dairy cows. We also have lots of chickens, bees and a vege garden.

Now as well as sharing what I'm learning, I can share what we make through our virtual farmgate (online shop), where I sell natural handmade tallow soap and raw chemical-free honey and beeswax.

If you want to find out more about what we do on the farm and where these products come from, you can read more in my blog, follow any of my social links or send me an email, I'd love to hear from you. Please join my mailing list, then you'll never miss an update from Eight Acres.

Eight Acres - the blog — chicks

Raising baby chicks

Mar 14 2016 0 Comments Tags: chicks, tractor

This is an article of mine that was published in Grass Roots magazine this time last year. I got too busy to sent articles for a while, but I just started again, so look out for my contributions!

Over spring and summer we incubate chicken eggs and raise chicks. We fatten the roosters to eat and keep the hens to replace our older layers. Raising chicks is great fun, a lot of hard work, but worth...

Keeping bantam chickens

Nov 11 2015 0 Comments Tags: bantams, chicks

I recently came into the possession of some bantams and they are ridiculously cute. They also have a job to do.... I'm hoping they will hatch some eggs. I thought I better find out a bit more about them first though! Here's what I've learnt about bantams....

Bantams are chickens that are bred to be smaller than full sized chickens ("large fowl"). There are different breeds of bantams, some are...

Incubating chicken eggs and brooding chicks

Jan 23 2015 0 Comments Tags: brooder, chicks, incubator

We just hatched 24 chicks in our incubator! They are so cute when they first hatch.

Here's some photos of our latest hatch and a few posts explaining how and why we hatch chicks:

Incubating chicken eggs - there are lots of factors that affect hatch rate, here's how to get the best results from your incubator

Caring for baby chicks - how to set up a brooder box, feed and water for your chicks

Raisin...

Caring for young chicks

Apr 03 2013 0 Comments Tags: chickens, chicks

If you are incubating eggs and you are as successful as we were, you will end up with chicks to look after. We currently have 33 chicks in a box in our lounge room! I was recently contacted by a lady who was about to buy some chicks and didn't know what to feed them.

Incubating chicken eggs

Mar 27 2013 0 Comments Tags: chickens, chicks, eggs, incubator

In the past we have had varying success with incubating chicken eggs. This time last year I really wanted to improve our hatch rate and I did some research. What I found out was that there are lots of things that can affect the hatch rate. Here's how we changed the way we did things and increased our hatch from 5 out of 48 to 34 out of 48.

Determining the gender of young chickens: are those chicks hens or roosters?

Jun 25 2012 0 Comments Tags: chickens, chicks

It can be very difficult to tell the gender of young chicks when they are very small, but when they get to about 10 weeks I am now pretty good at telling them apart. Back in 2012 I took some photos of our chicks to help with this common problem.

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Eight Acres - the blog — chicks

Raising baby chicks

Keeping bantam chickens

Incubating chicken eggs and brooding chicks

Caring for young chicks

Incubating chicken eggs

Determining the gender of young chickens: are those chicks hens or roosters?

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