Now for the perch…..

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Well, with the trout out for this year, in go the perch. We put two sizes in- fingerlings that will take this and next summer to grow to eating size, and some larger (approximately 300 grams) that will be ready during this summer. This means we won’t have to wait a full 18 months before we have any fish ready to eat. The plan now is that each spring we add more perch fingerlings and this should enable us to maintain a steady supply of fish without the need to completely harvest every 6 months.

silver perch fingerlings November 2011

300 gram silver perch 12 November 2011

We are looking forward to the perch getting bigger and eating all the string algae so it is nicer for swimming!

Swimming Pool Trout 2011

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Well, the trout season for this year is over as the water is warming up and soon the trout wouldn’t cope. We started with 50 trout (put in on May 6th as 15 gram fingerlings), and over the last month or so have been harvesting a few at a time. They ranged in weight from 450-800 grams. Our final harvest, 14 trout, weighed in between 800 grams and 1kg!!! We were very pleased with such a good result!

14 trout

The wine bottle shows the size of them, the longest being 40 cm.

New Arrivals!

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Today we bought 7 turkey poults! They are still very young (under 1 week) so are in a small cage with a 100W light globe to keep them warm. We are still building their new enclosure, but it will be ready by the time they are! It just needs to  be made fox proof, as unfortunately they do visit us from time to time, and they cause such destruction in a few moments.

turkey chicks

The chicks are doing well, even the two that were rescued as newly hatched. They were near death, so we put them in the cage with the light and were amazed to see they survived. After a few days they were strong enough to slip back to the mother hen and chicks.

 

Spring has sprung at McCarthy Park!

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We have been very lucky with the weather this year- warm enough and wet enough for everything to grow! The wheat/barley  mix we sowed in the ‘back paddock’ as a food source for the sheep has been very successful.

Nugget and Finn in the growing wheat

Also, the rabbits have had kittens, the sheep have had lambs, the chooks have had chicks and a duck is sitting on eggs!