Reviews by Dokdream

Terrific article! I have tree-rats. They live underground, coming up at night to eat the citrus fruit in our trees. Several eggs being incubated disappeared on successive nights. The weather was warm so I left the coop hatch open. When I closed the hatch, no more eggs disappeared. Of course the run was protected with hardware cloth, but I'm sure the vermin got in some other way! I've tried live traps and glue traps to zero avail. They ignore the live traps and run right though the glue traps. I'm going back to snap-traps in a cage with openings too small for the hens to get through. Of course, even with the greatest bait, the rats are wary. I was even thinking of a BB gun, but they move so quickly and the foliage is so dense, I doubt that I would hit any. Problem also is they look really cute and I honestly don't want to kill them. (But I have to get them to stop hanging around my girls!)

Yes, good article. Our girls have the run of the yard during the day; placed in the hutch at night. NO ARTIFICIAL LIGHT!! Still have access to the run below. I recycle the egg shells for calcium. I've discussed protocol elsewhere. I hang ears of corn for them to play "tether corn," which they like. Also homemade sourdough bread on occasion. Happy, healthy, good layers, and endlessly entertaining. My BP goes down when I spend time with our girls.

After readng the article, I'll only feed my chicks the kernels and discard the husks. Why? Because our girls have access to a nice "pasture," full of vegetative matter as it is. The addition of husks to their diet would actually be a negative, which is really my take-away from the article.