Recent content by backintime

If you can stomach it, ask someone over with a Labrador retriever or other bird dog. Most dog breeds will happily chase down a chicken.

I live wayyyyy up north in northern Wisconsin and keep my chicks in a refrigerator box (turned sideways, with no top - entails quite a bit of cutting and duct taping to re-design the box for use on one side!) in an unheated garage as early as April or May, when nights can get down to 30 or 40F...

I ordered the chicken forage mix from Peaceful Valley and planted it in an unused garden plot which is in shade about half the day. We just raked it into the surface and kept it watered, and we had very good germination. The instructions state that it requires irrigation, and we noticed this...

It depends entirely on what breed you are raising for meat. Many "dual purpose" birds have a strong urge to forage for their food and would happily find a large percentage of their own feed if given the chance. Cornish Cross and other "strictly meat" birds have been bred mainly for large-scale...

Over the past few years I've struggled to keep my flock cool on the really sweltering summer days. Neither meat birds nor laying hens like to get sprayed with water. This summer I tried turning the hose nozzle on "MIST" and hooked it on the fence. Voila! Most every broiler waddled in and...

Thank you both for the rapid and informative answers!

I've got 10 Gold Star layer chicks in a 4' X 8' well insulated, draft-free coop in Zone 3 (northern Wisconsin). I started the chicks late in the season. They are now 9 weeks old. I've obviously been heating the coop up to this point. Outdoor temps have been down to 20 degrees F. at night...

"What kind of wine goes with chickens?" as I drag my lawn chair into the run to have a glass of wine while holding and petting the chickens.

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Factsheets/Beef_from_Farm_to_Table/index.asp#3 Here is a link to the USDA website regarding hormones allowed in beef. Not sure which ones are growth hormones and which ones relate to controlling estrus, but maybe someone out there knows...

Quote: Furbabymum (I just LOVE that name!!!) I surely agree that many factors contribute to our size. Not the least of which is affluence which many of our parents and grandparents did not enjoy. But eating meat (or drinking milk from animals) infused with growth hormones must surely be...

I have a friend who skins all his chickens. If I didn't want the skin, I surely would do this. This past winter when I had a knee-high stack of seed catalogs sitting by my armchair, I started emailing all the seed companies to ask about GMO seeds. I was pleasantly surprised when Burpee and...

And their feet are huge! I tried to give away my adult size ski boots at my kids' grade school, and I had to go way down to like 4th grade to find someone whose foot was small enough to fit my boots! (Not to mention other body parts which are also larger. . .)

Yukonchick, you're singing my song! Taking the words right out of my mouth. I recently saw a new brand of feed at a local feed store. So I wrote an email to the Big Gain Feed Company asking if their feed contained GMO's. You won't believe the response I got. I quote: Thank you for the...

Yukonchick, I'm with you. It's a huge problem, and I can't solve it by myself. But my motto is this: I can't do everything, but I can do something. Raise a few chickens, plant a garden, make some smarter choices at the grocery store -- the only way we'll ever effect a change is to vote with...

And then the worst insult of all: They put a label on the package with a picture of a pretty little idyllic farm with rolling pastures.