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Grape vines are fine for the run. So are grapes for chickens. The seeds are not toxic for all animals. Dogs, yes. Birds, no. Plant seedless if you're worried about it. Obviously, grapes are high sugar and are treats, not the main source of food, but I'm sure that's rather obvious. You'd...

Yeah, you do the turkeys by yourself? I was thinking about that yesterday. I'm not sure I could get a turkey into a cone by myself, and I can fairly easily pick up and haul around 50+lbs. But live things squirm and flap and avoiding giant turkey claws as you're tilting them into the cone...

No flies, but I just beat them. The area where I had the cones got sunny before the area with the planting bench, and by the last chicken, I could hear the flies congregating BIG TIME on the bloody shavings. If I had taken another 20 minutes, I would have been swatting those ******** away...

I butchered 3 of my meat chickens yesterday using my new stand. It worked like a dream. Where before, I was scrambling for a place to set up, making items to use as a cone, finaggling somewhere to put the cone...set up took 15 minutes for EVERYTHING, including getting the scalding water...

Yes, that's it! Wow, the passionflower vine is gorgeous. I tried one and it was eaten so severely by caterpillars that it never came back. Looks like I need to try another plant! Ugh, so did I mention that I found a rattlesnake in my meatie coop a few weeks ago? Well, my dog was bitten by...

My hens would not let my Tombstone rose grow at all. I even surrounding the thing with a hardware cloth cage, and they would fly into cage and get stuck, just to eat the leaves. Same thing with a grape I tried. I am successfully growing a vine that they don't seem to bother it at all, but I'm...

I'm sorry to hear about your EE. Most of the chicks I've had a broody raise are meat chickens, so the long-term result didn't matter. But, I have 4 laying hens, 9-10 months old, that were broody raised with little interaction from me, and they are just flighty and sketchy as all heck. I...

My garden loppers look something like this: I sharpen them the evening before I process, and I only use these loppers for chickens. I don't want to dull them on branches and such. I place the bird in the cone, pull out and extend his/her neck and then reach out with the loppers and do the...

aviddamy, my two buffs look like yours. I don't know what color the earlobes are on mine, haven't looked that closely at them. One of my buffs is really big and fluffy, and the other is leaner and not quite as fluffy. Mine are feed store chicks, I wasn't planning on keeping them for long--I...

Oh yeah, I definitely use the chicken poop in the compost! My veggies thank me. And so do the bunnies. cyborg, love the sunflowers!

Yes, my coop I still have to clean out. Otherwise it would just be mounds and mounds of chicken dung.

Sorry about your loss. I wanted to mention that my fly problem seems to be a bit more under control. Getting RID of the flybags has helped, a new batch of fly predator has helped, and NOT CLEANING 2x a week has also helped! I haven't raked in over 2 weeks!! Instead of raking everything up...

I finished the stand, but forgot to take a picture. I'll post sometime this week. It was super easy to make the posts and only took a few minutes. I even made a side table to attach for the scalding water pot. Ugh, the feed bags. Well, I took one of those big tomato cages and anchored it...

Oh Sill, that sucks. I've had 1 or 2 'bad kills' and it really is horrible. I started using old feed bags with the corner cut out after trying a few different household containers. Still not the best killing cone. I'm building a butchering stand this weekend to hold 2 killing cones, a pot of...

chuska, a 16lb rooster! Holy moly! That's huge.

I did want to say that parasites like tapeworm wouldn't affect the whole flock. They get tapeworm from insects, and not every bug will be a carrier. The other chickens can even eat the tapeworm segments from the poo, and still won't get tapeworm that way. So yeah, it's possible to have one...

Twinklin, what is Chromie? She's adorable! Does she have puffy cheeks AND feathered feet? Also, does she have a weird double toe? My silkie/Polish mixes had strange feet.

I'm thinking of butchering my 2 buff orpingtons. They are quite mean. One goes out of her way to peck at and dominate the Cornish crosses. It's been bad--broken and bleeding tail feathers on the CX, red spots on their shoulders-- I don't let them out at the same time anymore. All the batches...

Oh that's right, I've seen the ground squirrels eating their squished comrades. Yeah, I'll definitely hardware cloth the A-frame at the bottom. I can't believe it didn't occur to me before. Now the biggest issue will be maneuvering my big self through the tiny door.

It just occurred to me that the relatively easy solution to the rodents digging under is to hardware cloth the bottom of the interior of the coop! So simple. It's an A-frame coop, only 5x6'.