i need to make some money!! Do any of you guys have ideas?? My chickens seem to eat my money.And lets just say that my 16 year old boy salary cannot handle it
On a different note than the others, there are numerous things you can do to decrease your expenses, too. I don't know how much you've read or know already, so here goes...
- Check with your local grocery stores for produce that is not fresh enough to be sold on their shelves, but is still plenty fresh for your chickens. Virtually all of this at most stores go in the dumpster, so they may be willing to give it away for free. I've heard of several stores in my old neighborhood that had designated nights that they would "put cases out for disposal" in a convenient place for the homeless to take it.
- Remember to feed any food scraps to your flock after your family meals. My one-year-old daughter always leaves a mess on the floor and her highchair tray, so I just gather up all the scraps and toss them outside. They will darn near lick the corn on the cob clean, too. There is never an ounce of scraps going to waste in our house. Just remember to try to keep it semi-balanced. Avoid large amounts of bread products, for instance. They don't need empty carbs any more than humans do.
- The same goes for any local butcher shop. On all meat scraps, there is a certain amount of meat that is left over. You can take a little extra time to trim off this meat and feed it to your flock for extra protein content. You can feed them a certain amount of the fat as well, but don't use it heavily. If you can get enough protein, free-ranging and produce to eliminate commercial feed, you will need to supplement some fat content in to their diet, so it's good to have that available. Not knowing your situation, you can also use all of that and any roadkill you may find to create a
maggot bucket or
black soldier fly composter for additional live feed. Both are quite easy to do and require little to no work. You can find ample items you can reuse on Craig's List for a soldier fly composter and a simple used bucket works for the maggot bucket. ** Some claim you can have problems with limberneck caused by infested maggots, but others are claiming that the symptoms and indicators they are describing are due to wet, spoiled commercial feed and are that the situation is not possibly caused by the maggot bucket. Take that with a grain of salt and do what you want with the idea. My philosophy is that the chickens are eating anything and everything they can find in the wild, so no reason to be overprotective in my backyard. **
- You can easily start a
mealworm colony. Again, used items work great for a container to keep it all in, it doesn't smell at all, it's self-sustaining with the exception of a few potato halves every week, and it's practically free protein. I picked up a new tub of mealworms every few weeks for about two months so that I could offset the lifecycles and keep a continuous supply. I slacked on replacing the potatoes (their water source), and they have recently gone dormant, but adding more this week, I should have a nice explosion of them. It can be an interesting project for school, too.
- Keep your used egg shells, let them dry out in a bucket for about a week and crush them thoroughly. You can feed this back to them free-choice instead of purchasing crushed oyster or crushed limestone. I've been doing this with my flock and I have excellent quality egg shells.
- If your situation will allow it, use natural bedding that most people can find for free. Dead leaves work absolutely great in my coop for the bedding and I just rake up a pile once in awhile to throw in there. If you get in with the lawn work for your neighbors, for money hopefully, you can bring the various types of leaves back for your bedding. You can also add in grass clippings for extra bedding. You can utilize the
deep litter method in conjunction with this and end with a great compost by the end of the year. I haven't gotten to the point of being able to get a bunch of compost out for the garden, but I'm not quite at the one-year mark for getting chickens. I think I'm at about 9 months and most of that was in a smaller coop. My new one is designed around this method and it's working fabulous!
- Contact your local restaraunts that offer "fire roasted" items. Many cook them using seasoned woods like mesquite and such. You can often request their wood ash occasionally and you can use it for their dust baths. It works great for this and has been recommended as a complete replacement for diatomaceous earth on several occasions. In addition to the dust bath, they will supposedly eat it periodically and it helps balance the acidity of their gastrointestinal tract. In general, it appears burning wood is more environmentally friendly than composting it and definitely better than sending it to the landfill, so you can also burn any dead and dry branches that you acquire through the landscaping work everyone has mentioned.
Just a few ideas... I might use this for the article writing contest that is going on right now... Hmm, interesting thoughts...
