California - Northern

[ronott1]

Thanks for the tip on the soy beans!!! You are right... too much of any thing will change the taste of the eggs. The chickens love flax seed so perhaps they did indeed eat too much as they would pick through their food to get it. Maybe I will try again in lower dosages as the health benefits are tremendous.

Yes, a lower amount would be great for them. Flax seeds are in Worm Guard along with Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth.

Here is a very interesting article about Ovarian Cancer and Flaxseed.

http://news.aces.illinois.edu/news/flaxseed-fed-chickens-shed-light-ovarian-cancer

That is a great article! I should start eating Flax Seed meal and Chia seeds again. They are very good for Cholesterol too.

 

[ronott1]

Well since you two brought up seeds again. Anyone give their birds Chia seeds? I had some extra that I thought about throwing out to them. They are not a good sprouting seed because they get that weird gelatinous goo on the outside sort of like the flax but more so. Very interesting to me when they do that. Had me wondering how those Chia Pets worked. I never did one as a kid but I can't sprout the seed like I would other seeds so now I am all curious how those worked.

That is how I end up with a meal worm farm. Got all curious about them to see if I could do them.....

Chia Seeds would be good for them too. Probably pretty expensive though.

 

[juststruttin]

I just called Hunt and Behrens and a 50# bag of flax seed cost $32.98. Cheaper than I thought It is NOT organic tho. I think I may start feeding it to my chicks. Couldn't hurt.

 

[chiqita]

Where did you get this from?  My friend in England has never heard of this either.

Deb from English chicken Facebook birds. They talk about bit all the time. I think it is recent. There is always an uproar when someone brings it up.

 

[chiqita]

My chicken hated flax seed! They would pick the little seeds out and there would be a pile by the feeders

 

[Chickengirl1304]

Where did you get this from?  My friend in England has never heard of this either.

We give ours scraps from our restaurants

 

[salkxsj]

re home some hens they started laying this week I have two many bantums.

 

[lawatt]

I looked into importing chickens from England. Besides all the regulations, the price for quarantine is what drives the price up so high. Here are the official regulations:

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/animals/live_poultry.shtml

Laura, I'm so sorry for your bobcat losses. I hope that she moves on, after raising her young.
We have bobcats in this area. When I first had chickens here, I lost one to a bobcat and I also saw one around the yard a couple times. Now that I only range them during the day, I don't have any more losses. The dogs must scare them off or they find easier prey. I'm still finding carcasses of rabbits etc. near the coops. So some wild critter is choosing jack rabbit instead of chicken.
Those of you who want to scare them off but not shoot might consider one of those Scarecrow sprinklers.

thanks -- mine only free-range by day as well, and i've been surprised by these last two attacks, as one was in mid/late morning, and the other around 5:30pm with the sun still up and shining -- i didn't think a bobcat would be to active during the day. but i don't have dogs, so will have to cut off the supply of feathered snacks for a while, and hope she stops watching quite so closely.

a scarecrow sprinkler is a good idea, but i don't have a water spigot (nor electricity) at my coops -- maybe something to think about trying to add at some point -- but that doesn't help when they're free-ranging, unless i also got a electric fence to keep them in a particular area.

 

[lawatt]

I'm so sorry Laura. My recommendation would be to run a hot wire around your pens. She will move on once she gets shocked a couple of times. It doesn't really hurt them that bad because they usually get it with their whiskers first. Once they know it's not an easy meal, they will move on.

thanks -- also a good idea -- but would need to get electricity connected to the coops, which is a larger project than i can take on right now (beginning of semester!) and i'm not sure a hot wire would really dissuade her from attacking when they are out free-ranging -- they are already safe inside the pens.

 

[debs_flock]

Quote: Hmmm, interesting. I'll have them check it out and into it a bit. I asked them about it this morning after you posted.

Chickens of course aren't prone to HMD and the normal transmission of "mad cow" would be through brain, spinal cord, digestive track tissue, although it can be found in all tissue. Of course, their food supply has been clean after aggressive culling MANY years ago.