To feed yogurt to chickens, just dump some in a bowl, set it on the ground, and stand back. Chickens LOVE yogurt. They peck in it then shake their heads so there will be splatters of white everywhere!
Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!
- Thread starter Beekissed
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Potatos can become green when exposed to light. THis is a mild poison. In a foods class in college, a prefessor talked about a time when his brother, another food scientist, and himslef embarked on a little experiment. Eating green potatoes. THey only got mildly sick. No biggy for an adult human. I'm sorry I can't remember the name of the chemical that makes it green. Otherwise potatos are a great food source for many types of animals.
Yogurt--I learned how to make homemade yogurt, using a starter, here on BYC. It's sweeter than the commercial types. For fun I mix with starter for the chicks as a way to interact with them and they know we bring yummy treats. Otherwise I add probiotics into their feed. Some feed companies add probiotics, others do not. Braggs Cider vinegar has many supporters based on some good scientific evidence that these good bugs promote a healthy gut. THere are recipes on here for using braggs as a starter and adding to pasturrized cider vinegar and making your own. I try to use some myself, in slaw, etc., to improve my health as well.
As for the silkies--as the crosses called things like TOp hats, showgirls, etc. Not my area of knowledge, but they sure are cute.
PS. I'm not an OT. But I've beed breeding and feeding livestock a long time and love to cook.
- May 19, 2012
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Thanks for al the information!!! It's very helpful. As far as the run goes, it's going to be roughly about 35 X 65 or 70 foot. My coop is going to be either 10 or 15 X 10 foot. I'm building it off the side of my pole barn hay shed, so space isn't going to be much of an issue.
I have 11 16week old chooks and have just installed a couple of nest boxes into thier coop. They're Black sexlinks and California Whites, so they should start laying in the next month or so( so I've been told). Thier roost is higher than the nest boxes but how do I keep them from roosting in the boxes? Also, do I need to put a couple of dummy eggs in the nest boxes to give them the right idea of what the boxes are for or will their maternal instinct guide them to lay in the boxes without any of my help?
With 11 pullets, I'd put in a third nest box if you can. You can probably get by with two when things go well, and they will probably mostly use just one or two anyway, but a third gives you more flexibility, sort of insurance. Even with yours, you might get a broody that will take up a nest. Not all broodies let other chickens lay with them, though a lot will. I've had hens that would regularly stay on a nest for up to three hours while she was laying and would not let another hen in the nest with her. I think a third nest will give you a better chance for less drama with them even if it is not used much.
Do you currently have a problem with them roosting in the nest boxes or are you just anticipating a possible problem? If you are currently having a problem, what is going on? How much roost space do you have? Is it all of them or just a few? I can't tell from your post if you have a problem or are just worrying about something that might happen.
I'm a firm believer in using fake eggs. Golf balls work well for me. I've used plastic Easter eggs, filling them with sand and glueing then shut, but they eventually came open. With ping pong balls or the empty Easter eggs, they can ge scratched out of the nest easily when the hen is rearranging the nesting material. Wooden, rock, or ceramic eggs would work too. Something heavier works better for me.
I've had a fake egg get scratched out of a nest onto the floor and a hen laid an egg next to that one that hed been scratched out. When I put the fake egg back in the nest (I raised the lip on the nest to stop that) that hen wen t back to laying in the nest. There is a fair chance they will figure out what the nests are for anyway, but I firmly believe a fake egg helps give them the right message.
Do you currently have a problem with them roosting in the nest boxes or are you just anticipating a possible problem? If you are currently having a problem, what is going on? How much roost space do you have? Is it all of them or just a few? I can't tell from your post if you have a problem or are just worrying about something that might happen.
I'm a firm believer in using fake eggs. Golf balls work well for me. I've used plastic Easter eggs, filling them with sand and glueing then shut, but they eventually came open. With ping pong balls or the empty Easter eggs, they can ge scratched out of the nest easily when the hen is rearranging the nesting material. Wooden, rock, or ceramic eggs would work too. Something heavier works better for me.
I've had a fake egg get scratched out of a nest onto the floor and a hen laid an egg next to that one that hed been scratched out. When I put the fake egg back in the nest (I raised the lip on the nest to stop that) that hen wen t back to laying in the nest. There is a fair chance they will figure out what the nests are for anyway, but I firmly believe a fake egg helps give them the right message.
Hey folks,
I don't post much on this thread, but I do lurl and glean info.
I was reading a copy of "The Poultry Tribune" from 1896 and ran across this article. Thought we may all enjoy it, as it is right in line with the topic of this thread...
Advice to Beginners.
Oliver L. Dosch, The Poultry Tribune, January 1896 page 120
From the multitudinous advice heaped upon the amateur one would conclude that poultry keeping was fraught with more failures, disappointments and calamities than any other occupation in which a man could engage.
No wonder the beginner is bewildered after reading all the different methods of mating, feeding young chicks, housing, fattening, feeding for eggs, running an incubator, brooding, feeding condition powders and giving medicines. It is enough to drive many prospective breeders from the ranks when he counts up the cost of the stock, the houses with concrete floors and plastered walls, the patent drinking fountains, pre· pared foods, grit, bone cutters, clover cutters, incubators and brooders, condition powders and the thousand and one necessary and unnecessary things which our poultry writers are constantly advising us to use.
We know of one writer who describes a house, which anyone can build; with full windows and cement floors, whose own fowls are housed in empty hog pens and pens made of fence rails. Others write on the beauties of a bone cutter who never fed a pound of cut bone to their chicks in their lives. Others write voluminously on the proper method of preparing cut clover whose whole stock, of information on the subject, bas been derived from the circular of a dealer in this article. While many others give us gratuitous information on batching with an incubator and raising broilers, who never have brought off a decent hatch with one of these patent hens.
Others there are, (may the Lord forgive them,) who endeavor to instruct the public by describing the standard requirements and best methods of mating varieties, when they have never owned or bred a bird of these varieties.
If this should reach the eye of anyone who has been contemplating purchasing some pure bred fowls, but is hesitating because he has not the bank account of a Gould, we would say to such a one, forget all the fine spun theories which you have been reading, buy a few fowls, even if you have nothing better to keep them in than a large dry goods box. Make the roof watertight, shut up any cracks with plastering lath, put in a roost and a pane of glass in the south side, and you have a house sufficiently good to keep the finest bird which ever wore a red card. Now feed them good, sound grain; wheat, corn and oats, give them plenty of pure water to drink and some gravel for teeth. But leave the powders and medicines until you reach the more affluent stage where you have money to waste and chickens to spare. Then buy them all, try them, discard the useless things and keep the good and you will be a poorer but wiser man.
When buying fowls, buy the very best you can get. The best are poor enough to found a flock upon. Buy a few; don't try to stock the farm the first year. House them in the warm and dry store box. Hatch your chicks with the much abused old hen. Raise the young chicks much as your grandmother did. Keep them free from lice and let them run. Let them roost in the trees until cold weather if they want to, and you will have much better birds to show for it than you would have if you had yarded your young stock and had used all these “necessary” inventions.
Pamper ,our young birds and you will have a lot of delicate fowls when they grow' up, but let the young birds grow up in the natural state, as free as the birds of the air, and your flock, when fully grown, will be strong, vigorous and profitable.
We are a plain, every day fancier and believe not in raising fowls in unnatural conditions. Free range, plain food, pure water, with a warm roosting place in winter, are the four essential things in poultry raising.
Condition powders and medicines have no place on our poultry farm. We believe in the survival of the fittest. If your flock is susceptible to every change of the weather, let the weak ones die and give place to the stronger. This is nature's plan and it is hard to improve upon.
We know that this doctrine is not received with much pleasure by many, but of what use is a sickly fowl? It won't lay, you can't raise good birds from it and it is not fit to eat.
The hatchet is our specific for most of the ills of our flock. It is a sure cure and a good preventive and as such we recommend it to our brother fancier.
OLIVER L. DOSCH
I don't post much on this thread, but I do lurl and glean info.
I was reading a copy of "The Poultry Tribune" from 1896 and ran across this article. Thought we may all enjoy it, as it is right in line with the topic of this thread...
Advice to Beginners.
Oliver L. Dosch, The Poultry Tribune, January 1896 page 120
From the multitudinous advice heaped upon the amateur one would conclude that poultry keeping was fraught with more failures, disappointments and calamities than any other occupation in which a man could engage.
No wonder the beginner is bewildered after reading all the different methods of mating, feeding young chicks, housing, fattening, feeding for eggs, running an incubator, brooding, feeding condition powders and giving medicines. It is enough to drive many prospective breeders from the ranks when he counts up the cost of the stock, the houses with concrete floors and plastered walls, the patent drinking fountains, pre· pared foods, grit, bone cutters, clover cutters, incubators and brooders, condition powders and the thousand and one necessary and unnecessary things which our poultry writers are constantly advising us to use.
We know of one writer who describes a house, which anyone can build; with full windows and cement floors, whose own fowls are housed in empty hog pens and pens made of fence rails. Others write on the beauties of a bone cutter who never fed a pound of cut bone to their chicks in their lives. Others write voluminously on the proper method of preparing cut clover whose whole stock, of information on the subject, bas been derived from the circular of a dealer in this article. While many others give us gratuitous information on batching with an incubator and raising broilers, who never have brought off a decent hatch with one of these patent hens.
Others there are, (may the Lord forgive them,) who endeavor to instruct the public by describing the standard requirements and best methods of mating varieties, when they have never owned or bred a bird of these varieties.
If this should reach the eye of anyone who has been contemplating purchasing some pure bred fowls, but is hesitating because he has not the bank account of a Gould, we would say to such a one, forget all the fine spun theories which you have been reading, buy a few fowls, even if you have nothing better to keep them in than a large dry goods box. Make the roof watertight, shut up any cracks with plastering lath, put in a roost and a pane of glass in the south side, and you have a house sufficiently good to keep the finest bird which ever wore a red card. Now feed them good, sound grain; wheat, corn and oats, give them plenty of pure water to drink and some gravel for teeth. But leave the powders and medicines until you reach the more affluent stage where you have money to waste and chickens to spare. Then buy them all, try them, discard the useless things and keep the good and you will be a poorer but wiser man.
When buying fowls, buy the very best you can get. The best are poor enough to found a flock upon. Buy a few; don't try to stock the farm the first year. House them in the warm and dry store box. Hatch your chicks with the much abused old hen. Raise the young chicks much as your grandmother did. Keep them free from lice and let them run. Let them roost in the trees until cold weather if they want to, and you will have much better birds to show for it than you would have if you had yarded your young stock and had used all these “necessary” inventions.
Pamper ,our young birds and you will have a lot of delicate fowls when they grow' up, but let the young birds grow up in the natural state, as free as the birds of the air, and your flock, when fully grown, will be strong, vigorous and profitable.
We are a plain, every day fancier and believe not in raising fowls in unnatural conditions. Free range, plain food, pure water, with a warm roosting place in winter, are the four essential things in poultry raising.
Condition powders and medicines have no place on our poultry farm. We believe in the survival of the fittest. If your flock is susceptible to every change of the weather, let the weak ones die and give place to the stronger. This is nature's plan and it is hard to improve upon.
We know that this doctrine is not received with much pleasure by many, but of what use is a sickly fowl? It won't lay, you can't raise good birds from it and it is not fit to eat.
The hatchet is our specific for most of the ills of our flock. It is a sure cure and a good preventive and as such we recommend it to our brother fancier.
OLIVER L. DOSCH
Wow, thanks for that..after reading some of posts I Was starting to feel like a poor caretaker, I do very little for my chickens, other than have a strong coop,it shouldn't give you a headache to take care of chickens should it...my oagf are just thriving so far, the ones that can run faster, fly higher and stay alert, I almost hate to close the coop door at night...
Perfect timing! I had to cull one hen last night. Don't read if you don't want the details.
I'm not so proficient with the ax. I can manage a chick, didn't think I could do a strong necked hen. DH offered how they handled the hens; I said if it is over quickly. We settled on the ax. He had to walk to the sheep pens where he fells a few young trees regularly for the sheep ( he is renovating). I'm holding my hen and holding on to the advice given here: Don't try to fix everything. It was almost comical to work out the details, me holding, and not willing to get hit, but wanting the deed accomplished with the first effort. DH is very practiced with the axe, so I had to trust. Wack! And I dropped the hen in a trash can while DH covered her head.
THe whole time I'm thinking, fix problems with an axe. Thanks for helping me cope with the dreaded event. Waste not, want not; dressed and cooked.
I'm not so proficient with the ax. I can manage a chick, didn't think I could do a strong necked hen. DH offered how they handled the hens; I said if it is over quickly. We settled on the ax. He had to walk to the sheep pens where he fells a few young trees regularly for the sheep ( he is renovating). I'm holding my hen and holding on to the advice given here: Don't try to fix everything. It was almost comical to work out the details, me holding, and not willing to get hit, but wanting the deed accomplished with the first effort. DH is very practiced with the axe, so I had to trust. Wack! And I dropped the hen in a trash can while DH covered her head.
THe whole time I'm thinking, fix problems with an axe. Thanks for helping me cope with the dreaded event. Waste not, want not; dressed and cooked.
To the lady that sent me a message
Why is it my Rhode Island Reds don't look like the picture in the Bur key Catalog I found a blog from Australia that I think sums it up historically.The pictures in this great catalog paineted by Diann Jacky are perfect.
Look at the pictures of the Rhode Island Redsin this blog article even the ones who have pictures of high egg laying females do they resemble your current rhode island reds???
What happen to this old breed to loose its appearance?
It looks like their was a fork in the road and one side breed them this way and left the road of the 1930s.
Also, if you go to this blog and have a interest in History of Poultry and what they looked like in Gradmas day look at these historic pictures breeds in all the post. Many of us would never see what the glory days of Poultry once was as all the magazines are in Library's around the country. Its a shame we left our roots of what a breed should look like. Has all breeds of animals lost their identify in America to what they once looked like or is it just chickens? Do any of you have any chickens that look like the ones posted in this blog by Rob in Austrails if so would you take pictrues of these birds for us to see?
Hope you enjoy this blog I have never seen a collection of data since I have been studying poultry available to us on the Internet. bob
http://chickenhistorynow.blogspot.com/p/rhode-islands.html
Why is it my Rhode Island Reds don't look like the picture in the Bur key Catalog I found a blog from Australia that I think sums it up historically.The pictures in this great catalog paineted by Diann Jacky are perfect.
Look at the pictures of the Rhode Island Redsin this blog article even the ones who have pictures of high egg laying females do they resemble your current rhode island reds???
What happen to this old breed to loose its appearance?
It looks like their was a fork in the road and one side breed them this way and left the road of the 1930s.
Also, if you go to this blog and have a interest in History of Poultry and what they looked like in Gradmas day look at these historic pictures breeds in all the post. Many of us would never see what the glory days of Poultry once was as all the magazines are in Library's around the country. Its a shame we left our roots of what a breed should look like. Has all breeds of animals lost their identify in America to what they once looked like or is it just chickens? Do any of you have any chickens that look like the ones posted in this blog by Rob in Austrails if so would you take pictrues of these birds for us to see?
Hope you enjoy this blog I have never seen a collection of data since I have been studying poultry available to us on the Internet. bob
http://chickenhistorynow.blogspot.com/p/rhode-islands.html
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This is a high productioin 271 egg laying female back in the 1930s. Why are the high egg production female today look different then her.?Where did we go wrong?
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