Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[aoxa]

Quote:

Well said!

I know it must have taken her so long! It's wonderful that you moderators take the time to do this. Some of us truly do appreciate it.

 

[Gypsi]

You mean feeding scratch doesn't heat up the chickens? I was about to buy them some scratch to help them stay warm?

 

[WoodlandWoman]

Sometimes what works for smaller goats is not a smaller door, but a tunnel with a bend in it. Make a sharp turn in it. They can get through a small door by crawling through on their bellies, but can't make as short a turn as a chicken, because they have longer bodies. The tunnel needs to be only wide enough for the chicken to get through. If it's too wide, it allows too much extra space for making the turn. Those goats can be pretty motivated when they're trying to get to food!

 

[Mommy 2 Wee Ones]

YEA, IT'S BACK!

OT, Please continue to enlighten us with your years of wisdom!

Had an interesting experience with someone who works at the feed store where I get my layer pellets. I always ask the owner if I can collect the scraps of alfalfa that is laying on the floor. I always have a plastic grocery bag in the truck with me. I told the guy that worked there, that it was for my chickens. He told me, he did not know that chickens could eat alfalfa. Mine only get a hand full a day, but they love scratching around in it & finding the dried leaves.

Is alfalfa easy to grow, I am planning out my garden for the spring & want to add a couple of raised beds to grow some goodies for the chickens.

Al - the pic you posted with the mouth watering roasted chickens, the smaller ones looked stuffed, what was the stuffing, it looked so yummy!

 

[thebirdguy]

Quote:
Alfalfa is easy to grow... you could do a couple of beds of it easily... I would suggest that you put wire over the top of your beds.. the alfalfa will grow up through the wire but the chickens won't be able to dig up your bed.. It will last all year!! Alfalfa can use a lot of water and grows pretty fast.

 

[loanwizard]

Quote:
Thank you SO much! That is excellent sage advise. I love this thread, even though it can make me feel dumb lol!

 

[Vcomb]

Fred's Hens :

No worming, other than curcurbit seeds or black walnuts.

Could you explain how to use the black walnuts please? We've got huge walnut trees in our yards and we've never used them for anything.


And just for an added measure:
I've had chickens for quite awhile, but I don't consider myself an "Ol Timer" just yet. My grandparents had quite the array of poultry and waterfowl on their dairy farm, but it was a working farm. People did come out for tours though. My parents had broilers and the standard laying flock which I eventually took over. Got to pick out my first chicks probably close to 18-20 years ago back in the first grade and you better believe I had to help with the chores. I started setting up my own broodpens around 5th grade, started showing in college. I'm 25 now and still raising chickens.​

 

[Wynette]

Quote:
Okay, THIS has me excited - the benefits of alfalfa are fantastic, however - hay - any type - can cause crop impaction. If they eat long strands, it can ball up in the crop and won't pass through. If you search for crop surgeries on here - I can be 75% of them are due to eating hay. Though I have horses, I have never fed hay to the chickens because of this. I don't even use it in the nest boxes. BUT - grown in a frame, with welded wire over the top, the chickens could peck at the seed heads/tops as it grows through, thus eating it green/growing, and nipping just the very ends off - getting FULL benefits of the alfalfa, but not allowing it to ball up in their crop? I'll be building new pens next year (just put a barn up on our farm) for the chickens, and I am now going to strongly consider putting moveable frames in EACH run and growing alfalfa under them!

Does anyone have any pictures of having done this??

 

[WoodlandWoman]

I qualify as an old timer, as defined for this thread. I'll take a shot at describing my background with chickens and a couple of other things that are related.

I've been around chickens since the 50s and quite a few of my family members have had chickens. Some were farmers and some weren't. I didn't get my first flock as an adult until the 70s. I got into a bunch of different heritage breeds in the early 90s. I had several years where I lived in an area where I couldn't have chicken's, but that time, working 60 hours a week, made the down payment on a house and some property out in the country. When I was younger, I rented farmhouses and property.

I've sold eggs, raised chickens for meat, butchered chickens and raised batches of 50 chicks at a time. Sometimes I've had smaller flocks, sometimes larger. It just depended on what else was going on in my life at the time. I mainly have them just for my own use at the moment.

During my life, I've lived in different parts of the country, including the heat of Texas and the cold of the Upper Midwest.

I also have many decades of experience with a variety of parrots and other caged birds, as well as time spent working for a vet. I have a lot of experience with dogs and earned money early on training them. I had a small kennel and raised dogs at one point. This has effected my views on nutrition, behavior and training for chickens, also.

Honestly, I don't see how there can be one right piece of advice on a lot of chicken topics, for all people. People live in different climates, with different zoning and have chickens for different reasons. I do think this is a good thread. Bits of it were a little hostile, but it made me realize just how alienated a lot of the people raising chickens as livestock have felt during their time here.

I'd like to see all the people on the forum able to enjoy posting more. It's not really just about old timers vs the people that are new to chickens. I really see it as more about the people that are or want to raise chickens as livestock or in more of a homesteading way, needing a better way to interact on the forum. That's a very important set of people that have or want to have chickens. They can have a different perspective and way of doing things than a person that's raising just for show, as pets or in a more urban area with more restrictions on what they can do.

Maybe in the future, people could start more threads where they let people know that their interest is in chickens as livestock or for homesteading. I know some have, already.

 

[RattlesnakeRidgeWV]

Thank GOD this thread is back!
Old Timers, hit me with your best shot, I can take it.
Let your CHICKENS be CHICKENS, they are not human, and they are tougher than you know.
Life is not fair, who told you it was, they did you a great disservice.
In the natural world, truth be known, only the strong survive!

Now lets get back to solving ChICKEN problems and learning from the Old Timers.