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

Status
Not open for further replies.
I had a question for the OTs, but I didn't want to hijack this thread, so I posted a thread in the "managing your flock" section about an issue I am having with a chick. If some of the OTs that frequent here want to offer some input there, it would be appreciated.
 
Try it with 30 chickens, a milk cow, three sheep, two dogs and a cat....my kids called me Ace Ventura!
lol.png
When I'd sit down all the animals would settle around me and the cow would fight the dog for the spot next to me...actually would try to horn him out of the way.
roll.png
They didn't follow anyone else like that...I think animals know full well who is their guardian and protector. My boys would feed regularly but they never got any of the animals to follow them around like they do me.

Yeah..that's me, the heartless killer of my chickens when they stop laying.
smile.png
Yes I'm the food lady!! And I'm all for killing when they stop laying because then u get dinner that u KnOw where it came from. I'm not sure I can do the killing yet for food but I have toyed with the idea and since the majority of my birds are less than a year I have a little bit of time before I make that decision. But it is way healthier than store bought hormone pumped chicken. Wouldnt the world be a better place if we went back to supporting small farmers instead of putting them out of business but ok ok I won't get on that subject lol
 
I had a question for the OTs, but I didn't want to hijack this thread, so I posted a thread in the "managing your flock" section about an issue I am having with a chick. If some of the OTs that frequent here want to offer some input there, it would be appreciated.
The OP of this thread doesn't mine hijacks....
big_smile.png
I know her personally and she feels that all hijacks that relate to the central subject are not true hijacks. Ask away!
 
that hog was probably being fed by someone who made corn liquor.

Yes, that's exactly what he was making.

well before my time,

Maybe not...this was actually in the early 1980's This is deep piney woods and big thicket southeast Texas, lol. And I've no doubt some such stills are still operating even now.

i was told by an older man that used to help his uncle make corn liquor that the best way to do it and get away with it was incorporate the process with raising hogs. one of the drawbacks of makin shine was the smell. of it cooking and then what to do with mash after the distilling process. well the smell of a bunch of stinkin hogs blocked the smell

NOW you're on one of my pet peeves....
duc.gif

There's no more reason for hogs to be any nastier and stinkier than any other animal. The old putting them in a tiny board-sided cubicle to live in their own piss and droppings that stunk so bad it would gag you half a mile away is stupid and downright cruel! Hogs are VERY clean animals is given a decent facility. My hogs had yards 50' long, ranging in width from so to 40 feet, depending on how many were kept in it, a group of feeders, a sow and her litter, etc. Even my boars had each their own 40 X 50, into which the ladies visited a week or so as the mood struck them. The ground had a very slight slope, the high end was at the front, where they each had a little 3 sided roofed stall to get under, and close to the front was a shallow dug out low area their water trough was allowed to overflow into for their 'wallow'. Hogs have very sparse hair and delicate skin that sunburns and dries out and cracks easily, especially white hogs. The hogs NEED their mud wallow for not only comfort but good health and condition. The coating of mud both helps protect from sun and biting insects, as well as moistening the skin. ALL my hogs instinctively went to the far end of their yards to do their potty business, and NEVER laid down or wallowed in it, becasue they had their clean wallow for that. Yes, people that vistied were often shocked when they found they could actually reach over the fence and pat and scratch them like any oter farm animal without getting stinky. And myself and my kids entered the yards to care for them, often giving them a scratching with a stiff brush, of a good belly scratching..they'd roll over like dogs for a belly scratch! We were naturally more cautious with the boars, and most sows shortly after farrowing, but even they were easy to handle. My kids weren't allowed to enter boar pens, or those with newly farrowed sows, until they were older, teens. and even then, at times with the boars, when there was a lot of breeding activity going on, generally no one but me ever handled them, or the getting the gilts and sows into and out of the boar runs. Hogs became actually one of my favorite meat animals to raise and handle...I prefer handling them over cattle.


of fermenting mash, and when done distilling you feed whats left over to the hogs. no more evidence. the hogs were always tore up drunk. but you lived to make shine anonther day.

Utilizing the spent mash in an efficent way just makes good sense...throwing it away would be throwing away money when it could be put to good use.....ie feeding hogs, that thrived on it. There are other ways, actually more effective ways, and easier ways, to deal with the smell from the still other than trying to just cover up the odor with an even stronger odor. Most use a water and charcoal filtering system through which vapors are passed before being exhausted into open air. You could walk within 40 or 50 ft of a properly set ip and operating still and not smell it...even 'trained revenuer' noses can't awlays pick up the smell even that close...
And interestingly, I never saw his or my hogs act 'tore up drunk', or rowdy or staggering, they were just, well, happy and mellow!


and thats your lesson for the day on how to beat the man if you want to be a bootlegger lil chiruns..

...ah, now days, The Man is more concerned with mary jane farms and crack kitchens scattered throughout our forest and timberlands than corn liquour stills...and most bootleggers had/have 'children', just like anyone else..not 'chiruns'.
 
nasty?
tongue.png
a chicken will drink outa a pool of piss and love it, a chicken will scratch through manure all day, pecking through it. a chicken if given horse manure, will eat mouthfuls of it. i dare say eating oats soaked in stud urine is worse than anything else ive mentioned.

if you observe true farm raised fowl, you'd see why they are called yard buzzards.

I remember my mother would get so upset and wouldn't eat eggs or chickens at one of my aunt's place becasue they allowed their chickens free access to the open backside of their 'outhouse'!"

they are nastier than hogs if given the chance.

...done had my say about hogs....
 
For the runny poops, digestive upsets in general, human, dog or chicken, my first and most successful treatment is acidopholus...cheap in any natural supplements section in the pharmacy department or drug aisle. ALWAYS have a bottle in the fridge. I've even saved 'fading puppies' that seemed there was no saving, that didn't look like they'd make another hour, with it.
 
Actually, I'm finding itr ather amusing trying to imagine someone standing around out there with a bucket waiting for the stud horse to pee so they can run over and hold the bucket under it to catch it.
lau.gif


The first prize winner for the nastiest farm animal, hands down, btw, is a billy goat.
sickbyc.gif
 
Last edited:
Actually, I'm finding itr ather amusing trying to imagine someone standing around out there with a bucket waiting for the stud horse to pee so they can run over and hold  the bucket under it to catch it. :lau

The first prize winner for the nastiest farm animal, hands down, btw, is a billy goat. :sick


I've been on farms where the nastiest animal was the farmer. :gig
 
Thanks Bee, but it's too late now, it died last night which is exactly what I thought would happen. I'm just tacking this one up to natural selection I think. It was acting really sluggish, just standing in one place staring at the wall...not eating or drinking, and it was a lot smaller than the rest. Probably just a runt. I had it isolated just to make sure it could get all the food/water it needed, but it just stood in its water dish and did nothing. And I've already decided that I'm not going to pump money into vet visits and medications...that's not how I want to do things.

That aside, my first venture into raising chickens is going great. They're a week old today and looking awesome. The help I've found here has been invaluable.

edited for typo
 
Last edited:
I'm "heartless" like that too. So many of us are, I'm sure that's why not so much is known about curing chickens. So far I've medicated exactly one, and it didn't do any good really. And cried like a baby when my polish hen died but again I didn't do anything much to help her. Natural selection, like you say. Whatever killed her, none of the others got sick at all (she didn't have runny nose, etc.) so I chalked that one up.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom