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

[Beekissed]

Quote:
What does it matter? If the prime goal is a healthy bird and the bird remains healthy, what does it matter was the cause of the health? See, the goal is a healthy flock/bird....those that are obviously unhealthy are not then "treated" to gain health. They either are or they are not....if not, they are eliminated from the flock. If they are, they continue to contribute to the flock. The chickens come to you all fresh and new, naturally healthy.....what you do from that point is crucial.

Do you practice good husbandry to maintain that naturally healthy state or do you allow your methods and conditions for your flock run that flock's immunities and condition down to the point that you have to add something to the mix to get them back to their original state? This whole forum is neck deep in folks who practice poor husbandry from the get go, develop a flock that is weak and compromised and then spend the rest of the time trying to "fix" what they broke.

I don't look at my flock and see a general poor conditioning going on and think, "Gee, better whip out the pumpkin seeds!" The pumpkin seeds are rather a regular regimen of just healthy care that goes along with all the other healthy care my flock gets. If ever I look out my window and see unhealthy birds in my flock, then it's much too late to apply garlic, pumpkin seeds or any other health product. If a person does do that, they will only have to continue to do that very thing....wait until the flock shows signs of poor health, treat, rejoice that they look great and are producing again...oops, there they go again...gotta get out the dewormers and meds!

The goal then is to look out that window and NEVER see a general flock problem...you can have single birds that are not as thrifty or hardy that don't respond to good methods~at which time that single bird is not allowed to live long enough to bring down the flock or the flock genetics. If you have several birds in your flock that you have been managing, then the problem lies in methods, not the birds.

If I never gave another pumpkin seed to my flock it wouldn't change them for the worse....pumpkin seeds are not the base and integral part of the program. They are just a good supplement to an already excellent regimen of care. Why do I even use them then, you might ask? Because they are there, they are good for them and even for us, they are cheap and they are a source of nutrition, just like BOSS.

If you can eat food that is healthy, why not? If you don't, that's like saying a person that is already healthy shouldn't continue to seek out healthy foods to augment that natural state of health...adding good to good can only result in good. Adding good to bad(as in bad flock health) has no guarantees of success and often has mixed results....how much good would you have to add to make something bad into something good? Who knows? On this forum I see that struggle continue time after time and no one seems to get it...start with good, stay with good, continue good and the bad never happens. Preventative is so much easier an cheaper than curative any old day...even in the human world.

 

[qball53]

It's not simple for me to grow a yard. We have the poorest soil here I've ever seen. And to make matters worse, there are too many trees to get good sunlight. We've tried 5 different types of grass in the past decade and even bought some fancy burmuda grass. We brought in lime and other minerals, and spread hay. That didn't work at all. 1 of many reasons I'm moving in a few years.

You probably already learned this but Bermuda is a wonderful grass in the right conditions. However SHADE is not the right place for Bermuda grass. It does very poorly in the shade! Saint Augustine is a popular grass here in the south. Not because it is a pretty or soft comfortable grass but because it does best in the shade. But even Saint Augustine must have some sun light to grow. You may notice many trees have some sort of shrub grown around the trunk .... those are shade loving plants. They are grown there to cover the bare soil right up under the tree where there is insufficient light to sustain the growth of grass.

 

[normanack]

I have a microscope, and I do my own fecal tests. Piperizine WILL get roundworms, and Safeguard goat wormer will get the rest. I've seen the proof in my dogs, cats, and birds under the microscope as well as in their condition.

Excellent. Thank you!

 

[normanack]

. . . .
What does it matter? If the prime goal is a healthy bird and the bird remains healthy, what does it matter was the cause of the health? See, the goal is a healthy flock/bird....those that are obviously unhealthy are not then "treated" to gain health. They either are or they are not....if not, they are eliminated from the flock. If they are, they continue to contribute to the flock. The chickens come to you all fresh and new, naturally healthy.....what you do from that point is crucial.

. . . .
I don't look at my flock and see a general poor conditioning going on and think, "Gee, better whip out the pumpkin seeds!" The pumpkin seeds are rather a regular regimen of just healthy care that goes along with all the other healthy care my flock gets.
. . . .
If you can eat food that is healthy, why not? If you don't, that's like saying a person that is already healthy shouldn't continue to seek out healthy foods to augment that natural state of health...adding good to good can only result in good. Adding good to bad(as in bad flock health) has no guarantees of success and often has mixed results....

Excellent points. You're right: it really doesn't matter. Healthy is healthy, and is all the proof, in the end, that one needs.

It's just my curiosity that wants to know if garlic (for example) has specific uses (such as killing worms) versus simply being a good food. I, and my chickens, will certainly be just fine if that curiosity doesn't find a definitive answer.

Thank you!

 

[galanie]

Well I know garlic killed the worms that were bothering us as kids and that's good enough for me LOL.

 

[Beekissed]

There are all kinds of articles and studies done on such things if one cares to look them up....Google is genius. In the end, one must realize that even science fails at finding "proof" and then one just has to take it on faith because the results are visible.

Some drugs had been in use for over 50 years before science could prove how they worked...they just knew they worked and so they would use them. How does anyone know if a natural compound works when ingested? They try it. If the results are consistent, then it's all the proof you really need.

But..again..the issue is not what you ADD to your flock that insures health. It's what you start with to begin with and continue to provide.

I'm like you..I'm a WHY person. I want to know why anything works and I rarely just take someone's word on it. I do research, I read, read, read...then I TRY it. If it doesn't yield consistent results for me, no matter what anyone says or the studies say, I'm going to take my own proof as the real proof. In real life, that is the most final proof of proof....try it and see how it goes. Give it a real try, not a simple try it once or twice and didn't really see a difference kind of try.

That's how you develop your own husbandry style and, if it yields the desired result, then it works. It may not work for everyone, everywhere, but we don't really care about that, do we? What works on your own land and for your own flock is the most important thing. Many standards of care translate across all areas of the nation and that should always be the core of any chicken husbandry, but a person who is really managing chickens instead of just keeping them usually adds their own ingredients to the mix.

 

[Beekissed]

One example of the kinds of things I provide as supplement to normal, natural methods: Layer feed~ or any feed, for that matter. For many years I've had to supply layer feed to my flock's health regimen because the forage opportunities at my place, though better than most, were just not optimal to supply a chicken's nutritional needs fully.

The place I live now is the type of place that could provide almost 100% of a chicken's nutritional needs if the chicken/flock were developed to forage for subsistence. I just raised out 50 CX on this land and the forage available is astronomical! I'd feed once in the evenings and they would come to the pen with their crops bulging with foraged food...bugs, worms, bugs and more bugs, even lizards, and the types of grasses are such as to cause an actual very active grazing-type foraging...they would look like cattle moving along, eating mouthful after mouthful of just pure greens~mostly clover but other grasses as well. My former pasture had clover but most of the other greens were the kind you'd find in a hay field...not the succulent plants that chickens prefer.

Ultimately, my goal is to develop a layer flock that produces well and maintains excellent health on primarily foraged feed...like my granny had. That's my big dream and I want to do it without ME having to provide those opportunities. It takes a certain location/area to provide that and one can also work on their own area to develop it but it all takes time to cull the animals that do not do well on that type of subsistence...but, man, wouldn't it be worth it!

 

[thedragonlady]

One example of the kinds of things I provide as supplement to normal, natural methods: Layer feed~ or any feed, for that matter. For many years I've had to supply layer feed to my flock's health regimen because the forage opportunities at my place, though better than most, were just not optimal to supply a chicken's nutritional needs fully.

The place I live now is the type of place that could provide almost 100% of a chicken's nutritional needs if the chicken/flock were developed to forage for subsistence. I just raised out 50 CX on this land and the forage available is astronomical! I'd feed once in the evenings and they would come to the pen with their crops bulging with foraged food...bugs, worms, bugs and more bugs, even lizards, and the types of grasses are such as to cause an actual very active grazing-type foraging...they would look like cattle moving along, eating mouthful after mouthful of just pure greens~mostly clover but other grasses as well. My former pasture had clover but most of the other greens were the kind you'd find in a hay field...not the succulent plants that chickens prefer.

Ultimately, my goal is to develop a layer flock that produces well and maintains excellent health on primarily foraged feed...like my granny had. That's my big dream and I want to do it without ME having to provide those opportunities. It takes a certain location/area to provide that and one can also work on their own area to develop it but it all takes time to cull the animals that do not do well on that type of subsistence...but, man, wouldn't it be worth it!

Beekissed,
I couldn't agree more. When I had my SLW LF in Georgia, they free ranged on 40 acres. They ate very little processed feed.Bugs, snakes, frogs, rats and mice a plenty, as well as most what we call weeds.. Here in S.C. I'm on 2 acres. Different ball game. Despite the fact that I sow and grow all sorts of goodies in my garden and orchard, the birds must be supplemented. They have simply exterminated their natural animal prey too.Whom ever the genius was who took animal protein out of chicken feed, obviously never kept chickens.I keep no more than 25 birds. I think if I kept 2 birds only, this place would sustain them, and I have irrigation.

 

[Kassaundra]

I have a microscope, and I do my own fecal tests. Piperizine WILL get roundworms, and Safeguard goat wormer will get the rest. I've seen the proof in my dogs, cats, and birds under the microscope as well as in their condition.

Is there a site w/ pics of what you will see under a home microscope w/ worms and w/o worms? And any information about when you do look how you tell what is an acceptable load and what requires worming?

 

[Beekissed]

I'm wondering if the fellas who are developing these heritage breed flocks are incorporating that concept into their flock's genetics and husbandry methods? Heritage..meaning those first chickens brought over on the boat and then developed into specific breed lines/types. I can guarantee that there was no formulated feed recipe fed to those flocks back then. They foraged, primarily.

In my flock I have a mix of breeds that are considered heritage breeds, though they be from hatchery stock. Then I cull from those birds to get the most hardy, best producing birds from THAT breed in my flock. I'm actually just turning that so-called inferior hatchery stock around to produce birds that have the necessary instincts and genetics to forage for their foods and thrive on natural husbandry...which are the true characteristics of heritage breeds.

The SOP describes a certain physical standard but that's as far as it goes. Where did that physical standard originate? From birds that had a deep chest for a reason or hens that had wide bottoms for a reason...not just because it looks good or proper in our eyes. All those physical standards developed from the need to survive and thrive and produce. It almost follows that 99% of the birds judged on that original SOP were because these birds~firstly~were the big producers and hardy flock members and then someone noticed that all those type birds had this or that physical characteristic. You can count on most hens with wide pelvises to be good egg producers just because they are structurally built for it...not all big bottom gals are good producers but most good producers are big bottom gals. Like me!

It seems a shame to produce birds that are SOP proper without going a bit further and using those standards to let them live the way for which those standards were developed. I'm sure that most of it is that not many of us live in ideal foraging situations and must do the best we can...but what if we MADE ideal foraging conditions by developing woodlots and pasture to promote optimal insect and herbal life? Is it worth it to work that hard? Heck, if you're retired and you have time on your hands for a hobby like breeding birds, why not spend the extra time to develop them even further? It would be cool to try!