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

[fowlman01]

Guess I'd like to join in here on all the fun, heard my ol' friend Al was on here, Name is Bubba or Lynn, i been raisin chickens of one kind or another and other birds about 40+ years and I still don't know it all, but I am willing to help when I can, thanks, Lynn

Cool........I didn't think Al had any friends.

Walt

 

[Beekissed]

As always, Walt, you have perfect timing... never fails to put a grin on my face!

 

[Nomibear]

Thank you, I will and I will be back from time to time, I assume that the members here are from all over so, I am from north Central Oklahoma, it is currently hotter than Haiti's at 115* here today, we have been doing all we can by watering and wetting down pens and birds every two hours here, as of yesterday we have lost 5 hens and one baby, today we lost one hen and 3 babies, it is just too stinkin hot, have had wild fires and auto related fires with in 15 miles of me, it is so dry here the ground has 1- 2 inch cracks,  Lynn

Lynn! Good to run across you in the threads
I'm so sorry about your chickens;( 115* is Way to hot. I remember the temp getting to 115* once when I was a Teen. Man, that's been a min....

 

[Erin~TheChickenLover]

Thank you, I will and I will be back from time to time, I assume that the members here are from all over so, I am from north Central Oklahoma, it is currently hotter than Haiti's at 115* here today, we have been doing all we can by watering and wetting down pens and birds every two hours here, as of yesterday we have lost 5 hens and one baby, today we lost one hen and 3 babies, it is just too stinkin hot, have had wild fires and auto related fires with in 15 miles of me, it is so dry here the ground has 1- 2 inch cracks, Lynn

Sounds like we are in a similar boat. It's been well over 100 degrees every day for a while now with 70% humidity as of today. We had a pretty bad fire that caused a near by town to have to be evacuated and another fire less than 2 miles from me that about had me packing. We got rain this morning, though.

Hopefully since the summer heat kicked in early this year we'll have an early fall. One can only hope.

 

[just me]

Sorry for the "newbie" questions, but I didn't pay a lot of attention when we had chickens on the farm....I just fed and watered them, gathered the eggs and cleaned the coop now and then. Now that I'm a little older with grown children I am trying to "set" us up for retirement (be more self sufficiant). My first thought was to get and raise some chickens, hopefully by the time DH and I retire we will have a good, healthy flock going. SO glad I found this thread. So, the newbie questioins....

1.) My chicks are now 6 weeks old, can I start feeding them calf manna now or do I need to wait until they get older?

2.) When is is NOT safe to eat a chicken you've had to cull? As in I don't intend on doing any foot surgery, and really don't want any tender foots in my flock, so if they get that "bumblefoot" thing, can you still eat them? Also, I don't intend on giving anybody warm baths to help them lay eggs, if she can't lay an egg on her own, I don't want to keep her genes in the pool, is it okay to eat a hen you've culled due to being egg bound??

Guess that's it for now, Thanks in advance for any response. As I said, I didn't pay much attention growing up, whenever mama pointed at a hen and told me to catch her for Sunday dinner, I just figured we needed the meat.....now I'm thinking she might have been selecting weak or sick birds.......

Julie
from Roxboro, NC

 

[bobbi-j]

Personally, I would not eat a chicken that is sick, or has an infection of any sort. I'm not afraid of it, I just don't find it appealing. If you butcher a chicken with bumblefoot, and the meat is off-colored or smells funny, don't eat the bird. If it ony has superficial injuries, I wouldn't have a problem with it. This is all just my opinion.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You'll find that a lot of us do things differently. I don't put additives in the feed or the water, just provide basic feed and water and let them chase grasshoppers, scratch for what they can find, and let them forage as they will. I do offer oyster shell on the side whether they need it or not and I make kitchen and garden wastes available to them they want it. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.

I found this article on Calf Manna which gives the analysis, contents, and recommended amounts to feed various anmimals. I don't feed it myself so I'm not familiar with it, but if this analysis is correct, I don't see anything wrong with feeding it as a small supplement to 6 week old chicks. The protein is high so I would not make it a major part of their diet at that age, but a little amount should not hurt at all.

http://www.ohkruse.com/PDFs/Products/Horse Section/Supplements & Blocks/CALF_MANNA.pdf

I personally don't eat sick animals, but that is just me. If you cook it well and handle it safely when butchering, there should be no bad side effects. In the wild, predators pick off sick animals and eat them all the time. They eat them raw, not cooked, and generally don't have medical problems because of it. It's just the YUK! factor that keeps me from doing it.

 

[bobbi-j]

I personally don't eat sick animals, but that is just me. If you cook it well and handle it safely when butchering, there should be no bad side effects. In the wild, predators pick off sick animals and eat them all the time. They eat them raw, not cooked, and generally don't have medical problems because of it. It's just the YUK! factor that keeps me from doing it.

Yes, exactly!

 

[galanie]

I can see not eating one with a bumblefoot infection, but I personally wouldn't have a problem eating one that is eggbound, so long as it's not been so long that a bad infection has set in. Or is that my inexperience showing?

 

[Kansas Prairie]

I'm in SW Kansas, it's been very hot and dry here again this year, many days in the triple digits, trees, plants and grass not being watered are dying or dead. This condition brings in the snakes and skunks from the fields. I pulled another skinny bull snake out of the chicken run today, it was on the ground under one of the water buckets, I'm sure it could not get up to the nipples and get water, must be moist under the bucket. Sometimes the chickens are alarmed by snakes, sometimes they ignore them. I see more snakes since we started using the nipple buckets, maybe they can't get their drink and move on as fast and that's why I see them. The chickens usually react when I pick a snake up with a pitch fork and twirl it like spaghetti noodle on a fork and the snake starts that hissy breathing thing they do.