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

[armorfirelady]

Haven't started on the fermented feed yet, I want to do it shortly. One question- it's dropping below freezing at night here, and pretty soon it will get that way in the daytime. Is the FF damp? Will it freeze out in the run?

We have had below freezing temps here but I feed the FF in a plastic bowl that I put in a heated dog bowl & its hasnt frozen at all. I just take the bowl back in to refill it before the next feeding time (I feed in the am & grab the bowl at night when I lock them up)

It also keeps the dog bowl cleaner as well

 

[Sally8]

first congratulations on the dear kills.

roosters well we all different opinions on them. what i look for in a rooster is this.

1. how is he with the flock

 2. how does he free range- find food , protect and observant 

 3. how does he mate aggressive or gentleman

 4.how much does he crow and why ( i personally don't like excessive crowing )

5. how is his structure - build

6. aggression towards others- humans included



these are some of the characteristics i look for and not in exact order. with multiple roosters there will an order of the top rooster. also rooster to hen ratio is about 10 hens to 1 rooster.

Funny, how we can change our minds. I hatched 30 chicks in May, 1 roo was culled very early for challenging me early on. I'm now left with 5 roosters. One is a very beautiful BCM and he is a perfect example of what a rooster should be. That leaves 4 EE's of which I will keep 1. One I had my eye on has become a hormone crazed boy. Stanley, who I picked very early on is extremely rough. Both are gorgeous. Blue, is perfect in coloring and stature. Kind of laid back though. A very big surprise is the last one, no name. He has always been slender and smaller and all black. In about 6 weeks time, he has become very colorful and large. Every night I stand and watch for a few min because this week end 3 are going to the freezer. I am sure that once the first 2 that I was thinking of keeping, are gone, the other will step up to the plate. If not, around here, you can't pay someone to take your EE rooster. The BCM has his own ladies. Stanley actually has 5 of his own and they go their own way (along with the colorful one)
Up to date, they've never fought. 5 roosters to 20 hens are way too many. Who knew that my success with incubating would be so good.

I don't feel that I'm an old timer or that i can give much advice. I've kept chickens off and on for over 15 years. Up until I started reading BYC, I never had any problems. Once I started reading that you could, I was trying to find all sorts of issues! It took a few weeks to put everything back into perspective and enjoy them for what they are. Chickens.

I posted and then read on the FF. We leave at 5:30 am every morning and it's already below 20 every morning. Instead of putting the FF in dishes, I use a large wooden spoon and place large spoonfuls in lots of different spots on the ground. They all get in for their breakfast and I leave what's left in dishes. It's always gone by the time they roost. Everything is frozen. Water included. Hope to get heated dog dishes this week end.

 

[thedragonlady]

Thanks for the UTI advice - she'll be outside all day today, but my mother refuses to allow her out at night while I'm here. Oh well

I grew up eating preserved food from my great grandmother, grandmother, and mother. They all (even the great-grandmothers in the last years of their lives, maybe not back in the day, nut they did switch over) used pressure canners with non-acidic foods. I agree with Bee that if the food, jars and lids are handled properly from the beginning then it shouldn't be a problem, but being a newbie canner myself, I follow my grandma's directions and use the pressure canner. Funny how there's so much conflicting information on the same subject. Bottom line: if the jar doesn't seal, or you open it up and give it a whiff and it smells off, don't eat it. Otherwise, home canned food is a pleasure all year long!
I'd take delisha up on her pm offer -- it's always good to have a real person - not just a book - to ask questions. Can't tell you how many times I called my mom, grandma and friend who cans this fall while trying to make sure I did everything right and random questions would send me running to the phone

Botulism does NOT smell. Many people die from improperly canned beans each year. I told my boys to open rthe jar, and boil it in the microwave for 3 minutes.I used to put up 100 Qt. jars of beef and chicken stew, EACH, every year for the boys' snack coming home from school.They ate me out of house and home, but never got poisoned. Better safe than sorry.

 

[chickachee]

This confuses me. Is it because today's pressure cookers are different or what? Because 10 lbs pressure for 30 min is 10 lbs for 30 min no matter what's in there. Could you explain this?
ETA: Mine are all pre-1990, in one case 1950, weighted gauge cookers/canners. All identical except the sizes.

Canners are designed to maintain heat and pressure, pressure cookers are not. I have a pressure canner that is probably about at least 40 years old. Periodically I send the gauge in for calibrating to make sure it is accurate (mine has the dial gauge). It's a good idea to replace the gasket and safety pIug every once in a while too. I also have a pressure cooker, but that (for me) is for preparing food, not canning it.

 

[Leahs Mom]

The whole heat canning - whether pressure or just boiling water - has always been frustrating to me. Not because I'm unable to do it (I used to can bushels and bushels of stuff). But because you're cooking stuff to death in the process. I kind-of got to wondering if there was any useable nutrients available after all the boiling and pressuring.

Now, this is just my thoughts....
I always liked frozen flavor much better and it finally dawned on me that it was because it tasted more like fresh...and I realized that it was because it hadn't been cooked in the process.

Then I got to thinking further...what if we came into a time in which there was no electric available to us? A war, natural disaster, etc. So I started looking for ways to preserve foods as much as possible without canning or freezing. Actually have read a good deal on how to accomplish that and the old ways of preserving items that don't require electricity to maintain (like a freezer).

I still use the freezer quite extensively, but have done a fair amount of fermentation and dehydration and some root cellaring/clamps, etc.

Now I know you can't root cellar meats, but I'm going to mention the dehydration again...just something to think about.

 

[NikkiMiChickie]

Chickachee: mine are canners. Like galanie, I've always heard cooker/canner used interchangeably.

LeahsMom: same here... All of the apocalypse talk in our society now has led me to look into food preservation methods. I'm going to check out the book mentioned earlier (putting food by) to see how I can incorporate dehydration into my gardening and my husbands hunting. And I 100% agree about the cooked to death taste. Certain veggies, like corn, are ALWAYS frozen in our house. Tastes like it's fresh out of the garden, even in January.

 

[marty8587]

there is a canning thread! Kinda fluffy too!

 

[delisha]

I finished the butchering..and the pumpkin cheesecake made a small one just for meeeeeeee. What a treat. I did not get much done in the cleaning department, but, the kitchen does sparkle. I made the homemade laundry detergent. What a saving proposition. I even used the pot to melt the flakes in the dishwasher to see if it cleaned the dishes. It sure smelled nice and fresh. I will check them all out tomorrow. This detergent is really thick, I wonder if I measured wrong. The DH is the one who graded the bar for me. Wonder if that is what makes the detergent so thick or if it is the washing soda.

 

[bruceh]

canning i love canning. i canned an employee today. he wanted to spar but he chickened out. now back to chickens.

 

[KnobbyOaks]

canning i love canning. i canned an employee today. he wanted to spar but he chickened out. now back to chickens.