Consolidated Kansas

[mommahen10]

GRRR, my computer is acting up and it shut down on me twice. I'm going to try to go back through here quickly.

Chickies-duckies, it is hard to believe Dolly is closing. My dd kept texting me asking me if I heard, she's living there now. My sister is a vegetarian and she let her kids have Twinkies yesterday and took their picture just so they could have that 'life experience'. I thought that was funny coming from her. Thanks for the sprouting link, it seems like I should be able to devise something and at least use this bucket of wheat I have sitting here.

HEChicken, how would fermenting increase the protein? I mean, unless yeast are protein, I guess that makes sense but it would be by very little. I wouldn't think it would reduce the calories, I mean, the calories don't vanish into thin air, they have to so somewhere. So the sugar converts to alcohol but alcohol is high in calories, thus.... 'beer belly'. I thought the alcohol was a just what was left from the consumption of sugar and that the sugar was still there in the yeast which at this point have reproduced. It sounds like Madge may be a bit jealous of you. I got a recipe from an older lady to make balloon wine. I'm anxious to try it and it seems easier than making beer. I don't like beer really.

Danz, if Dolly is bought by another company these people are going to end up being without income for a long time. I'm curious to to see what happens to the price of breads and snacks now. I'm loving the turkeys. We planned on butchering one of them too but the problem is that he's not a 'bad boy'. These turkeys talk to me, and everyone in the house is gobbling. I don't know how we are going to do it at all, they're so nice. Last night, I heard turkeys out by the lagoon while I was hanging out laundry, that is the oppostite direction. We've never EVER seen them this close to the house. Well, I didn't see them because it was dark but still. I think the turkeys drew in the wild ones. I'm hoping that alone will be a good reason to keep them around. I'm sorry you are so sad about your brahmas. I take it they are smaller birds? Is that why the owls were so hard on them? Could you keep some less costly chickens to keep up your egg production for now? My dh as been talking getting a peacock, I think he would change his mind though if he couldn't keep them fenced. They are so pretty. I wouldn't add sugar to the fermented feed, if left long enough it would just create more alcohol. Hey, doesn't alcohol have something to do with anaerobic conditions too? We definitely need a brewing expert aruond here. This is important stuff. In my bread starter, I want to make bread when the yeast are most active, just before they start to make alcohol. I think it's doable for you to ferment feed even with so much feed but anyway you look at it you will need to have containers that are reasonable for you to lift. The thing about fermenting is that you will have all of this feed dished out and waiting. For instance, when I make tons of bread for an event I will have bread on every counter, the stove, covering my table too. It's all in the process, some of my bread rises for 36 hours so you can imagine big bowls out and big pans out. The fermenting is going to be the same way, it's just going to have to sit out somewhere. I don't think that leaving a small amount of feed in the botttom will hurt anything. The ACV is acidic, we use when canning to increase the acidity to help preserve the food. If you just refill the bucket and there is some let in the bottom and you just keep doing this it won't always be the same pieces left in the bottom. If you didn't turn around and refill the bucket that may be something to think about.

While I'm waiting for my computer to go to the next page I will update on my hatch this time. There were 21 eggs left in the incubator at the time of lockdown. Up until that point, there were probably about 15 eggs I had thrown out, most just didn't develop at all and a few started and just stopped. Of the 21 left in the incubator, 10 hatched spontaneously and the humidity was dropping below 40% an I added water through the holes without opening it and it went up over 70%. At this point I lost 1 chick that had completely zipped, I stuck a wire in the hole and turned the egg over and it fell open. It was a white chick. I barely cracked open the side to release some of the humidity. By barely I mean, I stuck a fuzzy pipecleaner in the side and the humidity did go down slowly. All of the 10 chicks were hatched by yesterday morning, there were 5 more pipped that made no progress by evening. All 5 of these were shrink wrapped, all 5 are alive and fine now. There were
6 more eggs in the incubator and no signs of life. I poked a hole in the air cell side, 1 was shrink wrapped and clearly died trying to get out. The other 5 had to have stopped developing just recently, there was still some liquid. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please. What I noticed was that the first 10 that hatched the membrane looked like it was just 1 membrane and it was stuck to the shell. These chicks were very active right from the start and were playing and drinking water through the wire before i removed them from the incubator. I removed them yesterday evening and then took my time with the pipped eggs and helped them out. There was minimal bleeding, and they recovered pretty quickly but I don't think they would have made it through the night. So, of the 15 new chicks that I have I'm seeing some very different colorings than usual. Usually out of 10 chicks I will get roughly 1 white, 1 barred, and 8 black. This time there are more whites, one red/orange, and two multi-color that remind me of the EEs without the muffs. I don't know where this came from. Either a hen who hasn't been laying has begun laying again, or there was another rooster in there. I don't get it. Something had to be different. Nothing has changed in the hens other than the 2 black ones that I liked and kept I added them to our flock. They are black, and offspring of the rooster that is in there which is black. I had some roosters in there but were removed about the same times, but they are black too except for 1 that is white and they are also offspring of the same black rooster and are only 4 months old. I've never seen them acting like grown ups yet. They are now removed. I don't know what to think right now.

Are you a scrapper PrairieChickens? I love to sew, I used to scrap, I love to use my Cricut for other things.

I can't hardly stand to sit here when I hear those turkeys gobbling outside, I want to go see what they're doing.

I'm sorry you are having to deal with losing your posts mikeksfarmer. I've been typing in Notepad so I don't have to worry about losing it. It helps a lot, but right now my computer seems to think it needs to install updates and it shut down on my twice so I still lost what I wrote. GRRRR. I thought when you said your hen was 10 years old it must have been a typo. I didn't know they lived that long. That's amazing, I couldn't make her into dinner either. I'd just have to let her live out her life. Isn't it nice to get things cleaned up. This is the first year I took any initiative outside, I've always had babies and just didn't go out there. Well, we counted and we hauled off 5 loads to the metal recycle getting $30-over $100 for each load and then we took 3 loads to the dump. That makes me feel shameful that there was so much junk laying around here, but now it's all cleaned up and all we have left to do is the inside of the barn and we can continue with that into the winter. I can't believe how much stuff can accumulate, it just grows. It's so nice to have room for things that you love though.

KansasPrairie, how are your toms doing today?

PrairieChickens, your mug is adorable!!! I can't get one, but I like playful and cutesie stuff. I love plain and simple, I love ribbons and dots. Got anything along those lines? I can't wait to see what you come up with. This is indeed where the PARTY is!!!

Hi ppimf!!! I don't have enough experience with ducks but I'm sure someone here will be able to help you.

Sunflowerparrot, HI! Your puppy is sooooo sweet!!!!

I need to get off my patootie and get busy. I need to make bread and do laundry, and go see the turkeys and my lavender orp, I'm going to take him for a walk with me to the clothes line. I love having chickens walking around, my dh doesn't so much. I need to go see what he's building for me today. My lavender pen is getting started for real today. We've been collecting the supplies for a while. Even though his girls aren't old enough for him yet I think I'm going to put some girls in his age so he can start getting the right idea. Josie said he's not ready yet, but I want him in the mood or at least start thinking about it. My BOs have to be getting close to the 2 month mark, I need to start writing their birthdates down.

Have a great day all!

 

[PrairieChickens]

I'll do something whimsical next

Here's my first effort at a template. It's not as full as the one I made for myself because of the limitations of the technology available to me, but it's a start. http://www.zazzle.com/rustic_chicken_template_mug-168039198705691877

mommahen: I'm an all around creative sort... pretty much if you leave something in my reach, I'll try to make something out of it. I do crochet, drawings, painting, photography, paper crafts... I don't sew very well yet, but i'm trying to learn. I'll add your ideas to my list for future templates :3

 

[chicken danz]

Mammahen no the brahmas and cochins are both huge. I mean super big birds. I sold one boy yesterday that must have weighed about 14 pounds. The girls are smaller than the boys though. I still have my breeder brahmas and my new fancy colored project brahma chicks. Not many, but a few to get started with anyway. I also kept all my partridge, black, and gold laced cochins. I only have one pair of gold laced and it is my favorite. I wish I had a large enough space they wouldn't feel confined to get them breeding right now. In my experience caging a large fowl cochin doesn't work. They just refuse to eat and die. I may have to get my rear in gear and build a chicken condo and see if they will tolerate it.
I'm just not a bantam kind of person. The only bantams I have now are my olandsk pair and my d'uccles. Both of these are strictly bantam birds and have no large fowl counterpart.
I hate to see the bakery closed. It will effect people all over and not just in Emporia. Sad thing. It's pretty surreal to think they could even sell the building and equipment. There just aren't many companies willing to go into that much debt in today's economy. At this point between Tyson layoffs, Modine closing, Didde, and the Bakery I would hate to own real estate in Emporia. Along with that, of course there is talk about Wolf Creek being on the market and how many engineers and supervisors would become unemployed if it goes under new management.
Along with the bakery are all those outlet stores that will close elsewhere. Sure puts a lot of people out of work.
I would have thought the Emporia city commission would have tried to incorporate some incentives to these companies to get them to stay in business. Maybe they did. I don't take their newspaper so I depend on Topeka news for information like that.
Then of course there is always a chance of the banks going insolvent as well due to people defaulting on loans. It just doesn't stop at just the bakery.
Sad!
I keep my peacocks in a covered pen. They don't free range like my chickens. Lots of people just let them roam but I think for the money invested and to know who is breeding with whom, I want to keep mine penned. They do tend to take some room but not all that much. I've always thought they were beautiful but never wanted the noise the males make in breeding season. It actually isn't bad at all and only lasts a few months a year. They are very easy keepers and eat very little for as big as they are. It's all feathers! I love watching them. And although they are a basic wild type bird you can certainly tame them as I proved with my little peachick I hatched this last summer. He still eats out of my hand and doesn't mind being held once I get hold of him. He is just a big spoiled baby.
Well I've managed to waste the entire morning and need to get in gear.

 

[HEChicken]

HEChicken, how would fermenting increase the protein? I mean, unless yeast are protein, I guess that makes sense but it would be by very little. I wouldn't think it would reduce the calories, I mean, the calories don't vanish into thin air, they have to so somewhere. So the sugar converts to alcohol but alcohol is high in calories, thus.... 'beer belly'. I thought the alcohol was a just what was left from the consumption of sugar and that the sugar was still there in the yeast which at this point have reproduced. It sounds like Madge may be a bit jealous of you. I got a recipe from an older lady to make balloon wine. I'm anxious to try it and it seems easier than making beer. I don't like beer really.

Danz, if Dolly is bought by another company these people are going to end up being without income for a long time. I'm curious to to see what happens to the price of breads and snacks now. I'm loving the turkeys. We planned on butchering one of them too but the problem is that he's not a 'bad boy'. These turkeys talk to me, and everyone in the house is gobbling. I don't know how we are going to do it at all, they're so nice. Last night, I heard turkeys out by the lagoon while I was hanging out laundry, that is the oppostite direction. We've never EVER seen them this close to the house. Well, I didn't see them because it was dark but still. I think the turkeys drew in the wild ones. I'm hoping that alone will be a good reason to keep them around. I'm sorry you are so sad about your brahmas. I take it they are smaller birds? Is that why the owls were so hard on them? Could you keep some less costly chickens to keep up your egg production for now? My dh as been talking getting a peacock, I think he would change his mind though if he couldn't keep them fenced. They are so pretty. I wouldn't add sugar to the fermented feed, if left long enough it would just create more alcohol. Hey, doesn't alcohol have something to do with anaerobic conditions too? We definitely need a brewing expert aruond here. This is important stuff. In my bread starter, I want to make bread when the yeast are most active, just before they start to make alcohol. I think it's doable for you to ferment feed even with so much feed but anyway you look at it you will need to have containers that are reasonable for you to lift. The thing about fermenting is that you will have all of this feed dished out and waiting. For instance, when I make tons of bread for an event I will have bread on every counter, the stove, covering my table too. It's all in the process, some of my bread rises for 36 hours so you can imagine big bowls out and big pans out. The fermenting is going to be the same way, it's just going to have to sit out somewhere. I don't think that leaving a small amount of feed in the botttom will hurt anything. The ACV is acidic, we use when canning to increase the acidity to help preserve the food. If you just refill the bucket and there is some let in the bottom and you just keep doing this it won't always be the same pieces left in the bottom. If you didn't turn around and refill the bucket that may be something to think about.

While I'm waiting for my computer to go to the next page I will update on my hatch this time. There were 21 eggs left in the incubator at the time of lockdown. Up until that point, there were probably about 15 eggs I had thrown out, most just didn't develop at all and a few started and just stopped. Of the 21 left in the incubator, 10 hatched spontaneously and the humidity was dropping below 40% an I added water through the holes without opening it and it went up over 70%. At this point I lost 1 chick that had completely zipped, I stuck a wire in the hole and turned the egg over and it fell open. It was a white chick. I barely cracked open the side to release some of the humidity. By barely I mean, I stuck a fuzzy pipecleaner in the side and the humidity did go down slowly. All of the 10 chicks were hatched by yesterday morning, there were 5 more pipped that made no progress by evening. All 5 of these were shrink wrapped, all 5 are alive and fine now. There were
6 more eggs in the incubator and no signs of life. I poked a hole in the air cell side, 1 was shrink wrapped and clearly died trying to get out. The other 5 had to have stopped developing just recently, there was still some liquid. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please. What I noticed was that the first 10 that hatched the membrane looked like it was just 1 membrane and it was stuck to the shell. These chicks were very active right from the start and were playing and drinking water through the wire before i removed them from the incubator. I removed them yesterday evening and then took my time with the pipped eggs and helped them out. There was minimal bleeding, and they recovered pretty quickly but I don't think they would have made it through the night.

Uggghhh, you got me there - I actually don't know why it would increase the protein. There is a thread about it - I'll try to find the link - and I think they explain it there. When my DH confirmed that he could see that it would increase the protein, I just took his word for it because he has a masters in a field of science, so he tends to know about that kind of stuff.

However I can answer about the sugars/loss of calories. In a sense yes, they do "just vanish into thin air". The yeast "fart" as they process the sugars - that is the bubbles you see during fermentation. In other words, they "eat" the sugar, use it for energy and "fart" out the waste. I am a home brewer but far from the expert you are calling for - I have only the basics down. Pikeman can probably answer questions about brewing better than I can.

Regarding your hatch, if chicks were shrink-wrapped it sounds like the humidity was too low. You mentioned 40% and 70%. 35-40% should be the goal while incubating but for lockdown, increase it to 70% or greater as that is when they need the highest humidity. Put it this way: it is almost impossible for the humidity to be too high for hatch. It sounds like what happened is that the humidity raised to a good level to allow the first 10 to hatch easily but as it started to drop, the chicks started to have difficulties. So sorry that you lost some but at least you do have some new chicks to raise up and have fun with.

You may be right about Madge being jealous although I tend to think of that as an emotion that birds' brains aren't capable of. This morning it happened again. I arrived at the yard, Ned gobbled, got his tail up and wings down and started to display and Madge ran right over to him and jumped him to get him to stop. I'm getting really annoyed with her.

 

[Kansas Prairie]

I believe they claim fermented feed is better absorbed by the bird's digestive system and that's where the increased nutritional benefits come in. If I find the article about it I'll post it. It's beautiful 70 degrees here and no wind, we don't get many days like this, I'm spending every minute I can outside!!

 

[Chickies-duckies-etc]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/644300/fermenting-feed-for-meat-birds/160

Post 168 Is that some of the info needed?

 

[sharol]

Well, a 2 week update on Scout, my Golden Campine with the bum leg. When I left, she couldn't use it, and in fact, it was tripping her up. She had no resistance when I pressed up on her leg.

I have been gone for 2 weeks, and my DH has been taking care of her. She has been isolated (sort of) in a portable hoop coop. In the 2 weeks, she has regained some use of the leg. She can hop around now that the shock of losing some of her mobility has passed, and she is using the leg for balance. When I held her she had some strength in the leg and pressed her foot back against my palm when I pressed up toward her body. This morning I let her out with the rest of the flock, and aside from some jockying for position, so far so good. She was pretty bossy before the injury and Karma is a b*^ch. She is hanging out with my EE Lily (bottom of the pecking order), and she is still alive after a day with the others. She has kept sort of to herself except for Lily. She is able to hop/fly up to the bottom roost and the feeding table, and she is able to get up the ramp to the coop. Right now she is in the coop with her flock.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. (and checking on them every 15 minutes

Sharol

 

[chicken danz]

I got busy cleaning some areas in the brooder house and spent most of the afternoon on that project. I put pour on ivermectin on a couple groups of chicks and I hope they aren't too young for it. I am crazy insane about keeping mites off the birds. But they still get them at some point.
I put 13 more baby ducks in the duck pen today and I have at least one more that has hatched since then.
I also moved my white orp eggs to the hatcher. I have a few I am just not sure about. At least started to develop but not sure they are still alive. I had 5 eggs I had to chuck that weren't any good at all. Still for shipped eggs that leaves me over 50% that at least were fertile. I am hoping beyond hope to hatch and keep these alive. My daughter will be thrilled. I may order another dozen as well just because the white orps are impossible to get. I just saw a juvenile pair bring over $200.

 

[ppimf]

so what does it take for ducks to want to eat the treats, i put out 2 hardboiled eggs chopped up and some apples choped up, but they would not even touch it. what am i doing wrong?

 

[chicken danz]

Ducks are like most birds. They just have to get around to trying things before they figure out they like them. My ducks don't like apples much. They love egg though. The one thing mine really love are pears. They totally cleaned up the ground around my pear tree. They seem to like green things better than others. If you really want to treat them give them some canned catfood, particularly tuna or fish type. They make a real mess with it but love it.