Farming and Homesteading Heritage Poultry

[cubalaya]

kept enough pullets and still have some adult hens that are still laying and keeping me in eggs. even had enough to do the devilled eggs for thanksgiving dinner. I hate buying store eggs.
on the corn, I stopped feeding it to my dogs long ago. they get a lamb and rice or chicken and rice formula. no problems and no vet bills.
corn for chickens and pigs is another matter. I buy a couple hundred lbs. of local grown gmo dent corn at a good price direct from the farmer. I like to finish the hogs before butchering, on this corn, for a few weeks. I also feed to all my chickens in the fall when moulting occurs and egg production drops. I also grow an heirloom blue popcorn that I use for feed supplements that has a higher protein than the dent corn. the chickens do very well on it.

 

[Fentress]

I would like to barter my chicken products for other naturally raised products in the community, especially dairy. I don't have the time or inclination to take on more animals/projects. Does anyone here do that or have any advice/stories on how to start. I plan to go to an annual harvest/heritage festival this year and ask around, but beyond that I am fairly clueless. The farmers in my area farm for cash, so I don't think they are even going to be a good place to start.


Thanks

 

[neopolitancrazy]

Not all feed mixes are the same. Some are superior to others. I decided to try a local mix that cost less. I watched my birds lose condition and weight before I switched back. I am not certain what the difference was as the ingredients were very similar. Still, it was obvious that it was poor feed....

There is nothing wrong with trying new feeds, and feed ingredients. You may very well find an improvement that you prefer. Just be cautious about definite conclusions. There is an immense amount of variables to consider from year to year.

I would like to add my personal experience here.

Last year, I was very proud of finding a locally milled chicken feed that was gmo-free, used animal-based protein, organic vitamins and minerals, met all the recommended nutrient levels on the tag, et cetera, and I fermented it to get the very most nutrition out of it for my birds. I thought my birds looked well, but I had horrendous hatch rates, (which can be caused by all sorts of things.) As I was fine-tuning all aspects of egg storage and incubation, I learned that the recommended nutrient levels for meat-type breeding hens included much higher amounts of methionine than for egg-type breeding hens. When I rechecked the feed tags, the methionine which met egg-type recommendations at the beginning of hatching season had been reduced dramatically, unbeknownst to me. So I switched to a Purina formula which contained the recommended amount of methionine. My birds immediately began to gain weight and bloomed right before my eyes. On gmo corn and soy.

Hoping for more vigorous chicks this year,
Angela

 

[neopolitancrazy]

I would like to barter my chicken products for other naturally raised products in the community, especially dairy. I don't have the time or inclination to take on more animals/projects. Does anyone here do that or have any advice/stories on how to start. I plan to go to an annual harvest/heritage festival this year and ask around, but beyond that I am fairly clueless. The farmers in my area farm for cash, so I don't think they are even going to be a good place to start.


Thanks

check out this link for sources that may be near you:
http://www.realmilk.com/real-milk-finder/virginia/#va
Best wishes,
Angela

 

[Zanna]

I would like to barter my chicken products for other naturally raised products in the community, especially dairy. I don't have the time or inclination to take on more animals/projects. Does anyone here do that or have any advice/stories on how to start. I plan to go to an annual harvest/heritage festival this year and ask around, but beyond that I am fairly clueless. The farmers in my area farm for cash, so I don't think they are even going to be a good place to start.


Thanks

In Oregon/WA there is a Homesteaders Classified on Facebook where people do lots of barter/trade, maybe there is such a thing for your area. I have also used Craigslist some. Any farmers markets in your area where you can go talk with people?

 

[bnjrob]

This year my memory has been refreshed as we had a extreme heavy molt and was forced to buy 1 dozen Wally world eggs during the Hen strike- ate the last WW egg yesterday and when cooking
they don't even look good in the pan and are tasteless . We do some egg for wheat swap with a local farmer and his son was visiting durring the holiday last year . He had some of our
fresh free range eggs and told Dad he wanted to buy some . Dad explained you can't buy them they were a gift and how they were acquired. Son went back home and found a local
flock that he now buys his eggs from. People just don't realize the difference until they try them.

LOL, it's funny how even folks, city folks, fall in love with home grown eggs after they try them.

As far as running out of eggs during molting/winter - have you considered oiling them and preserving them when you have them coming out your ears?

I started doing it this year and I am impressed. I have seen video of homesteaders that oiled the eggs and then put them in the refrigerator with no loss of quality after a year and a friend of mine years ago told me how they previously had just sailed around the world all the time and they never refrigerated the eggs on their boat and never had a problem. I don't have room for cold storage for the eggs, but since I have read so many things in antique literature about preserving eggs without electricity, I decided to try it. I used mineral oil to coat the eggs - no washing of the egg before oiling - and then put them in cartons and then put the cartons into a cheap Styrofoam ice chest. The ice chests sit on my kitchen floor in the corner. When I only had cardboard cartons to put the eggs into, I lined the carton with plastic wrap, put the eggs in, laid a sheet of plastic wrap on top of the eggs and then shut the lid. I did label the cartons using masking tape as labels, as to when the eggs were collected so that I could use the oldest first and rotate the stock through as we used them.

I have not had any gross eggs at all. In September I was using eggs from March/April. Right now I am using eggs from May/June, since even though we are getting eggs again, the fresh eggs are going to other people. The yolk and white are a little runny in the eggs, but flavor is fine. I have been able to get eggs out of the preserved supply that were not too runny, so that I could separate them and make mayo. I have a feeling if I were to oil the eggs and then be able to get them in a refrigerator or at the least someplace cooler than my kitchen, they would not even get the bit of runniness that they do.

My next step is to look into the feasibility of storage like they did it in the 1800s - they were adamant about no air getting to the eggs for best results, and eggs were oiled and then packed in things like salt, sawdust, and stove ashes so air was completely prevented from reaching the shell. We heat with wood burning fireplaces so the firewood ash sounded appealing, since it also repels bugs and mice don't care to dig into the ash pile we have outside either, but they will get into wood and sawdust.

 

[bnjrob]

I would like to barter my chicken products for other naturally raised products in the community, especially dairy. I don't have the time or inclination to take on more animals/projects. Does anyone here do that or have any advice/stories on how to start. I plan to go to an annual harvest/heritage festival this year and ask around, but beyond that I am fairly clueless. The farmers in my area farm for cash, so I don't think they are even going to be a good place to start.


Thanks

In Oregon/WA there is a Homesteaders Classified on Facebook where people do lots of barter/trade, maybe there is such a thing for your area. I have also used Craigslist some. Any farmers markets in your area where you can go talk with people?

There is a new online site geared toward homesteading - www.earthineer.com that has a barter/store section where you can put all kinda of items up for buy/sell/trade.

 

[capayvalleychick]

I learned that the recommended nutrient levels for meat-type breeding hens included much higher amounts of methionine than for egg-type breeding hens. When I rechecked the feed tags, the methionine which met egg-type recommendations at the beginning of hatching season had been reduced dramatically, unbeknownst to me. So I switched to a Purina formula which contained the recommended amount of methionine. My birds immediately began to gain weight and bloomed right before my eyes.

I have not been a fan of Purina chicken feed in the past, but their new formulation of Flock Raiser now has .55% methionine. That's better than the breeder ration and other feeds available here. So, I'm switching and hoping it makes a difference.
Methionine is also especially needed during molt. Flock Raiser methionine levels even beat the special feeds that are marketed for molting chickens.

I would like to feed only non GMO and Organic feeds. The issue that I've found is that the ingredients that are available to make those feeds are so limited that the end result is a less nutritious product for breeders.

 

[ronott1]

I have not been a fan of Purina chicken feed in the past, but their new formulation of Flock Raiser now has .55% methionine. That's better than the breeder ration and other feeds available here. So, I'm switching and hoping it makes a difference.
Methionine is also especially needed during molt. Flock Raiser methionine levels even beat the special feeds that are marketed for molting chickens.

I would like to feed only non GMO and Organic feeds. The issue that I've found is that the ingredients that are available to make those feeds are so limited that the end result is a less nutritious product for breeders.

Chicken Canoe posted abut the methionine level being too low and it causing aggression in cock birds.

Purina has a new formulation for layeena too.

 

[Fentress]

I appreciate everyones ideas, thanks