Homesteaders

[Beekissed]

You can can those right up if you want. My Mom used to can them in thick slices stacked in the jar so she could use them for fried green tomatoes later on.

 

[KlopKlop]

Or not.     Some chickens like easy food and don't forage as well as others, so the ones that want and like that easy food will still be eating at the feeder all day long, with little forays out to peck and scratch but it won't be serious foraging. 

They aren't going to die if you take away the food and send them out in the big bad world to work for their tucker, no weaning necessary.  Just open the door and let 'em go and don't give them feed until they've hunted all day.  After they learn to do what comes natural as a way of life, you'll start to see some real savings on feed. 

I cut their morning feed yesterday and half the flock spent the day following me around "excuse me, you forgot to feed us today, excuse me!!" Lol always under foot!

In other news I picked up a used wood burning furnace yesterday to replace my tired old pot belly stove I use to heat my workshop. This thing is pretty neat and I look forward to using it. The old stove had no air flow control so it was full power burn and if I wasn't careful my shop would be up to 90+ just keeping the coal bed fed. This one has draft control and blower fans. Fancy!!

 

[Beekissed]

Nice!!!! Don't you hate running the wood stove and having to open windows too?

We tweaked our barrel stove last year for the same reason....my Dad had designed it for hot fires and more hot fires, but with not much control over that or for wood conservation. Mother and I decided it was time for a change with that, so we changed out barrels, moved and reduced the stovepipe so that all the heat wasn't roaring up that huge chimney, then added a collar with a damper in it. Soooooo much better in all ways now but still a cheap stove to have/maintain/tweak.

 

[lazy gardener]

For those "little smudges" that don't require a lengthy burn, just to take the chill off in the morning or the evening, I simply toss paper and cardboard in the stove as it accumulates. by the time I need that smudge, there's a nice little start. Add a couple of tiny pieces of fire wood, or even a hand full of fallen branches, and I'm good to go. So much easier when I need to keep the fire going 24/7. Then, there's always a good bed of coals to work from.

 

[KlopKlop]

Nice!!!!  Don't you hate running the wood stove and having to open windows too? 

We tweaked our barrel stove last year for the same reason....my Dad had designed it for hot fires and more hot fires, but with not much control over that or for wood conservation.  Mother and I decided it was time for a change with that, so we changed out barrels, moved and reduced the stovepipe so that all the heat wasn't roaring up that huge chimney, then added a collar with a damper in it.   Soooooo much better in all ways now but still a cheap stove to have/maintain/tweak. 

I was considering a double barrel type stove when I found this one. By the time I bought barrels and the stove kit it was may more than this stove cost. I will need to invest in a few lengths of double wall stove pipe but not too much

 

[Chicken girl 15]

So I have been running an experiment with my chickens. I have 3 ages so it was fairly simple. I split all 3 age groups into 2 groups. Half of each group has been free ranging from sun up to sun down with feed available all day. The other is on a very strict diet of only store bought feed.

My purpose for this was to see how the birds grow better. Well hands down the free ranging birds win. The 2 months Olds are huge and fully feathered, the teens are laying already and the "old" hens look great with minimal feather loss and still laying daily. My "feed only" group looks blah. The 2 months Olds are small and still not fully feathered, the teens are not laying yet and skinny and the "old hens" have Pink combs horrible feather loss and lower egg production.

My conclusion!!!! Grow forage and fodder and any kind of bug farm I can over winter. Catch mice and other critters that my flock eats in warm months and feed during winter. Chickens (at least mine) can not thrive fully on a factory feed.

 

[KlopKlop]

So I have been running an experiment with my chickens. I have 3 ages so it was fairly simple. I split all 3 age groups into 2 groups. Half of each group has been free ranging from sun up to sun down with feed available all day. The other is on a very strict diet of only store bought feed.

My purpose for this was to see how the birds grow better. Well hands down the free ranging birds win. The 2 months Olds are huge and fully feathered, the teens are laying already and the "old" hens look great with minimal feather loss and still laying daily. My "feed only" group looks blah. The 2 months Olds are small and still not fully feathered, the teens are not laying yet and skinny and the "old hens" have Pink combs horrible feather loss and lower egg production.

My conclusion!!!! Grow forage and fodder and any kind of bug farm I can over winter. Catch mice and other critters that my flock eats in warm months and feed during winter. Chickens (at least mine) can not thrive fully on a factory feed.

Great to hear the results! I grow fodder in the winter but haven't convinced myself to do any sort of bug farming. If I can find some duck weed around the area soon I may play around with growing it indoors this winter.

 

[lazy gardener]

So I have been running an experiment with my chickens. I have 3 ages so it was fairly simple. I split all 3 age groups into 2 groups. Half of each group has been free ranging from sun up to sun down with feed available all day. The other is on a very strict diet of only store bought feed.

My purpose for this was to see how the birds grow better. Well hands down the free ranging birds win. The 2 months Olds are huge and fully feathered, the teens are laying already and the "old" hens look great with minimal feather loss and still laying daily. My "feed only" group looks blah. The 2 months Olds are small and still not fully feathered, the teens are not laying yet and skinny and the "old hens" have Pink combs horrible feather loss and lower egg production.

My conclusion!!!! Grow forage and fodder and any kind of bug farm I can over winter. Catch mice and other critters that my flock eats in warm months and feed during winter. Chickens (at least mine) can not thrive fully on a factory feed.

WELL DONE! HATS OFF TO YOU FOR STEPPING OUT, AND PUTTING PROCESSED FEED (with all of the backing of advertisers stating it is developed to "meet all of the nutritional needs" of a chicken) TO THE TEST!

 

[Chicken girl 15]

WELL DONE!  HATS OFF TO YOU FOR STEPPING OUT, AND PUTTING PROCESSED FEED (with all of the backing of advertisers stating it is developed to "meet all of the nutritional needs" of a chicken) TO THE TEST!  

Well I know my family of 7 all have very different nutrition needs. Some for weight control, some for extra vitamin or mineral and some to support the meds they take. If 7 humans have such various needs how on earth can over 100 chickens all thrive on the exact same diet. Not possible. The only thing my flock isn't given is processed human food, I don't feed it to my kids either.

 

[rancher hicks]

So I have been running an experiment with my chickens. I have 3 ages so it was fairly simple. I split all 3 age groups into 2 groups. Half of each group has been free ranging from sun up to sun down with feed available all day. The other is on a very strict diet of only store bought feed.

My purpose for this was to see how the birds grow better. Well hands down the free ranging birds win. The 2 months Olds are huge and fully feathered, the teens are laying already and the "old" hens look great with minimal feather loss and still laying daily. My "feed only" group looks blah. The 2 months Olds are small and still not fully feathered, the teens are not laying yet and skinny and the "old hens" have Pink combs horrible feather loss and lower egg production.

My conclusion!!!! Grow forage and fodder and any kind of bug farm I can over winter. Catch mice and other critters that my flock eats in warm months and feed during winter. Chickens (at least mine) can not thrive fully on a factory feed.

Can you explain this? Certainly one can't be sure what chickens eat when ranging but if you're talking of purposely feeding mice to chickens that is very dangerous and unhealthy.

This from an article in Hobby Farms by Mike Wilhite. You can find the entire article online just google "mice and chickens" it will pop up.

Rodents are responsible for more than a quarter of all farm fires of unknown origin, but the main risk from infestations is feed contamination and disease exposure to both you and your flock. A rat can produce more than 40 droppings per day and a gallon or more of urine per year, while a single mouse can produce more than 80 droppings per day and more than a quart of urine per year. A variety of human and livestock diseases are spread through contact with rodent excrement, which include cryptosporidiosis, toxoplasmosis, leptospirosis, brucellosis and salmonellosis.