INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[Old Salt 1945]

Regarding meat:

When I processed 11 roos, I threw feathers in a trash can, wings, legs, breast in an ice chest and everything else - back, guts, liver, neck, gizzard, in a bucket.

When I was done, I dumped the bucket of junk into the scalding pot and let it cook for a couple of hours. Then I put all that in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer.

Occasionally, I take out the bag of crud and use a hatchet to hack some off, thaw it and throw it into the chicken yard. The chickens pick the bones clean. I throw the bones back over the fence and Rotten Dog Millie cleans that up. Recycling at it's best.

Nobody has died yet.

John

 

[Old Salt 1945]

Hello H3, I'm going to start them in the house for the first few weeks. I was then going to move them out to the garage.(4-8wks) From there to the chicken tractor/yard. I don't have a set in stone time table because obviously the weather and the chicks themselves demand flexibility. My wife is... hesitant to embrace my chicken desire. As soon as they start making a mess in the house I'll have to move them to the garage. Thanks for the input though definately something to consider.

get a refrigerator shipping box and cut it down to a height you like. Makes a great brooder.

 

[SallyinIndiana]

Quote: If your wife is hesitant, it is a tougher call. The cuteness wears off as soon as those chicks can be smelled. If you keep the shavings clean at least twice a week the smell is not so bad.
If you don't have other chickens in a coop and if you have your coop ready, it might be best to keep them in the house only for the first week. Then your wife has time to fall in love with the puffy balls of down but no smells to hate. Then once in the coop provide heat.

Regarding meat:

When I processed 11 roos, I threw feathers in a trash can, wings, legs, breast in an ice chest and everything else - back, guts, liver, neck, gizzard, in a bucket.

When I was done, I dumped the bucket of junk into the scalding pot and let it cook for a couple of hours. Then I put all that in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer.

Occasionally, I take out the bag of crud and use a hatchet to hack some off, thaw it and throw it into the chicken yard. The chickens pick the bones clean. I throw the bones back over the fence and Rotten Dog Millie cleans that up. Recycling at it's best.

Nobody has died yet.

John

This must be a special freezer just for you. I would not be happy if my DH froze a bag of crud.

 

[Old Salt 1945]

More tolbunt pictures. I just love these guys.

That looks like 2 x 2 fencing. Where? How much? I need.

John

 

[Old Salt 1945]

This must be a special freezer just for you. I would not be happy if my DH froze a bag of crud.

I double-bagged it.

John

 

[bradselig]

That looks like 2 x 2 fencing.  Where? How much?  I need.

John

It was purchased last year from Lowes on clearance for $9 for a 4'x50' roll. I guess there are perks to working at Lowes.

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

Hi guys!!!

AWESOME BIRTHDAY! Here is one of my best gifts...
http://muncie.craigslist.org/grd/4112732246.html

Sneaky they brought them in to my office trailer, and there they were this morning!

BR Tom & Hen, just beautiful

Were shown in 4H this year.
I still can't wait for my porters babies, but am so excited to have a jump start on my breeding program!
Will have 4 good bloodlines to work with next spring.
DH bought a headset for my phone, maybe I can hear on it, finally

Off to catch up, almost 200 posts behind, been a fantastic birthday yesterday, and today was even better!

 

[ellymayRans]

Jchny~ Happy Birthday!
Sally~ my meat birds are about 4 weeks
Danand~ I've missed you too!
has anyone heard from animallover? i remember she had to give away all her animals. just wondering how she has been doing.
so i worked all day, and the DH took care of the animals since i left so early... i got a call from the neighbor at about noon saying that our rooster was over at her house. so, i called my husband and he went over and walked him back. well, when i got home i noticed 2 of my BO hens missing. i figured they were hanging out somewhere or got lost in the cornfield and would follow the clucks back home. i just went out and they havent come home. checked the garage, barn, and around the bushes and pine tree. they were good girls that came when called and always were friendly.

Awe well for me I came home with a dead baby in the office brooder another on its last leg which I luckily caught in time when I heard screeming from an escapee little older cock and a dead one floating in the pool! OMG what a thing to come home to!! I til this day raz him about! Sorry about ur hens..hope they show up soon! I will tell u tho just today after thinking a hawk got one of my laying pullets at the least 2weeks ago! I noticed one of the roos checking out something under a tub turned upside down so not to house mosquitos and I go lift it and I was absolutely in shock that there was my poor girl! !!! She ran to eat scraps I'd just thrown out! I use a ton of !!!! because I really am still in shock! So she stumbled around and I snatched her up to give her her own space in the garage. I just can't believe that she is still alive after all that time and this was only 5 ft from the deck this whole time...how does that happen? !

 

[Leahs Mom]

Quote:
Brad - do they sell that fence every year? Wonder if there would be any on clearance again? I guess I thought that fence would be a year round item and wouldn't clear out.

Not sure if this was shared on this thread so forgive if it is redundant. I saw this on portable fence posts. This guy sells them but one of the byc members made his own and showed it to us on the natural chicken keeping thread. You can use roll fence like that. This is a really cool idea if you could use portable fencing in your area!

http://www.ranch-coop.com/Portable-Fence-Posts.html

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

Quote:

good luck and congrats on the new babies!

Hey, everyone. We now have 6 baby chicks! Looked at the other two and they were undeveloped. I'll take 6! They are too cute. There was only 1 black one. Hope it doesn't get picked on. Nice to have peeping again, but I'm missing it being in the house. It will be cool, though, to have chicks raised by moms.

congrats to you and the new momma!

That is a terrible article. People are already refusing blue and green eggs because they just seem weird. Now if they read the article, they'll refuse them because they are 'gross', and if they don't read the entire thing, they'll refuse them because 'oh my gosh, those eggs have a virus!'

I'm already reading reports of this happening among our fellow chicken keepers.

The truth is, virus or not, the color is in the shell only and doesn't affect the interior in any way. If you were to crack open a blue egg and a brown egg laid by hens from the same flock, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. What affects the quality of the egg is what the bird eats. If she is fed only crumbles and not allowed to forage, her eggs will likely not be as rich as those from a hen who is allowed to free-range. Yolk color is usually darker in birds that free-range as well, though that is not a great indicator of a bird's ranging time as one can do something such as feed marigolds to a cage-raised flock and get the same dark yolks as those of a free-ranging hen.


Interestingly enough, I have seen this with my own eyes (not the marigold effect, but the difference between a ranging hen and a hen eating nothing but crumbles). I have a rescued silver Sebright named Francine whose previous owner debeaked her and did it so badly that she has almost no upper mandible. She can eat nothing but crumbles because she can't pick anything up while free-ranging. I can tell which eggs she laid by cracking them open. Her yolks are much paler than the other Sebrights' and in general they don't seem as firm or taste as rich.

This is Frannie, by the way. She is understandably human shy, but I think she's just beautiful and she has a home here no matter what.

Agreed, it will cause a scare! But I know my birds are healthy, and I have ate their eggs almost 2 years now. (and the roos!)
Frannie is beautiful! She looks so healthy, you have gave her a good life.

This weird chicken egg is blue because it has a virus

By Jess Zimmerman

Gmoose1
Do you like blue eggs and ham and infectious diseases? Then you will love these blue eggs, which get their weird color from a harmless retrovirus.
There are a few breeds of chicken that are known for their tendency to pop out the occasional blue egg – Araucanas in Chile and Dongxiang and Lushi chickens in China. (These breeds don’t show up often in the U.S., so you’re unlikely to find a blue egg at your local farmers market.) Among these particular chickens, there’s a high incidence of the EAV-HP retrovirus, a type of virus that slips its own manufactured DNA into the DNA of its hosts. EAV-HP inserts a gene called oocyan (which as far as I can tell literally means “blue egg”), which makes the eggshells absorb a pigment called biliverdin from the chicken’s uterus.

Julian Berry
EAV-HP isn’t harmful to humans, but frankly, “oh, the virus makes the egg absorb chicken uterus bile pigment, it’s perfectly safe,” doesn’t sound too appetizing to me. They look awfully pretty, though! Let’s get some Araucanas and have a labor-free Easter this year.

Source​

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• Find A Blue Chicken Egg? Congrats, Your Chicken Has A Virus, Popular Science
• Why did the chicken lay a blue egg?, Boing Boing

Jess Zimmerman is the editor of Grist List.
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Thats creepy! But who would even know if it weren't for the article.