NY chicken lover!!!!

[JayLyn07]

Morning all! Would anyone be interested in a Silver Laced Polish Rooster?? 12 weeks old and attempting to crow! PM if interested.

 

[java girl 2]

Certainly there is some type of meter to use in the well right.

If the plants are veg garden plants, use my can method to conserve water. Non essentials I'd water just enough to keep them alive. You could of course us a temp can method. Just take up the cans when the rain comes. Put the cans as close to your plants as you can without damaging roots.

You can certainly use a water conservation method to save rain water for the garden too. You might find some of those plastic drums on CL for cheap. Here we can get them for $10. If your house and coop have gutters place one in each area. I didn't think rain water would be good for chickens but I stand corrected. You can cool it down by freezing water in large containers so you have a big "chunk" of ice to put in the waterers.

Water in the evenings and of course mulch where you can. Evenings will keep things from drying out right away. Newspapers under straw or hay makes a good mulch. I use cardboard boxes. After a good soak they hold moisture fairly well. I also use coop cleaning to mulch too around trees or plants.

I've been carrying the chicken water tubs/pans over to my ornamental grasses and dumping it on them when I clean them each day. I also empty waterers onto plants when cleaning and refilling those too.

Hope some of my ideas help.

Rancher

Just fill each can and not spray around the plants. It saves time and water. This will work in gardens that are not raised beds too.

As far as the mulch go's here is what I do. Because I have poultry, when I take the shaving out of the barn. I put them in a pile FAR away from my birds to keep the critters away from my birds and then keep piling it up till early spring. Then in the spring, I take them and spread them out in my garden with it being 4-6 inches high up and I DO NOT TILL MY GARDEN AT ALL!!! then I put down weed barrier on top of it and cut an X on it where the plant is going to go. I only use weed barrier where I have big plants. I don't use it for beans, corn, anything that's like this I don't use it there. But here's the thing, where the weed barrier was the year before, there is not as many weeds to pull up!!! I LOVE MY WEED BARRIER!!!!!!! I got two rolls of 4' x 100' two for the price of one, it was only $30.00 for both 2 years ago and it has a 10 or 15 year warranty on it as well. I do 4' by 27' rows in my garden. So with the combo of using the shavings and weed barrier, It does such a good job of keeping weed to a minimum AND I find that it keeps A LOT OF WATER IN TOO!!!! Even when we had a 4 week drought this year, we did not have to water more then 1 that's right, 1 time a day!! And there is a LOT of worms in the ground too by doing this which is why I no longer till as I want to keep them there!!! The worms do the tilling for me now!

 

[Henicillin]

I have a dumb question about our ducks. We have one male mallard and two Rouen (sex unknown) young ducks. We are debating on keeping them or not. They have had their own area, fenced in, with a small unfiltered pond. It gets nasty quickly and the water has to be completely changed every 1.5 to 2 weeks. PITA.
Can we put the ducks in with the chickens? Including the coop? Would they need their own caged area in the coop?
I'd be willing to keep them if I could. As it sits right now, the 3 ducks are just as much, if not more, work than all the chickens combined.
My plans are to change the coop floor to sand.
What do other people do???

My eight Rouens live quite happily in the coop and run with the chickens, to the point that they appear to think they're chickens at times. They even go in the coop at night and sleep on the roosts (we have a setup like bleachers made of 2"x6" boards with the flat side up, so webbed feet fit just fine). They're messy little slobs, and think the water bowls are their personal tubs, but the chickens don't appear to mind duck soup, and it just means we dump bowls a couple of times a day. Thus far they're still totally ignoring their pool, but my ducks are admittedly weird.

I use pine shavings in the coop, and they keep the moisture down well. The coop is 10'x20', so it's a big shed and everyone has plenty of room in there. The run is approximately 18'x36', and slopes, so there are occasionally puddles at the lower end of it that please the ducks (and some of the chickens), but most of it stays dry. So, I have no problem keeping them together. Depending on your setup, though, your mileage may vary.

 

[rancher hicks]

I'll ask my one neighbor. There isn't another for another mile or more down the road. LOL Another thing that got me thinking was the "water system" they have set up for the horse in their pasture. There's this long pipe that looks like it runs from the mountain, across/under the road and thru to this spot they have this large barrel that is constantly filling up with water. It just runs and runs. And whatever falls out of the barrel goes into this little stream, again that is backed by this larger pipe that runs under the ground (and under the road). Could it be that the water from that pipe is just constantly getting recycled from the stream/mountain? I'll have to go talk to her this evening when she gets home from work.

When I was a kid there was a huge cast iron bowl sunk into the ground with a pipe that spring water ran out of and into the bowl for the cows. The area I lived in was full of under ground springs. Cold clean water.

 

[rancher hicks]

As far as the mulch go's here is what I do. Because I have poultry, when I take the shaving out of the barn. I put them in a pile FAR away from my birds to keep the critters away from my birds and then keep piling it up till early spring. Then in the spring, I take them and spread them out in my garden with it being 4-6 inches high up and I DO NOT TILL MY GARDEN AT ALL!!! then I put down weed barrier on top of it and cut an X on it where the plant is going to go. I only use weed barrier where I have big plants. I don't use it for beans, corn, anything that's like this I don't use it there. But here's the thing, where the weed barrier was the year before, there is not as many weeds to pull up!!! I LOVE MY WEED BARRIER!!!!!!! I got two rolls of 4' x 100' two for the price of one, it was only $30.00 for both 2 years ago and it has a 10 or 15 year warranty on it as well. I do 4' by 27' rows in my garden. So with the combo of using the shavings and weed barrier, It does such a good job of keeping weed to a minimum AND I find that it keeps A LOT OF WATER IN TOO!!!! Even when we had a 4 week drought this year, we did not have to water more then 1 that's right, 1 time a day!! And there is a LOT of worms in the ground too by doing this which is why I no longer till as I want to keep them there!!! The worms do the tilling for me now!

If you have a compost pile it's good to let the birds have access to it, so they can "work" it. Mine dig and scratch where I put the coop cleanings to find corn they may have missed or worms or cooties.
I even had some wild turkey's do it when they were passing through.

 

[Glasshen]

That system is probably what Rancher is talking about, don't know why it goes back that way though. Maybe it is keeping the container fresh by circulating it???

I looked at some property on the west side of the valley and there were weird PVC pipes coming up out of the ground making gurgling flowing noises. I totally didn't understand. There are crevices which appear on the hillsides, my friend tells stories of her old uncles loosing cows down some. Particularly the west side is unstable and there have been mud slides over the centuries. On the hill on the east side there is a warm water pool.

I think the people who have lived there a while have figured out ways to make it work.

 

[Lynzi777]

Well my landlord got back to me with this response:

"You are right that it is good to be cautious regarding the well water. The good news is that if it was going to be a problem, this is the summer that it would probably show up. This is the driest summer that I can remember in a long time. Thankfully, the spring that supplies the water to the well down there is a pretty good spring. All that being said, it is probably prudent to conserve water whenever you can. The only way to know for sure how the water is doing is to unscrew and remove the green well cover that is in the back yard. I screwed it down when you guys moved in because I didn't want to have to worry about the kids being tempted to explore that. I guess I would recommend that you be mindful to conserve water whenever you can during this dry spell. Again, the fact that it hasn't been an issue as of yet is probably a good sign."

So thank you all for the heads up and all the good advice. Like I said, we are new to this whole "well water" usage and I've been reminding my husband that just because we have a well, and don't pay for water doesn't mean that it will never run out. We have to be more cautious with how we use it now more than ever, especially since we always had city water. Still, I love living out here in the "country". This is definitely our best move yet and I hope we're here for the next 5+ years AT LEAST. It's just so peaceful. Now if I can only get my hands on some land so start my own real farm. LOL I'd love to add goats, pigs, maybe even a horse. I never in a million years thought my landlord would be open to the idea of letting us have these chickens - but he agreed when I told him I'd be staying with a small flock of no more 5-6 chickens. I still have my 4 chickens and haven't caught the Morefowl Disease thats been going around. ;-)

I am LOVING this weather! Too bad I have to get back to work and will be stuck inside for the next three hours. Bleh

 

[AQHAchick22]

Has anyone ever heard of a chicken with a "toe" growing out of its wing?
No this is sadly not a joke nor a trick question

 

[JayLyn07]

Help! My little pullets are beating the crap of my little roo found him bloody this evening as they where pulling his tail feathers out and help with tail pecking? Should I also consider gettingrid of the tail pulling snots since this seems to be a reaccuring problem.

 

[JayLyn07]

I did seperate him out!