Oregon

[SHRIVERFARMGIRL]

We have our border collie separated from the chickens or she would herd them all the time. I cant insert a picture it seems, but we have a double fence. Chickens are in the center, and she has a fence all the way around it and part of the field unused by the chickens. She herds them (she thinks) all the time ... (literally all the time).

Keeps her happy and the chickens

and rabbits

safe. Just something to think about. Would work for ducks too.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

I feed a mix of grains along side a pelleted feed. My mix is dried peas, soft wheat and corn. We buy the peas and wheat from Farmers directly out of the field and the corn from a mill. It goes from the combine directly into the back of our pick-up and we shovel it out into barrels. My chickens beak out the grains trying to get to what they consider is their "favorite" I suppose. They do not beak out the pellets, in fact they eat very little of the pellets. I just don't give them more feed until they have cleaned up the ground under the feeders. I have considered putting chicken wire or something like that over the feeders so they can not beak it out......... I think your feed idea is great, but it may not solve the problem of the beaking out............

I would like to find a local feed that has meat protein in it rather than veg. proteins. Anyone know of one??

Also looking for some pure Ameraucana's for a friend. Need only be pet quality but must lay blue eggs. POL or just started would be great, let me know what you have.

We switched from the big galvanized store-bought feeders to home-made PVC feeders ... 4" pipe, "long" right angle connector, shorter length of 4" pipe with a pattern of large holes drilled into the top-side half. Sand the holes smooth (trust me on this). Cap the bottom end, leave the top open for filling (or use a drainage pipe cap which doesn't fit as tight so it can be removed with ease), attach to the wall of the coop with chimney brackets or metal plumbers tape up kind of high so the birds have to reach over the top to just get their little heads into the holes, tilted forward to encourage gravity to work for you in distributing the food the full length of the trough.

These feeders are awesome for eliminating the beaking out issue but, they are pretty crap for re-filling themselves and I find myself scooching food into the eating area with my fingers several times per day so my birds don't starve. I need a monkey to perform this duty for me, or I need to tweak my physics. One thing we thought of was switching to pellets as theoretically those should slide down into the trough better than the crumbles we are currently feeding. Whole grains would work on this same theory. In theory. One can hope.

Another issue with the crumbles is the whole end of the new trough feeders are filling up with the dust from the food, so we have to remove the end caps and remove the dust pretty often. I toss it in the run, and they do peck at it. But still.

If one were feeding fewer birds, one could eliminate the corner and then "cap" the upright hopper at the bottom with a clever arrangement of round-to-square pipe converter and a square vinyl fence post cap screwed upside-down to the bottom of that converter as a little dish (the caps are the cheaper "pyramid caps" one finds in the fencing aisle of Lowes and such ... the people at my local Home Depot don't do fencing, so were not useful with this info, but a quick online search will provide a good visual), maybe a little notch in the bottom of the eating side of the converter piece, too (so pellets and grains can move through). Pipes, converters and caps all come in 5", 4" or 3" options. One or two birds can eat from this style of feeder at a time and the feeders are inexpensive and easy to make ... especially if someone from the store does the sawing of the pipe for you. I'm thinking it would also work really well in a broody pen ... our broodies REALLY like to show the chicks how to scratch by dumping out as much food as possible and burying it in the bedding.

These feeders are SO much less expensive than the store-bought feeders. We have several up around the coop. I think this helps with pecking-order issues. Now if we can just get the feed to slide from the hopper to the full length of the trough I will be kissing the sky in gratitude. I could maybe even leave my house for more than a few hours. Like maybe even over night! Imagine that ...

But anyway ... back to the topic of the quoted post ... I think you are right about the chickens playing favorites with the whole grains. Is grinding them the only way to discourage this behavior? Hard to say! I can't go into the coop to find the whole feeder full of peas while all the corn has vanished. I want my chickens to have a well-balanced diet.

I never had kids, but I'm beginning to understand how difficult children must be.

I called around about protein sources in feeds. So far I've only found the soy and canola options available in commercial chicken feeds. Because I'm pretty anti canola and soy for myself, I've thought a lot about fish-meal protein for the flock. I think I read a hint about how/why fish-meal protein wasn't working very well for Joel Salatin in the online preview of his Pastured Poultry Profits book, but I'd have to get the book and read the whole thing to get the entire story on that. I gather there are concerns with using meat protein meals for chicken feeds, but as chickens are omnivores I'm very curious to explore it. I do know that we don't feed our flock any meat products and one of our customers did a taste-test of the Farm Fresh Eggs in the area and declared ours tasted the best. She said all of the other eggs she tested left a funny after-taste, so even though she could get some of those for free, she prefers to buy from us. That made me smile, but it also makes me a little cautious about messing with their feed too much.

Our Easter Eggers lay nice green eggs. The one adorable little hen who gave us more blue eggs passed away (that's the only mature bird we've had die of unknown causes).

We have some more September EE babies, and some EE roosters with the pea combs (feed store chicks), and some slightly-younger EE mutts we hatched out from our own flock. We're hoping we can raise or breed something with bluer eggs ... I might cross an EE hen with the Brown Leghorn roo to see what hatches from that combo.

I gather there is a new-ish-to-here English breed that also lays sky blue eggs ... I forget the name ... I might have to look into hatching some of those. I'm definitely into this chicken thing for the pretty eggs, so will be ordering colorful hatching eggs from other BYCs in the spring to put under a broody.

We currently get white, green, and many shades of brown eggs ... some of the light brown ones are really pink to my eye, and some of the darker brown ones are purple. I am really craving chocolate brown eggs so have Cockoo Marans maturing now (though unluckily all but one is a rooster!). If those work out, I can maybe make an olive egger cross.

I bet if you make a separate post here stating you want proven but young blue egg layers someone local could hook you up fast.

Can you tell I'm procrastinating something today? Type, type, type ...

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

We have our border collie separated from the chickens or she would herd them all the time. I cant insert a picture it seems, but we have a double fence. Chickens are in the center, and she has a fence all the way around it and part of the field unused by the chickens. She herds them (she thinks) all the time ... (literally all the time).

Keeps her happy and the chickens

and rabbits

safe. Just something to think about. Would work for ducks too.

LOVE it! Now I just need to marry the heir to a fencing fortune!

Really, this could work GREAT with my planned pasture arrangement.

Edited to add: My lab would literally never stop playing fetch if he could find a partner. We have tried to wear him out and couldn't, even when playing fetch in the water. He is only two, so I gather we only have another 3 years of this eager puppy stage. He does sleep REALLY well if he's been out "working." But he never wants to come in if we've been throwing pinecones or frisbees for him. I can imagine how persistent herding dogs must be.

 

[peepacheep]

Zanna I saw an Oregon milled, (Hood River or McMinville?) brand of layer feed with white fish meal (less oily fish) at the Back Yard Farmer on 5th in Eugene last year. Think they still carry it and they could tell you the brand so to find it closer to you. I supplement with cheap tuna cat food, easy for one hen to get the least bit too much and the oily tuna flavor carries over to the eggs. Somehow salmon omelets taste wonderful but tuna flavor?? Edible but....not my personal favorite.

 

[M-I Chicken]

Okay Oregon Chicken Lovers ... someone on another thread suggested contacting a local feed mill to make a custom feed mix for chickens. There are lots of reasons why this might be a good idea, but it was suggested to me that feeding a mix of whole(r) grains is a way to help with the feed waste issue I'm currently having -- my chickens beaked 90 lbs of food onto the coop floor in one day.

For various other reasons I've been thinking of doing this myself, but know feed mills must mix the feed in rather large batches (like 500 lbs at a time), and this would probably be more than is practical for me even though I do have a lot of chickens for a backyard chicken wrangler.

The solution is so simple it is elegant: form a buying co-op to share the batches of feed.

My question is this: Is Anyone Interested? Feed mixed locally, from as many local, non-GMO, perhaps also organic, ingredients as is practical, with the rest of the nutrients shipped in.

Here is the recipe(s) for the feed that the BYC member pointed me toward. http://marystilwell.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/marys-whole-grain-chicken-feed-recipe/ This is just a starting-point recipe and we could tweak it according to our resources and needs.

Hi LeslieD,

Not sure if this company will work for you... Azure Standard is an Oregon company used in rural and not so rural areas for direct buying/ and or group ordering using drop sites (cheapest). I live by a farm that serves as a group drop site, and buy from Azure Standard though this farm - because the group order is large, we do not pay extra for shipping, which is nice to keep costs down. Anyway, I love them... If you live near me, I can provide you with the contact info for my drop site.

From Azure's web site: "specialize in natural, organic, earth-friendly foods and products. We deliver directly to customers, buying clubs and retailers by semi truck and UPS."

You will be required to create an account to see the prices - but they do spam you, in fact I've never received an email from them. best of luck - great idea.

 

[chickened]

Hi LeslieD,

Not sure if this company will work for you... Azure Standard is an Oregon company used in rural and not so rural areas for direct buying/ and or group ordering using drop sites (cheapest). I live by a farm that serves as a group drop site, and buy from Azure Standard though this farm - because the group order is large, we do not pay extra for shipping, which is nice to keep costs down. Anyway, I love them... If you live near me, I can provide you with the contact info for my drop site.

From Azure's web site: "specialize in natural, organic, earth-friendly foods and products. We deliver directly to customers, buying clubs and retailers by semi truck and UPS."

You will be required to create an account to see the prices - but they do spam you, in fact I've never received an email from them. best of luck - great idea.

I am aquainted with a couple of the boys and they have no problem with calling them with questions.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

I'm intrigued. I currently only have seven girls, but intend to grow to (a still relatively small) 10 this spring. But I am intrigued and living in Aloha.

We buy the peas and wheat from Farmers directly out of the field and the corn from a mill. It goes from the combine directly into the back of our pick-up and we shovel it out into barrels. My chickens beak out the grains trying to get to what they consider is their "favorite" I suppose.

Hi LeslieD,

Not sure if this company will work for you... Azure Standard is an Oregon company used in rural and not so rural areas for direct buying/ and or group ordering using drop sites (cheapest). I live by a farm that serves as a group drop site, and buy from Azure Standard though this farm - because the group order is large, we do not pay extra for shipping, which is nice to keep costs down. Anyway, I love them... If you live near me, I can provide you with the contact info for my drop site.

From Azure's web site: "specialize in natural, organic, earth-friendly foods and products. We deliver directly to customers, buying clubs and retailers by semi truck and UPS."

You will be required to create an account to see the prices - but they do spam you, in fact I've never received an email from them. best of luck - great idea.

I am aquainted with a couple of the boys and they have no problem with calling them with questions.

Good to know. Thanks!

 

[TurtlePowerTrav]

How y'all doing? I need this thread back on my first page, so

.

 

[BantyChickenLuv]

How y'all doing? I need this thread back on my first page, so .

Well, you know how I've been from the WA thread- But I'm so excited, my HRIR Bantams are coming at the of this month.

 

[sbpdx]

Garden Home, Oregon.

The current flock includes six birds including three chickens and three ducks.

Their names are:
1. Regular Chicken (she's blind in one eye, and she's the leader);
2. Red Chicken (beautiful bird, scared of her own shadow);
3. Black Chicken (The #2 in command, after Regular Chicken);

And three ducks (all runners):
4. Big Duck (the biggest of the Indian runners);
5. Black Duck (the black duck);
6. Other Duck (not Big Duck or Black Duck).

Regular Chicken has pretty much stopped laying, so now I rely on her leadership and pest-eating qualities. Everybody else still lays regularly (the ducks are prolific layers).
Good flock, and I expect to add some more chickens when the weather warms a bit (no more ducks though, the mess that three make is about all I can handle).

Anybody else in Garden Home?