Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Ribh]

I don't recall any of the dogs in Catalonia being particularly interested in chicken droppings. The chicken howeverwould spend many happy hours cracking open sheep droppings for the small grain particles or digging through the donkey middens for bugs and grubs. I won't go into detail about what they fished out of the compost heap. Given I don't kiss dogs or chickens I don't see it as a problem.

All I can say is these dogs follow the chickens round & clean up any poop before it hits the ground! And there is no way I would kiss a dog~ or even a chicken for that matter. I don't even kiss my cats & they are much cleaner animals!

Tax:
Sorbet & Tootsie.

 

[no fly zone]

Update on the turkey

 

[Shadrach]

What is your long-term plan for Dig? Do you expect him to be driven out by Henry eventually?

No, at least I hope not.
As for a plan; well I make one and then things change.
Dig is already showing signs of wanting to be more independant. Some cockerels just leave, others are content to be a satalite male, others stay and eventually challenge the senior rooster. The keeping conditions and availabilty of other territory and other hens must have a major impact on what the junior male does.
Dig doesn't have many options currently. Henry has been good with Dig so far. Henry knows Dig is a male and Henry will know that Dig is a potential challenger.

Cillin, a senior rooster had a son called Treacle and they lived together without major problems for many months. Cillin was a terrible father. He was way too hard on Treacle. Treacle grew to be quite a large chap a bit heacier than his father. They started fighting, Treacle lost over and over and then one day Treacle won and from that day on Cillin was driven out of the tribe coop and not allowed near the hens or commnal feed stations by his son.

I'm hoping that Dig isn't going to grow to Henry's size and would think very very carefully about making a challenge.
At the moment Mow and Dig are very close but as Mow matures I expect her to spend more time with Carbon and Fret, and of course Henry, the senior rooster,
leaving Dig on his own more.
Best case Henry dies without things getting violent and Dig takes over. Worst case, there are a few possibilities none of which I'm delighted about.

 

[BDutch]

I'm not evangelical about any feeding method.

My evangelic is a combination of easy, healthy & vegetarian (except for insects). Buying organic feed without fermenting is both.
For spoiled chickens it cant compete with fermented feed of course.

I dug that garden, 800cm deep at some points

Are you sure it isn't 800 mm? Or were you digging for a well?

Tax:

 

[Shadrach]

Are you sure it isn't 800 mm? Or were you digging for a well?

Corrected. Thanks.

 

[Shadrach]

I keep coming up against a particular question. Why has commercial feed got such a low fat content?

There are very few things a chicken will eat and thrive on with a fat content of less than 5%. Even grass has a higher fat content than 5% for many grass types when dried.
Worms, loads of fat!
Nuts, loads of fat.
Bugs, who knows the fat content of every bug a chicken will eat?
Meat, fish, both have a relatively high fat content but high protein as well.

Science has decided we need fats in our diet and some fats are better for us than others. My own fat intake is low compared to many but I'm way past 5%.

So what's with the commercial feed at less than 5% fat?

 

[fuzzi]

I've done intensive double dug gardens, I've done single dug gardens, and I've done no dig. Quite a few gardens of each kind over years in many different places, so I think I have pretty good experience to speak from. I never much liked the idea of raised beds in boxes because I'd rather work with the soil in the ground than constructing something to hold a bunch of "garden soil" from a hardware store. I did hammer together some boxes from scrap wood once and fill them with raked leaves and compost and used them to grow quite a bit of veg, mostly greens, but that was when I was between places and only had an asphalt alley for a growing space. As a last resort. If there's in ground space available, there's no need for a raised bed, and yes, I've worked with really heavy clay soil. It has potential, just have to develop it a bit.

Anyway, in my experience, double dug beds aren't worth the work. It's like the marathon run or English channel swim of gardening. Bragging rights for over achievers. Or masochism. I never noticed any real increase in what grew from a double dug or once dug garden.

No dig, as you've commented, often inspires people to put all sorts of plastics on the ground to shade out weeds and prep the area. When I tried no dig, I used a heavy canvas tent tarp with an old door I found on top of it for weight. Didn't leave a bunch of plastic in the ground. But even though, it wasn't a roaring success. It seems to me that even when weeds/grass have been shaded out, the ground still needs to be opened up and folding in some nice organic matter certainly helps. It doesn't have to be fancy... A few bags of raked up leaves mixed with a bucket of manure of some kind makes a decent nitrogen/carbon mix without getting all geeky about the exact proportions. Horse stables are a great place to get free manure (besides chickens of course). When I lived in cities, I would just go to the stables where the mounted police horses were kept and shovel a few buckets for free.

The other problem with no dig is that a lot of people just don't seem to realize that for all that carbon heavy stuff (wood chips, straw,etc) takes a loonnng time to become a decent growing medium. Like at least two years in a temperate climate.

I always got the best results from a happy medium: by digging to the depth of most garden plant roots (6 inches or so), folding in manure and raked leaves, and mulching over.

And the best time to do this for a really thriving garden is not in the early spring -- it's the late fall in prep for the next spring. Time and microbes work wonders.

I used to double dig my vegetable garden to add nutrients, compost, etc. I stopped vegetable gardening when it became too difficult to dig (arthritis).

BUT I got back into vegetable gardening after investing in a 4'x8'x14" raised bed kit. I can handle loosening the soil and digging in humus, and I hurt only slightly afterwards. If I could only have an in-ground garden...I wouldn't have one at all.

I don't use plastic as mulch. If I want to discourage weeds I use cardboard or carpet.

 

[RoyalChick]

I keep coming up against a particular question. Why has commercial feed got such a low fat content?

There are very few things a chicken will eat and thrive on with a fat content of less than 5%. Even grass has a higher fat content than 5% for many grass types when dried.
Worms, loads of fat!
Nuts, loads of fat.
Bugs, who knows the fat content of every bug a chicken will eat?
Meat, fish, both have a relatively high fat content but high protein as well.

Science has decided we need fats in our diet and some fats are better for us than others. My own fat intake is low compared to many but I'm way past 5%.

So what's with the commercial feed at less than 5% fat?

Maybe cost?
I believe oil has to be added to commercial feed to bring it up to 5% fat content. I have seen articles that clearly suggest higher than 5% is better (for both males and females). So I suspect it is another one of those ‘minima’.
Ever since I dug into the physiology of fatty liver disease I have been much less worried about fatty treats like nuts, cheese, beef (FLD is more about carbohydrate metabolism and not enough exercise than about dietary fat intake).

 

[Molpet]

So what's with the commercial feed at less than 5% fat?

I wonder if it is because fat goes rancid faster than most of the other ingredients.

 

[RoyalChick]

I wonder if it is because fat goes rancid faster than most of the other ingredients.

Good thought.