The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[delisha]

so, here's a couple pictures of my possibly underweight Buff Orpington rooster.





With his lady friend. I think he's such a pretty bird, although I don't know a whole lot about the SOP. As far as weighing him, that's going to be a bit of an issue. I, hem, don't seem to currently own a scale that goes over 10lbs, and I know he's more than that. By heft I would say he's over ten pounds, but not more than fifteen.... I can try to borrow my Mom's scale over the weekend and actually get a weight. If you shouldn't be able to "easily feel" his keel, then he's definitely at least a little underweight. I'll up their night time ration. I keep having people tell me how Orpingtons are such piggies and will get obese and not even look for their own food if you let them.... I may have erred more on the side of not wanting to over feed.

I was cutting up stew beef today, so everyone got raw meat, I got fifteen minutes of laughs out of watching the chicks chase each other all over the brooder with meat hanging out of their beaks. Because the piece your neighbor has is evidently ALWAYS tastier than the one you could get out of the dish yourself.

Your bird is not over weight..I would not say he is under either..He has a narrow body for an Orp so you are probably feeding him perfectly.

Delisha, I got regular beef liver today, thats good for the ducks right? We're going to cut it up and freeze it in portions, so once a week k can give them a bit.

It's funny, I worry more about the chickens weight than my own. I swear they're too skinny, but their food dish is never empty, so obviously they have enough to eat. I'm just a worrier.

Great.. job Ash..stop worrying and enjoy your poultry

Delisha -
You mentioned that you brought home (was it mites?) in a bale of straw and that you didn't "check" it.

-How would you have checked it? Would you have seen them plainly in that bale?
-What did you do to treat...did you treat the coops only? The birds only? Both?
-How long did it take you to get rid of them?
-Why did you use the method you did?
-Have you ever used any other methods? Compare their effectiveness.

lol

I have done it several times and it is embarrassing. I have brought it home in straw and in hay. I also have it in my wood chip pile now. I doused my whole pile with cigarette tea.

It is very easy to check and that is why it is embarrassing.

You take a white piece of paper and place it on the ground secured by small stones on corners. Take a handful of product being tested and tap it on the surface of the paper. Mites live in the hollows of the straw so you just need to make sure you tap ends on the paper. With wood chip I just cup some in my hand and shake it over the paper. You can see the little critter crawling as easy as pie.

This last time was easy to get rid of them because I discovered it almost immediately. I treated every bird and the coop even though I only seen it on one bird. It took me and Kendra probably a solid 2 1/2 hours to treat all the chicks and blow dry them. My DH started a fire in the double decker coop to make it a little nicer and warmer for the chicks. I treated the adults but I did not blow them dry. I did 14 adult birds in 1 hour.

I have used ash and prefer ash. This time of year the wood is burried in the snow. Not enough ash for the birds to do a through treatment. This time I used a dip.
You can use a more natural dip like:
1 cup of hydrogen peroxide
3 Tablespoons of Borax (you know the 20 mule team laundry stuff)
1 gallon of water
I use a spray with neem oil and let it dry. I am a smoker and make a tea too from the butts. I treat, let it dry and check later. I retreat in 10 days.

 

[Leahs Mom]

...and holy crap, it's 5:30 and I haven't started supper! I got lost in BYC for the day... I think I'm going to make my DH take me out, since I was too "busy" to cook

Hello! I won't try to answer many of your questions as Delisha and Mumsy will have lots of good input on the bare-backe hens, etc. I did want to put a link to the 3-part series on LACTO-FERMENTING feed that may answer some of your questions on that. It may have been that there was an excess of yeasts/molds in the feed causing the squishy crop but I couldn't say for sure. Take a look at these articles and the comments after them and see if that answers some of your questions on that:

Lacto-fermented Feed Part 1
Lacto-fermented Feed Part 2
Lacto-fermented Feed Part 3


I also tried the pumpkins but my girls never did like them. They didn't care for them fresh or after the freezing and thawing. I imagine other folks had better luck with that! I had a whole load of them and tried them at several stages and they just weren't interested. I ended up putting them in the garden for compost!

 

[Leahs Mom]

ETA: I meant to quote for this, it was in reference to honking Ameraucanas...

That just made me laugh

("honkin' Ameraucanas...")

 

[CoopChick719]

It is so nice to only have to worry about the two of us on most nights for dinner. I was the same way driving everywhere for all 3 kids, plus trying to work full time. I did not want to miss one event and I volunteered too. I enjoyed it, but now it is our time, my husband and I. So nice!
My chicks are Therapy Chickens too. When I started my raised bed garden my DH called our tomatoes thousand dollar tomatoes, now he is saying these chicks better grow up and lay golden eggs. He loves the chickens as much or more then I do though. I am still trying to catch up on this thread, almost there...to those of you that have had losses, I am really sorry for your loss...I have learned the past few weeks that it is easy to get attached to a chicken, especially the sweet ones, so many personalities. Also, to those of you with all those cute pups, adorable! Wish I could have one like Henry. I am so envious of all of you hatching chicks on your own, those pics of them are adorable, my DH is lucky we live on 1 acre and are limited. Those of you with all that land,,,,so jealous!!! I also would much rather be outside then in the mall shopping, if there is something I need or want I like to go in and get it and get out.

LOL LynnEBC, My DH says the same thing about our eggs too! He keeps telling his friends he's just waiting for the call from Egglands Best!

Some of his co-workers told him that their wives went thru the chicken phase and he'd end up taking care of the chickens...that's what happened to them. He said you don't know my wife or me very well if you think that's gonna happen. However, he buys them treats and likes to watch them as much as I do. He even had them out free ranging when I got home from work the other day. My coop is 8 x 12 and live on just an acre as well so I'm envious of all the hatchers too! We do live along a power line so I have "borrowed" some land...I'm sure the power company won't mind.

Why I am happy it's not snowing this torrential rain for 3+ days is getti old. My yard has never flooded as bad as it has this week. I keep thinking when I get home my hens will have turned into ducks !!!

This looks like my backyard! We had snow, sleet & rain today. Woohoo...NOT!!!

ok, there won't be a necropsy! I put her in an empty galvinized trash can in the run (it is freezing temp outside) til I could get to it - but when I went to do chicken chores at 4 this morning, something had gotten into the run and made off with her body. The snow shorted out the fence, and since the hens were locked up tight in the coop, I am not real careful about securing the gate at night. oh well, hope I fed whatever it was - coons are barely out of hibernation here, and with the new snow (couple more inches overnight) I couldn't see any tracks. I knew there was a reason I shoveled snow off the electric fence wire on wed and got it up and going for the season ! too bad it snowed so much on Thursday. all I can say is TGIF and where the heck is spring? it is still snowing!

Maybe it's for the best LaLa...hopefully whatever got it needed it....circle of life...even so it's still sad.

 

[Kassaundra]

Hello! I won't try to answer many of your questions as Delisha and Mumsy will have lots of good input on the bare-backe hens, etc. I did want to put a link to the 3-part series on LACTO-FERMENTING feed that may answer some of your questions on that. It may have been that there was an excess of yeasts/molds in the feed causing the squishy crop but I couldn't say for sure. Take a look at these articles and the comments after them and see if that answers some of your questions on that:

Lacto-fermented Feed Part 1
Lacto-fermented Feed Part 2
Lacto-fermented Feed Part 3


I also tried the pumpkins but my girls never did like them. They didn't care for them fresh or after the freezing and thawing. I imagine other folks had better luck with that! I had a whole load of them and tried them at several stages and they just weren't interested. I ended up putting them in the garden for compost!

I thought my girls were the only ones on BYC that didn't like pumpkins!!!!!! lol lol lol But they will smooth tear up the cucumbers!!!!! even the bitter ones.

 

[Leahs Mom]

lol

I have done it several times and it is embarrassing. I have brought it home in straw and in hay. I also have it in my wood chip pile now. I doused my whole pile with cigarette tea.

It is very easy to check and that is why it is embarrassing.

You take a white piece of paper and place it on the ground secured by small stones on corners. Take a handful of product being tested and tap it on the surface of the paper. Mites live in the hollows of the straw so you just need to make sure you tap ends on the paper. With wood chip I just cup some in my hand and shake it over the paper. You can see the little critter crawling as easy as pie.

This last time was easy to get rid of them because I discovered it almost immediately. I treated every bird and the coop even though I only seen it on one bird. It took me and Kendra probably a solid 2 1/2 hours to treat all the chicks and blow dry them. My DH started a fire in the double decker coop to make it a little nicer and warmer for the chicks. I treated the adults but I did not blow them dry. I did 14 adult birds in 1 hour.

I have used ash and prefer ash. This time of year the wood is burried in the snow. Not enough ash for the birds to do a through treatment. This time I used a dip.
You can use a more natural dip like:
1 cup of hydrogen peroxide
3 Tablespoons of Borax (you know the 20 mule team laundry stuff)
1 gallon of water
I use a spray with neem oil and let it dry. I am a smoker and make a tea too from the butts. I treat, let it dry and check later. I retreat in 10 days.

So, just to clarify:

You used a dip of peroxide, borax and water on the BIRDS.
And neem oil or cigarette tea on the roosts and in crevices in the COOP.

Am I getting that right?

 

[bluebirdnanny]

RE: "Which makes me think of another FF question- for anyone who does FF and lives anywhere with HARD freezes (I live in zone 4... -20), do you keep your fermenting feed in the house? And does anyone ferment feed for other species, like turkeys or ducks?

And lastly, does anyone else do the thing with the pumpkins? Yeah, it was really early in the other thread, so I'll explain- Beekissed said she kept pumpkins in her barn to freeze/thaw over the winter and then fed them in February/March. So I'm going to totally do that, but I was wondering if there are any other gems out there of ways to get more fresh, nutritious, and easy-ish (like not complex sprouting systems) foods to our birds in the winter. I'm talking things old timers did- like can you do the same thing with turnips to make them appetizing for chickens (mine love the greens but won't touch the roots)? Any other garden goodies I can grow to store? "
........

Yes it gets very frozen here. I keep mine in the mud room by the back door. If it is too cold out I believe it slows the fermenting...at least mine appears to.

Mine went after and threw around the pumpkin seeds I saved from past years. More like playing with them. I suspect they were having trouble cracking them open. I broke a few and left them in the kennel I use for unsupervised outside time. I didn't see them eat them but they were gone bye evening. Perhaps they 'planted' them with their scratching. They do tear into cantaloupe halves though. Going to try growing pumpkins and see what they do with them. Snowed since then and icy rain, sleet and snow again. They haven't spent more than 5 minutes outside in the last few days, but they did have an open coop to the kennel after insisting I leave it open when I fed them. Just chose not to I guess, like a dog.... I want out but when you open the door they turn right around and go back in.

 

[delisha]

Wow it's hard to stay caught up here sometimes!

I really wanted to make my own meat birds with my new Dark Cornish girls but since it's now almost been a month and no eggs, I think I got scammed.

is it possible for them to stop laying permanently as a result of being allowed to brood too many times? Anything I can try to restart the egg machine? They seem pretty young.
Not necessasarily. Chickens do not like to be moved, and some are more stressed than others.
The rescued baby bunnies, who are currently residing in a chicken tractor, are domestic rabbits that someone dumped. They are sleeping inside until they find homes or get a bit bigger.

So I'm sad to say my broody's eggs never hatched. I have no idea why. Checked all our breakfast eggs on the weekend 100% fertility. Since she's still determined to sit, she's getting 6 HRIR babies tomorrow night.

I hope she accepts them. Any tips?
Don't do it
I also discovered scaly legs mites on the weekend. Just on 2 girls that came from the same place months ago. Funny that I couldn't see anything before. I am using PAM to treat haha maybe not natural but very convenient!
Pam might work. Are all your birds together? Are you treating them all?
Sorry for the ramble!

I just read a great deal of this thread AND a great deal (the first 10 pages and the last 10 pages) of the Road less traveled thread this afternoon... what can I say, it snowed (is still snowing, actually) and I ran out of projects and the will to do them. Over the course of reading these threads I came up with some questions...

Let me preface the questions, though, by saying that my management style is (or at least I would like it to be) pretty much 100% like Beekissed... a mixture of respect and compassion without undue sentimentality or nonsense (yep, no chicken diapers here). My chickens have a well kept coop and run and free range all day whenever there isn't snow on the ground. I'm going on my third spring with chickens and have yet to use a drug or chemical of any sort. But I cull (and eat, if not for illness) my hens. Most of you probably know what I mean (and are probably the same), so I won't explain further.

BUT I still don't know 100% what to cull for. I'm out with my chickens a lot (when it's not -20 out), I watch them, I hang out with them. I know what I want, but I guess I have a hard time keeping track of who has the desirable characteristics... Take laying, for example. I don't have (nor do I really want to build, unless it's the only option) trap nests, so I don't know who's laying what. I want to cull for laying, obviously, I just don't know how to go about it. Frame is easy, I just have to feel and weigh them. I also find temperment easy to cull for. But there are other things that confuse me. For example, breed standards- if I'm not raising show birds, as long as they're healthy, have an average or above average for breed rate of lay, and average or above average carcass isn't that enough? Or should I worry about breed standards? And I've heard someone (I can't remember who...) say they cull any hen who gets a bare back... is that a good or bad idea? My gut says bad, both because my best broody hen gets a bare back sometime, and because the fact that the rooster gives a hen a lot of attention has to mean she's good/super fertile/has good genetics (like how we're unconciously attracted to people with symetrical faces because it means good genetics), etc. I do cull in the fall to cut my numbers before winter, but I'm usually just guessing. Culling for illness is obvious, but I've only ever done that once for a chicken who was either eggbound or something similar.

You have some good instinct. As a note, all thought you do not show or do not plan to show the SOP is there for a reason. it tells what is the correct body structure of a spacific breed of chicken. It tells you why this breed of chickens body should be shaped like a bowl and why that breed should be shaped like a brick. Why the intestines lay this way and that way and why an egg is formed to give the hen optimum egg laying years with vigor and less health issues. Keep your best broody. It is a quality you seek in a chicken. Keep a chicken that gives you full flavor and a full meal on the table. Keep a chicken that lays on a normal basis for 6 years and keep breeding and producing off spring that have the attributes you are seeking.

Cull your crooked keels, wry tails, narrow body's, close legs, bowl sitters, and unthriftys. You should not have any egg laying issues after that.


(PS I know culling isn't exactly a "natural" issue, (I beg to differ)but it fits in with this type of management, and I felt this would be a good place to get helpful answers-
My other question is about fermented feed- first off, let me say that I did fermented feed for my broilers last year and it went AMAZINGLY. It's hard to quantify the exact affect it had on their feed intake because that batch was also the first I allowed to free range (I had them in a tractor before that, so still on grass, but we all know they don't get much addl' feed that way)... and because I didn't keep track of how many bags of feed I bought. But I do know that they ate a lot less, they drank a lot less (I filled their water half as often), their poop was like normal layer poop (only bigger...), and I had zero problems- I got 25 chicks, only one mysterious chick death the second day, and butchered 24 very healthy birds, all still walking and not a single purple comb, at 9 weeks.

Oh, yeah, to the question... I had a bunch of young layers This chicken was otherwise healthy. I stopped the FF for them and it went away. Should I have culled her and kept it up? Any thoughts either way would be welcome, and maybe I'll give it another go this spring. Which makes me think of another FF question- for anyone who does FF and lives anywhere with HARD freezes (I live in zone 4... -20), do you keep your fermenting feed in the house? And does anyone ferment feed for other species, like turkeys or ducks?
I feed all of my poultry FF I keep it in the house during winter.
And lastly, does anyone else do the thing with the pumpkins? Yeah, it was really early in the other thread, so I'll explain- Beekissed said she kept pumpkins in her barn to freeze/thaw over the winter and then fed them in February/March. So I'm going to totally do that, but I was wondering if there are any other gems out there of ways to get more fresh, nutritious, and easy-ish (like not complex sprouting systems) foods to our birds in the winter. I'm talking things old timers did- like can you do the same thing with turnips to make them appetizing for chickens (mine love the greens but won't touch the roots)? Any other garden goodies I can grow to store?
I do sprout beans, peas, wheat. I do freeze pumpkin for them.
And I think that's all the questions I had. Thanks!

As far as FF and your one chickens reaction..I would think it was an allergic reaction. Try making this time with out the ACV. Use a different starter or nothing at all. I suggest you do it again and make it outside, just wet your fed down and keep it submerged in water. Do not add anything. Start feeding on day 3.

Brinsea has their incubators on sale. I placed my order last week and was able to use the coupon code "ADozenGirlz" to get 10% more off!!!

Quote: great suggestion

 

[BlueMouse]

Your bird is not over weight..I would not say he is under either..He has a narrow body for an Orp so you are probably feeding him perfectly.

I should mention that in the frontal shot he is doing that funny thing they do where they stand up REALLY tall and skinny. So it might be deceptive as to his frame? I think he's a pretty hefty bird, but not like some of the English Orpingtons I see out there. I wish I could have gotten my hands on one of those. But this guy was available and gentle. I wasn't sure about my ability to train a rooster with no experience, and it seems like even with training whether you get a gentle one is kind of a crap shoot anyhow. And I can't have a mean rooster with three kids under the age of four running around in the yard with the chickens.

 

[armorfirelady]

Which makes me think of another FF question- for anyone who does FF and lives anywhere with HARD freezes (I live in zone 4... -20), do you keep your fermenting feed in the house? And does anyone ferment feed for other species, like turkeys or ducks?

And lastly, does anyone else do the thing with the pumpkins? Yeah, it was really early in the other thread, so I'll explain- Beekissed said she kept pumpkins in her barn to freeze/thaw over the winter and then fed them in February/March. So I'm going to totally do that, but I was wondering if there are any other gems out there of ways to get more fresh, nutritious, and easy-ish (like not complex sprouting systems) foods to our birds in the winter. I'm talking things old timers did- like can you do the same thing with turnips to make them appetizing for chickens (mine love the greens but won't touch the roots)? Any other garden goodies I can grow to store?

And I think that's all the questions I had. Thanks!

I live where it snows.....My FF is in the house when the temps are below 60 degrees & it wouldnt ferment outside. I only have 4 hens so I only use 3 gallon buckets to feed them. Of course now that they have a bigger area to pasture they are eating even less feed.

I collected pumpkins last fall & stored them outside on a pallet covered with a tarp. On warmer days when I could get one of the pumkins to break I would give them to the hens. They loved the guts & seeds. Tho I am sure I might have a few extra pumpkin plants growing this season from seeds the hens didnt eat & scratched underneath

But free pumpkins are good

I am also planting a variety of veggies this year for the hens. Seeds are cheap!!! Last fall I usccessfully froze apples, grapes, pumpkins, squash, cukes & watermelon that I pulled out through the winter to feed my hens. It was very successful.
I planted beets & turnips this year & I dont know if they will eat them but I figured I could chop them up in the food processor into smaller pieces and put in their FF (kind of like hiding veggies in food from kids)