The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[lazy gardener]

This may be a silly question, but how exactly do you crush egg shells to feed back to the chickens? Mine aren't laying yet, but I get eggs from someone else who has chickens (not from the store). I'm hoping they start laying soon! They'll be 20 weeks old on Monday.

I've been taking the shells and trying to scrape off the inside membrane under running water, then letting them dry. Then I just crush them with my hands, and keep crushing them with my fingers until they're somewhere in between the size of watermelon seeds and bell pepper seeds. Then I just pour them in a pile on the dirt.

Is that OK? Or should I be crushing them finer?

Don't worry about the albumen. If they can be spread out enough to dry, no need to rinse. If I have a lot of eggs used at once, I'll rinse out the insides. Let them all dry until you have enough to bother with, lightly microwave (extra precaution, not necessary) then put in a paper or plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin or a glass, stomp on them, give them to the girls.

I'm wondering if I could build them a sun porch next fall from old windows. SHould be a way to hinge the windows to form the roof....set it on haybales....presto a sun porch! wouldn't have to do it if I was willing to shovel the whole run....laziness is a bad trait.

Neat idea combining old windows with hay bales. I'm doing that with hay bales for a re-cycleable cold frame this winter. When no longer needed, I'll use the bales to finish mulching my garden.

 

[aaggjg]

whimpering?
Have you had a chance to check her legs to see if she has injured something?

I have no experience with silkies, hopefully someone will chime in.
Keeping my fingers crossed for you and Pia.

Yeah there is something wrong with her .... I don't see an injury but she takes 2 steps and sits down. Where is Mumsy when I need here!!! I gave her some polyvisol baby vitamins incase it is vitamin deficiency ??? I remember reading somewhere about this being common in silkies .... but I'm not sure what to do for her besides keep a close eye on her ..... I might give her a spa day to see if that somehow helps ... UGH!!! Sick/ injured bay now open.

 

[lalaland]

Give that boy a good smack!

Just got in from working with him and a stick for a few minutes. Danged boy was seriously thinking about charging the stick! WIll try to get in as much stick training as possible before the snow comes in a few days. Better to do it with open areas than when he is closed in with snow.

 

[fosterson]

Just got in from working with him and a stick for a few minutes. Danged boy was seriously thinking about charging the stick! WIll try to get in as much stick training as possible before the snow comes in a few days. Better to do it with open areas than when he is closed in with snow.

Yeah. None of my roos is particularly aggressive (the one eatin roo I got that WAS drew blood the day I picked him up...he was chicken soup before 8pm...) but I have them all 'rake trained'. I have a small headed 'cultivating' rake that's only about 6 inches across on a LONG handle. I use it sort of like a shepherd's crook to direct the flock where I want them to go (out of the coop, into the coop, split into two groups, et al...) but it's long enough to help me corral a runaway and sturdy enough I can remind Goliath who is on top of the pecking order.

Now, when I pick up the Rake of Death, all the chickens head for the coop...it's just a yard rake. I have NO idea why they're all terrified of it. I've never used it once on them, just their run!

 

[TeaChick]

Oh, that's a little scary. My birds free range a lot, and in the past couple of days they've discovered the area around our house, which has bird feeders around back. I noticed them under the feeders this afternoon and shooed them away, but I don't know how I can keep them away. Any suggestions?

You could use hardware cloth and just make circles around the area where the feed falls.
Maybe set five-gallon buckets under the feeders to catch the feed where the chickens can't get to it.
If you could hang a wide shallow dish under each feeder high enough that the chickens can't reach.... and a brick or cement block in the bottom so they can't knock it over???

I don't think any of those ideas would keep all the fallen feed away from the chickens, but I'd think it'd keep most of it away from them.

 

[TeaChick]

Awesome!! How old is your son? My kids like the chickens, but not enough to actually help care for them! Well, that's not quite true. My 12 year old daughter will help when I ask her to do something specific. I can't convince her to go out and spend time with them just because they're fun, though. Oh, well. Maybe as she grows older, she'll get more involved in them. She's definitely my animal lover!

He's 10. My younger son is our family's "wildlife specialist", not the one who's into chickens.
I don't want to discourage you, but I've been a 12-year-old girl before and I am an animal lover. I didn't "fall in love with" chickens until I got them for laying as an adult. I hope your daughter is different.

 

[TeaChick]

I'm lazy too I keep my egg shells in a bowl (I don't rinse either) & then crush them a bit with my pestle when it gets to full. They are sharp!! Otherwise I'd just use my hands. Yesterday I decided I'd bake them as I was making cookies with my god sons. Well, I forgot about them and burnt them to crisps!! It smelled like burnt hair in my house.... So yeah I'm going back to doing nothing.

We've done the same thing trying to boil them. lol

 

[Kassaundra]

The flogging roo thing. This is just for what it's worth and only from my own limited experience. The stick never worked for me, at least not permenantly. I thought I killed mine a few times w/ the stick b/c neither one (me or him) were about to back down. When I would win (and I always won) he was always injured b/c he wouldn't quit until he was, he would mind his pees and ques for a few days or even sometimes a few weeks, then bam out of the blue he would attack again. Until he died I carried a stick in the chicken yard until he died.

The most success I had you probably can't do this time of year was a water hose on jet. I discovered it by accident I was actually trying to drown him b/c I couldn't catch him (he put a hole in my leg that day) He respected and feared the water hose way more then the stick. I water boarded him out of the blue until he died just to keep fresh in his mind I was boss, he never actually attacked after that but I never trusted him and several times I caught him "thinking" about it.

 

[TeaChick]

when I crack eggs for eating, I just put the halves in a bucket and let them dry. then crush them up with the flat end of the 'monster maul'. a tool of many uses... including crushing cans, crushing egg shells, crushing, well, anything that's crushable. including fingers and toes, so be careful when using one... it probably weighs every bit of 20 pounds, maybe more.

I also use it for making chick crumbles from the rooster pellets... babies don't 'get' FF the first couple days, so I give them something they will pick at.

forgot to mention, I don't pulverize the shells, just make them smaller pieces about the size of the oyster shell they get.

I like your "monster maul". Did you make that or buy it?

Also, you mentioned FF; and that the babies don't "get" it. Do you mean that you don't feed it to them, they don't understand that it's food, that the won't eat it, or something else?
I guess the short version is "What exactly did you mean by that?"

I'm tired, sorry.

 

[TeaChick]

lol, I'm laxier than you, I skip the rinsing step.....


Made an extended snow free shelter for the chickens yesterday. Just a couple of hay bales with plywood on top for a roof, but figuring out how to place it so chickens have easy access from under the coop to it, and so northwinds can't sweep thru, and so any stray sunshine can warm it up from the south took a lot of time.

It is directly under the chicken ramp to the coop, and oh my, it has totally confused them.

Spent a good hour sheparading them into the coop last night because they preferred to snuggle under the trailer in the hay rather than brave the ramp with that strange new troll under it.

Half the flock is still inside this morning because they don't want to come out and risk that troll shelter rising up and grabbing them.

Just in time as snow is in the forecast again, right now anything we've gotten has melted and the chickens are enjoying freeze dried grass and clover.

Still. No. Eggs.

My eggs are just beginning to pick back up. All four of my Comets are laying (I got four brown eggs the other day), but the first one only started back last Tues, so... I've gotten a total of thirteen so far, but I've only gotten one white egg out of three white Leghorns in a week and a half. =(
Surely yours will start laying again soon.