The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[Jewelwing]

Ok... Should not have jinxed myself... Sometimes ammo is necessary.

2am, sound asleep, pouring rain.
2 of the Maremma, Whenny and Dillon (short for Dillon Areo, btw - figured hellbender would get a biz outta that), start a serious intruder alert.

Now I usually just let a pair of dogs handle it and roll over and go back to sleep, but Dillon is only 5 months old. So... rain coat, coveralls, boots, shotguns... What do we find? opposum. It was a large, very angry male. Since Dillon isn't old enough to have had his rabies yet we didn't want to leave it for the dogs, so we shot it and took it to the woods behind the house.
Sometimes a good shot is easier and wiser... Although the dogs were mad at us for taking away their fun.

How old will Dillon be when you get him his rabies shot? Here in IL, and in CA when I lived there, a dog is given their first rabies shot at 16 weeks, so Dillon should be plenty old enough at 5 months.

I shoveled out the girls. For some reason they stayed in the coop all day. Maybe the foot & half of snow was the reason? Lol. Can't say I blame them since it would of been up to their beaks. Sophie & Edie ventured out after I shoveled them out. At least they were productive with their self imposed lock up. 3 eggs today, they demolished 2 bags of frozen kale in an hour. Guess they are missing their greens

Mine stayed in the coop until I cleared the snow off their deck, too! And were quite productive as well. Eight chickens, eight eggs!!! That was a first, and very exciting for me!

I'm looking into the links that you provided and it looks very promising as long as I devote the time and training necessary. Is there a particular one that you would recommend for a GSD with a lot of energy, there are a lot to choose from.

She doesn't come when called if she's distracted and I would like her to stay on the property and not bark every time the neighbor comes out of his door and of course, whatever is needed to be around the flock.

I highly recommend the e-collar that I use for my Great Dane. I've had a few different kinds in the past, and like this one best. It's the Tri-Tronics Sport Basic:

http://www.tritronics.com/sport-basic-g3-exp.html

I like it because the other ones I tried on this dog didn't go up high enough for her to be affected in an aroused state (chasing something). Also, it has an excellent range (and yes, both the collar and the "zapper" are waterproof, so your dog can go swimming in it, and you can be in the rain holding the remote). It has 10 different levels on a dial, so even though there aren't an infinite number, I find it's plenty for my dog. She doesn't feel anything under 2-1/2 (it goes from 1/2 to 5 in increments of 1/2), so we start at 2-1/2, but often end up at 4 or 4-1/2. Very occasionally I'll have to go up to 5. It also has a beep that she has learned to associate with the shock, so now when she gets close to the boundary, we can press the "beep only" button and she'll immediately bounce away as if she'd been shocked.

I use it in the house too, because my cats are declawed. So when the dog bothers them and they get upset or scared and lash out at her, I give her a little zap so their "claws" hurt her like the cat intended. That way she learns when she's gone too far in trying to play with the cat. It's worked really well - right now one of the cats is sleeping a couple of feet away from the dog, who is also sleeping, which wouldn't have happened before. The dog was relentless, thinking she would love to chew on those fantastic squeak toys and rip out their stuffing like she does on all her stuffed toys.

Maybe if something is taken away before it got used, just maybe it would not be missed.
The baby should come sometime in March or early April. I've been promised to have my little one before Easter.

I didn't know you were expecting at all! How exciting is that?!?

Is it your first?

 

[Jewelwing]

I told my husband that it sounded unlikely that his co-worker's three hens laid seven eggs in one day, and he said I actually got the story wrong. The guy told my husband that his three hens laid twelve eggs in one day!!

Yeah, pretty sure they were hiding them in the nest! I totally can't believe they each laid four eggs in one day.

 

[lazy gardener]

I have a white coop in my laundry room too, though not nearly big enough.

Any readers have experience with building a solar dehydrator? That's one of my bucket list projects for this summer.

 

[RedRidge]

For some reason I just noticed you are Canadian and what's more, you live completely across the continent from me. 

Technically, the black bears that are here are the exact same species that you have [COLOR=0000FF]BUT[/COLOR]...they have been raised in a totally different environment and must have had to acquire different survival skills than our bears.  While our bears eat lots of fruit as well, they aren't taught to catch as much fresh meat as yours.  They essentially have different dietary requirements, based upon how their moms brought them up.  Our bears don't fish in rivers nor attack adult deer but will take fawns and dead carcasses.

These bears here do very well; moving and living in close proximity to homes and towns where they can scavenge, steal dog/cat/bird feed and would be ok if people would not essentially 'hand-feed' them.  with most of them, if they had an encounter with a person in a chicken coop, they would be scared to death and not very likely to come back, at least not in day time.  Whole 'nother ball game.

My place is surrounded by bears, and as I said, several sows den within 3 or 4 miles of my house and I have never had a bear problem.  Sure, my dogs have treed a few over the years but they were glad to get out of that tree and be on their way...not coming back for any more of that, no time soon.  But yours did something alien to the 'culture' of our bears, if I can use that term. Unless a bear in this part of the country has been essentially desensitized or 'tamed', in a sense.....what happened to you just wouldn't happen here or at best...one in a million shot.  JMHO...as usual.

Black bears that aren't aggressive!?! You've been watching too many cartoons!

No I know they are a bit different here. Actually the island has larger black bears than the rest of the continent too. Lucky us! Although ours primarily don't actively hunt large game either.

It isn't that the black bears here are usually aggressive, it is that they have no fear. This is the reason they can be so destructive. We keep our bee hives in our Orchard surrounded by electro netting and keep Maremma on the perimeter. Otherwise we would have no fruit or honey. Course it isn't the honey the bears are really after, it's the larvae. But a bear will destroy a dozen hives in 5 minutes getting to that larvae.

 

[RedRidge]

I have a white coop in my laundry room too, though not nearly big enough.

Any readers have experience with building a solar dehydrator?  That's one of my bucket list projects for this summer.

Dehydrators use very few amps. Just run it straight off your battery bank on the days when you are making energy... more effecient use of your solar panels that way. I always do laundry and run the well pump on sunny days when I'm typing of the battery bank... Double use of power that way.

 

[RedRidge]

@chaosrules...
We don't do rabies until 6 months old here, Dillon is only 5 months old.

As a side note... IL is a good place to be "from"... Once you leave you will never go back - i didn't. LOL

 

[Leahs Mom]

I have a white coop in my laundry room too, though not nearly big enough.

Any readers have experience with building a solar dehydrator? That's one of my bucket list projects for this summer.

I've read about them a lot but we've never built one yet. My husband and I want to build at least one as we wanted to test it out and work the bugs out.


We know of, and support, an orphanage in South Sudan and the admin there have told us that they have lots and lots of mangos growing naturally. He told us that they just go to waste rotting on the ground as no one can use them all before they go bad. I asked him if they had ever dehydrated them as this made sense to me since no electricity would be needed to store them long-term. He told us they had never heard of it and didn't know how.

So...we wanted to perfect one and then at some point plan on traveling there, building one, and demonstrating how to use it and store the fruits.

We're hoping that it will not only help save and provide food, but be another means of income for some of the folks in the community who can then either build and sell the dehydrators, or make a business of selling the dehydrated fruit.


Edited to fix a mis--typed word.

 

[CourtsCacklers]

Maybe if something is taken away before it got used, just maybe it would not be missed.
The baby should come sometime in March or early April. I've been promised to have my little one before Easter.

Congrats SallyinIndiana!!!!! How exciting!!!!

 

[lazy gardener]

Thanks Red Ridge. I don't have a solar powered battery. I'm talking about building a dehydrator that uses heat from the sun to dehydrate the veggies.

 

[lazy gardener]

Congrats Sally. Both of my babies... 3 decades ago! ... were March babies. I remember it like it was yesterday. Funny how those memories squirm into your brain and become part of you. Wonderful time to have a baby! #1??