The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[jtn42248]

I want to thank everyone for the help you gave me with my first broody hen. I followed the instructions perfectly I think and now have eggs in the incubator as well as having the LF blue Cochin eggs I ordered under the broody hen. I also got her nest and all last night without having to disturb her. Hubby wasn't sure if the over sized bake sheet was going to work but I got it slipped under her without any problems. I was laughing while hubby carried pan/eggs/bird across the yard to the broody house because she didn't even wake up. He couldn't believe how easy it was. It did bring up another conversation....

hubby wants to put cameras around the chicken houses. We had talked about it before and I thought it was a little silly but after reading on facebook about people having their chickens stolen I'm not thinking its silly. We live just off a main highway I don't even want to imagine how I would feel if someone took off with my little beauties.
Do any of you have cameras/video around your chickens?

We live on a large farm located right at the intersection of a County Road and a US Highway. When we bought the place people said, watch out for thieves, you are on a perfect getaway location. Since then the only thieves we have had to worry about were four legged. Our best security is light. We have night-guard flashing red lights strategically located around all our coops, pens and runs. Plus we had the electric company install a security light that goes on and off automatically at dawn and dusk. With pretty much our entire property lighted at night, properly secured pens and runs, high fences and 7 dogs we have had very little problems and no drive away thieves.

 

[COChix]

I want to thank everyone for the help you gave me with my first broody hen. I followed the instructions perfectly I think and now have eggs in the incubator as well as having the LF blue Cochin eggs I ordered under the broody hen. I also got her nest and all last night without having to disturb her. Hubby wasn't sure if the over sized bake sheet was going to work but I got it slipped under her without any problems. I was laughing while hubby carried pan/eggs/bird across the yard to the broody house because she didn't even wake up. He couldn't believe how easy it was. It did bring up another conversation....

hubby wants to put cameras around the chicken houses. We had talked about it before and I thought it was a little silly but after reading on facebook about people having their chickens stolen I'm not thinking its silly. We live just off a main highway I don't even want to imagine how I would feel if someone took off with my little beauties.
Do any of you have cameras/video around your chickens?

Oh gosh the image of your husband must have been priceless! Glad everything went ok with that move. As far as cameras we have a security system and have a camera aimed at the chicken area in general, nothing in the coop. I know a few people on the Colorado thread that have web cams in their coops. We also have four big dogs, so if someone really wants to take a chance, I hope they can run fast.

 

[HumphreyEggs]

What herbs do any of you use in your coop/nest boxes?

 

[armorfirelady]

What herbs do any of you use in your coop/best boxes?

Dried orange peels, mint, lavender, basil.

 

[lazy gardener]

What herbs do any of you use in your coop/best boxes?

Add to the above list: citronella (used very sparingly), lemon balm, bee balm, russian sage. I've not had a single mite issue since using citronella.

Regarding the chicken tenders on the baking sheet: If I had tried that maneuver, I'm sure I'd have caught my toe on a little bump in the yard, and gone sprawling... ending up with egg on my face... not to mention a seriously disturbed broody. Certainly a creative way to move the nest!

 

[potagergirl]

Regarding the chicken tenders on the baking sheet:

Chicken Tenders!

 

[CoopChick719]

I use the DL method on a soil floor. It doesn't take any time except when I empty the coop in the spring into the veggie garden & compost pile. During the spring & summer I don't add very much to it. The hens are rarely in the coop except to lay & roost. During the colder months I usually take a pitch fork and turn it once or twice so the broken down compost is at the top to aid in helping the top stuff to break down. I usually add either leaves or saw dust to the coop every 6 weeks or so. Depends on how fast the other materials have broke down.

I do my DL a lot like this!

Yes, it' definitely worth it. Time? You'll be saving yourself scads of time, as well as materials by using DL. It works best on a soil floor. I'd love to hear from folks who are DL on a wood or other type of floor. I'm doing mine on a linoleum over plywood floor. Using pine shavings, because I didn't get a chance to gather leaves this fall. I had ammonia build up in December. Did a partial clean out (just under the roosts). Then, I put in a wheelbarrow full of compost and soil (that I was able to salvage from the garden) under the roosts. Then I moved all of the litter from the front of the coop to the back of the coop and put it over the compost/soil, and added a fresh layer of shavings over that, as well as in the front of the coop. So far, no more ammonia smell. It is a bit more damp than I'd like to see, but no odor when I go in. When using DL, my recommendation is: get that wood protected so it doesn't compost along with the litter! Get some good microbes going for the base: garden soil, compost, leaf litter, lawn clippings if you have them and they're not laden with ----icides. Add a bit of fresh litter over the top as needed. Have the flock help you to keep things stirred up: toss some scratch in so they'll go to town flipping things over. And finally: Never do a complete clean out: save some of the good stuff to inoculate the new litter you're putting in. One thing I'm planning to do is get as much aquarium sludge as I can from a friend the next time she does her tank maintenance. Good stuff, and I'm hoping that it'll do a good job increasing the bacterial load of my DL.

I do DL on a wood floor. Knock on wood...

so far so good on keeping the floor in tact. My DL is on the dry side so if I spill a little water or have snow on my boots, I don't freak out as much as I used to. I just kick some dry stuff onto the wet spot and move on. I turn it if I remember. On really cold days, I feed inside the coop because FF tends to freeze if not eaten quickly. I also keep a 5 gallon waterer in the coop and a smaller one in the run as well as dry feed. This is good in case the girls get snowed in like yesterday. I wasn't able to get out to the coop during the blizzard so the pop door was not opened. AND I heard about it this morning! Everyone was hollering at me as soon as I walked in the coop!! On a bright note, they turned a lot of the DL over searching for feed.

Thank you and everyone else. Unfortunately he was still in really rough shape this morning but still hungry so I fed him eggs until he fell back asleep and then culled him. I was surprised by how upset I was but its so different culling a bird that you have been trying to save and comforting. I beleive that he may have had it beat but was too brain damaged to recover. Poor little guy, I feel aweful but he was in distress more often than he was comfortable.

So far all my other birds are doing great, laying like mad too. It's possible that it wasn't botulism and he had taken a nasty peck to the head which I have seen in polish before but the symptoms weren't quite the same.

I worked off my upset in the yard all day not coming in for breakfast until 4. It's freakishly warm here right now and everything is confused. I have three broodies I need to break, daffodils are six inches out of the ground, the snap dragons are coming up and I found a patch of pansies actually blooming. I have to keep reminding myself that its January and winter will definitely rear her head again before its over. Either way it way it was nice to have garden therapy and the flock enjoyed all the dandilions and bugs I was throwing to them.

Shan, I'm so sorry for your loss

It is harder to cull when you've been nursing them for a long time. I had a little BCM in the garage for about a month--fed her by hand each night. Finally decided I had to cull. It was hard to see through the tears. DH had to help me.

 

[lalaland]

My flock includes 5 hens that hatched in 2011 - they all stopped laying this fall with the molt, and today one of them laid an egg! Hooray! you never know who will return to laying and who will not ever lay again....so one layer down, four left to watch and wonder. Well, 3 really, because one of the four has a comb that tells me she won't be laying again.

 

[HumphreyEggs]

Dried orange peels, mint, lavender, basil. 

Good thing I have plenty of fried mint from the last place I lived Yay for free! I've been waiting for a good use for it! Guess I should plant some basil too.

Have any of you used essential oils with your chickens? I love using lemon (especially on fresh bug bites) and the bug repellant one on myself, but don't know which would be good around chickens.

 

[RedRidge]

And the bad mommy award goes to... ME!
I did something I've never done before. And considering how anal I am, this slip up is an indication of what 40+ lambs born in 5 days will do to your brain...
I totally forgot to put a batch of hatching eggs in lockdown. :-0
And what's worse is, I didn't remember until day 21!
So... two dozen eggs, still in the turner (the top shelf of course), with no humidity increase.
I opened the bator and it was like popcorn - chicks everywhere! LOL. And they all hatched except one.
Guess I got very lucky. But boy do I feel bad those chicks spent a day riding the ferris wheel. Or in the case of a few who doesn't wear their seat belts, falling down the cracks to the bottom. :-/