The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[delisha]

Justine, I first want to send my condolences for your loss. Sending my prayers to you and your partner. I am thankful that you are posting and updating here for us to see. I hope that will help you in your healing process. Thank you for all I have learned from you in this post.

I do have a question re ff if any of you have a moment to listen. I have been making kefir and kombucha for about a year now and I use the whey from my milk kefir to ferment the chicks food. I don't saturate the food, but I do pour the whey in and stir it up and let it sit a day or so. It is in a room in my house that is pretty chilly and I can feel the heat from the contents thru the plastic bucket. Is that the same as fermenting their food or do I have to soak it in water and filtered ACV?

I have also been using my spare C to mix into their ff when I feed them. (I grind it up in my food processor) I read in one of BeeKissed posts that giving them pro biotics would help keep them healthy.

Last week, I lost a 20 month old barred rock for no apparent reason. I also have another barred rock that is going thru what I think is a very sever molt right now, however I don't know that for sure. Altho she is loosing lots of feathers and pretty skinny she is eating and acting normal.

The only thing I would guess is that I was giving them too many "treats" which caused them to not get enough of the nutrition they needed from their food. The treats would be oat, barley and wheat flakes mixed with whey or yoghurt. And yes, a small amount of left overs from our table.

That is why I began fermenting their food in the hope that the others would benefit from the ff. Can anyone tell me if my method is the same as fermenting with ACV?

Thanks

I am sorry that you lost a bird.

This is just a guess and my person opinion.

Fermenting your food with kefir is great. For it to ferment property and safely it does need to be covered in liquid.
I am not so sure about the sweet tea..it also can contains tons of caffeine. For that my instincts say no, do not use the kombucha. Those types of sugars are not the good kind for chickens.
Treats for anyone or anything is simply not good, but what you state are not bad things, they are good treats. However chickens are not vegans. They need meat. Birds do not simply die for no apparent reason. There is always a reason. The hard part is finding out why, sometimes we simply can't. Thin birds are a clue..they are not eating enough, and if they are eating enough they do not have enough good calories in what they are eating.

From the information you have given (not enough) I would have to assume they need meat. How about a picture..I might..and that is a might be able to help more with out just guessing.

 

[delisha]

@PeepsCa: That Blue Slate in your picture is beautious!
It's going to be a struggle on butcher day for sure. The reason I will try to keep a breeding pair is to help cope with that. My son, son-in law and husband are experienced hunters. They will be doing the hardest part. My daughter, Grandsons, and I will dunk, pluck, and help process. The Grandsons are twelve and nine years old. They have been duck and turkey hunting with their dad and know the score where meat comes from.
@del: Love love love the chick pic's!

My new chicks are eating FF since coming out of the bator. A couple drops of Un-ACV with mother in the water too. Filled the brooder tub bottom with DL from the barn kept in an unused pen out there. I stir it a couple times a day for them to snuggle and play in.

Had to euthanize a Johnny bumpkin kid this morning. Failed to eat and drink on it's own. It started going down hill yesterday so I stopped it's suffering. Surprisingly, this didn't put me over the edge emotionally. I stepped up and did what had to be done.

This is my question for del or others on here that have done a lot of incubating. It is a mystery to me why a chick that made it to hatch on it's own and appears perfectly healthy for two or three days, does not eat or drink on it's own. I will dip beaks but that's as far as I'll go to help. Sometimes I see this happen in a draggy hatch. But this chick hatched on time and appeared fine on the outside.

It seems every so often a hatch of chicks has one of these 'fail to thrive' babies. I personally think it is neurological and happens in the egg during the incubation. But I don't know the answer to this mystery.

Charging my batteries for chick pic's now. These buff babies are pretty little things.

Sometimes it makes me so frustrated to cull them, but, I am also happy to do it. I simply do not want weakness in my flock. I usually assume it is a birth defect and the mother would cull it too. If it happens twice, I never breed the hen again. It can be a fluke, it also can heredity. So many breeders are saving chicks and selling off spring that should never have made it. For these Orpingtons. I have set 9 eggs and 9 chicks hatched. (between the coop and bator). So I am relieved that this Black Orpington is proven. All chicks are strong and healthy. Now I am waiting for the blue pullet to start. She is taking forever. For these shipped eggs..it is hard to judge. Shipped eggs might have there own problems I think, but I am not sure. I need to ship some of the blacks eggs to someone to hatch to see how they do.

 

[pcappy2]

I have 15 baby chicks in the basement and I started them in FF on day three. It took them a bit at first to get them started on it but now they gobble it up. Glad I started FF. I had been reading up on it for awhile but just hadn't taken the plunge and started it. This might be off topic but after reading about the barn fire I thought you might laugh like we did this morning. Chicks out grew my box set up in the basement and grandsons were obsessed with watching them. So I brought the boys kidding pool inside. But some shavings down and got the light all set up for them. Day two the feed dish was outside the pool, we can't imagine how they flipped it out of there.....come to find out, our dog had gone downstairs and stole the FF and licked the dish clean. Crazy dog! He has no interest in the chicks just luvs the FF.....so now I'm researching FF for dogs.. DH is wondering when does this end???

 

[countrygirl74]

 

[Melabella]

DH is wondering when does this end???

Thanks for the laugh pcappy2, so true isn't it?

MB

 

[aoxa]

Somehow I woke up this morning to double the support as I started out with last night. Everyone is pulling together and helping me build a coop for our sweet little babies in the basement. I am so blessed to have all of you guys.

I am so hoping that the insurance goes through quickly. A good friend of mine - Jamie Carson (APA Judge and master exhibitor) is helping me find the best birds he can in Canada for the breeds I want. I am going to miss my partridge silkies.. no one has them.

All these updates are very nice to hear. Delisha, your silkie looks like a Diva.

pcappy - my dog Chloe is the exact same way.

 

[Mumsy]

@del: Yes, to your methods of progeny testing. I too will not breed to a hen with inconsistant hatch rate for laying, health, and vitality. I am also rethinking my experiment on incubating pullet eggs. Though Phoebes eggs were a nice size and consistency in shell quality. Ediths eggs were small and shell quality questionable. One chick of hers to make it past seven days incubation and hatch. It is the smallest chick. If it is a hen, I'll give it to my daughter. She does not want to breed. She lives in Seattle city limits. They can have up to eight hens but no roosters anyway.

My daughter wants eggs so she will keep me informed how any of these pullets turn out. I won't hatch any Edith eggs again. She has still not settled down in her laying habits and eggs are still sometimes off in shape.

However...I love the color of these Johnny babies. And they are real little crackers. I smile when ever I sit and watch them.







The pair of chicks is one Phoebe baby and the only Edith baby. Big size difference. But...I am loving on them.

 

[gram of five]

Sorry about the lack of info. I was trying to keep it as short as possible. The treats also include boss, meal worms and just recently, cracked corn. About a month ago I noticed that I wasn't going thru as much of their layer pellets as I had this summer. Now in hind site that should have sent off alarms to me as they don't get out to free range now with the snow. They have a covered 20x30' run, but not the grass and garden they have in the summer. THeir coop is a mini barn that is well ventilated, dry and out of the cold and wind. I have pine chips on the floor and poop board below their roosts. I clean up the poop every morning before I go to work. In addtion I bring out the "greens & grains" to them which is the approx. 2 cups of grains mixed with yoghurt or whey, and a bunch of kale,spinach or greens of some sort. When I get home from work, I go out tocheck on them and give them boss, meal worms, peanuts or cracked corn. I had 19 of them and would probably spread 2 or 3 cups of this mixture for them inside their coop to scratch in the wood chips.
Beginning last week, the treats they get are the fermented whey from the milk kefir ( I use the cheese/milk part of it for my family) mixed with the layer crumble. I don't give them the kombucha tea or anything sweetened however; I do give them the scoby that forms in the kombucha. I read that was good for them.
As far as meat goes, they do occasionally get left overs from our meals, but you suggest more meat? What type of meat? I will gladly cook something up if it will help. Now that they eat their crumble mixed with whey, doesn"t that help with their intake being more balanced?Also, they always have layer pellets available to them all the time. THey do eat the pellets from the feeder, but as I said, just not as much as last summer.

I know my BR didn't die for no apparent reason, when I checked her out I just couldn't see any marks on her, no swelling or noticable damage to her body. The one thing that I thought was strange when I picked her body up, a liquid drained from her beak, but I can't say if it smelled sour or not. I do know, she wasn't skinny nor sickly a few days prior to that. I usually get to spend more time with them on the weekend and she seemed fine. She had just gone thru her molt a few weeks prior and her feathers were back in and just beautiful.

I don't have acess to download pics or I would send some of my other girl. She is loosing feathers like crazy and over the past few days loosing weight. She is as active as ever and continues to eat the whey and layer crumble.
I appreciate your time with this and wish I could give you more information. I am hoping that in changing their "treats" to whey and layer crumble that will help improve the overall health of the rest of the girls.
I appreciate your time and help.

 

[Pullet Surprise]

What a delight to see Johnny's progeny! It's kinda' like waiting on your own grandchildren!

 

[Leahs Mom]

gram -
I agree w/ del. The kefir is good for fermenting - not the kombucha. If you get a chance, take a look at the link I posted a little earlier today - it shows the type of fermenting I do and why.

On the meat - RAW MEAT rather than cooked leftover meat. I give mine meat a couple times a week and I could give them more. With the new babies around I've give it more often. I just use a ground meat - venison, beef, etc. Works good because it's already ground.


PigeonGuy suggested using canned meat based cat food. I like the ground because I know what it is rather than having a lot of other stuff mixed in and it is also "cooked" if it is canned. So...that would be a 'second best" choice for me.


Edited to correct an error!