The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[Leahs Mom]

New chick picks..coming up
I have internal pips on my shipped eggs!! woo hoo
finally............



lol...you can barely see them


One black????????????? I don't have a black anything...

My hen must have visited the neighbors roo..that hussy!

YAY!!!!!!

My hen must have visited the neighbors roo..that hussy!

 

[Melabella]

Just for a smile....

 

[Bulldogma]

Busy day today so I have a LOT of catching up to do reading wise, but before reading through everything I wanted to share this!



It finally came! Hooray! So as soon as the kids are back in school and my brain gets some rest, we'll be doing our first Nu-Stock give-away on the Blog! I'm keeping one tube for myself, and the rest will be given away - probably at the rate of one a month - to readers.

 

[Mumsy]

Hi everyone! New here...learning a lot. Keep it up

Thanks!

Join the party. Always good stuff posted on this thread and friendly folk too.

 

[Sally8]

ssterling1776 - welcome. Glad you found your way here! sue

 

[Miss Lydia]

Hi everyone! New here...learning a lot. Keep it up

Thanks!

Welcome!!

 

[Miss Lydia]

Busy day today so I have a LOT of catching up to do reading wise, but before reading through everything I wanted to share this!



It finally came! Hooray! So as soon as the kids are back in school and my brain gets some rest, we'll be doing our first Nu-Stock give-away on the Blog! I'm keeping one tube for myself, and the rest will be given away - probably at the rate of one a month - to readers.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Never mind..sheesh my roo is Bar Rock cross...dufas..wow I am lacking sleep

 

[CESpeed]

Yeah I'm finally caught up!!!!! Whoo-hoo. Ok I cheated I couldnt read 200 pages but i did read most of it and eventually I'll get back to the pages I missed. I am soooo exicted by this thread. I want to raise chickens as naturally as possible. I've re-thought how I'm setting up my flock. I'm going to try to get a couple of adult hens and then order teenage pullets and when I discover broodiness (which I will encourage) I'll order chicks and let the broody's raise them.

But something I read that I found to be a little disturbing: if the hens won't go back to the same box where they hatched the eggs how does one get them to raise multiple clutches? Or do they only stay out of the nest box while raising their chicks?

It sounds disgusting but I'm starting wrap my mind around FF. Is FF only for meat birds or would you feed it to egg layers as well? My dream flock would be 4 broody hens and 12 - 15 egglayers with 1 or 2 roosters to keep everyone nice and fertilzed. But I'll start with a couple of broodies if I can find them and grow from there. Quick question should roosters be given free access to breed at will or should he only be turned out every other day?

Ideals, thoughts, opinions, tweats, bubble bursting (lol) ?

 

[Mumsy]

The feed store informed me the only turkey poults they carry are Heritage Bronze. They expect them to arrive end of Feb. Not knowing a whole lot about raising turkeys except by hearing horror stories locally I have been studying. There is so much good information (and bad) on this subject here on BYC but I did find good information on this thread. https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/725829/turkeys-for-2013
The member named Treebird has suggested wire bottom cage for babies until around 3 weeks. His reasoning is sound and I usually go with that kind of advice when I'm unsure what to do. After three weeks he puts his on dirt floor. Then at eight weeks they can go outside.
So this is what I'm going to do. I know others do it many different ways and are successful but I'm sticking to this and if it doesn't work, next time I'll try something new. That's just the way I roll.


I took my large fowl show training pen that has an open bottom. Cut a piece of 1/4" hardware cloth to fit and bent up the over hanging edges. Then I took a fistful of zip ties and secured the floor.




About enough room for four poults for a couple weeks. I've read the pros and cons of doing it this way. There are no sharp edges within the pen. I'm going to suspend the cage in the chick house. I have power in there and it's secure and draft free.
Bronze turkeys are sure beautiful in the pictures and it seems they are the easiest to sight sex at around 10 weeks. Although I'm raising these for food so their sex is of no concern.