The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[delisha]

I'm sure, first egg is not this big of a deal to an old timer. But wanted chicks forever, found this site and lurked and lurked...took notes and basically absorbed everything you all have posted. Just luv this site. When I'm out there watching chicken tv, I'm always thinking about what I've read. I sprout there wheat grass, have a heated dog bowl. Acv in water, neighbors saving his firewood ash for me.....need to do FF but I leave for work at 4am..I'm still trying to figure that one out. That and posting pics, my Internet is one step up from snail mail out here and my skills are almost as slow!!
DH asked me how many eggs was it gonna take before this wasn't soooooo exciting.........

aww some of us old timers love first eggs. I get excited every times a new pullet lays her first egg. My DH thinks I am so cute when I come running inn the house to announce it. I feel I am fortunate to have someone who appreciates my enthusiasm of a new egg discovery.

(Tell the hubby you like the excitement and hope it never leaves) or 1,0000000000000000.
(You can feed your FF when you get home from work)

My hatch date was 7/8/12.............I thought she would have laid a few weeks ago?? Its our first egg, from first chick out of first incubator batch. Feel like we have been waiting forever

It is always exciting, and very special when you hatch it yourself.
Congrats again and

 

[Bulldogma]

Well we sold our house, so it was my Christmas gift Probably should have saved the money, but whatever. I am getting a lot of use out of it, and it's helping me with pictures for the website I'm working on (for the farm).

Cameras are wonderful creative outlets for those of us who simply must have something artsy to do at all times! My camera (Canon EOS 50D) was a gift from my late FIL. Best gift ever!

Guess what guys? I have a second girl laying!

Congratulations!

I think having the fakes in there may have given them a clue to where I wanted them to lay since there were no older ladies to teach them. Not sure, but it seems to have worked and the only time I got an egg anywhere else was the one that was under the roost very early in the morning before dawn.

I have cheap, plastic golf balls on all our nest boxes. The white Silkie is laying, but none of my originals (23 weeks old) are laying yet.

Finally found an egg this morning....right under the roost. Trying to figure out how to post a picture!!!

And congratulations to you, too!

I'm really going to miss them. We only have an acre and have fenced in as much as possible.

Awww... sorry you had to rehome your turkeys.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Cameras are wonderful creative outlets for those of us who simply must have something artsy to do at all times! My camera (Canon EOS 50D) was a gift from my late FIL. Best gift ever!


Congratulations!

I have cheap, plastic golf balls on all our nest boxes. The white Silkie is laying, but none of my originals (23 weeks old) are laying yet.


And congratulations to you, too!

Awww... sorry you had to rehome your turkeys.

Me too sally such a bummer.

 

[stonykill]

skimming through today's stuff.. I heard mention of Splash. I have a few Splash Sumatra's and Splash Sumatra/White leghorn mutts. Here are the mutts. Fantastic egg layers BTW. And theydon't eat a lot

you can see the splash in the back in this pic.


2 of them...when they were much younger.

 

[PeepsCA]

Sheesh you guys! I sleep in, head out to do my AM animal chores, start some laundry, plan dinner etc before sitting down to the laptop, and I am already 120+ posts behind! The way you guys get going there will probably be another 100+ posts to read after I finally get finished with this multi-quote reply, lol, ugh! (Sorry in advance if I missed anyone's post that replied to me).

PeepsCA,

Hi, thank you for speaking up, I'm sure you will be a lovely asset to the gang here! I absolutely drooled over your photos on the link to your coop page! I dream of having guineas of my own but have only owned chickens since July 2012 and wanted to educate myself as I feel I needed to learn some skills before attempting to train guineas! I live in Dutchess County, New York which has some of the highest concentrations of lymes, (and other kinds) ticks in the nation, heck, the world for that matter. I could definetely use a few! What beautiful colors you have!


The picutes of the turkeys looking up in the sky are precious!

Welcome to the thread!

MB

Thanks Melabella!
I am a certified Guinea hoarder

so having a beautiful flock and beautiful varied hatches very quickly became an out of control obsession. I'm also OCD with the camera, so I take lots of pics of my Guineas (and every other animal I own), lol.

I originally got my first batch of Guineas for the heavy infestation of ticks, BIG HAIRY WOLF SPIDERS and the rattle snakes here on my property when I first bought this place. It was horrible. I was pulling 50+ ticks a day off each of my horses' flanks, bellies, under their chins etc and I had 3 dogs bitten by one baby rattle snake that thought sleeping in one of the dog houses was his right, then my Buckskin filly (very nosy girl) got bitten in the nose by an adult rattle snake while out grazing in the pasture. HUGE vet bills for all of that, almost lost the first dog that was bittin', and my filly almost died too. I had to keep her in cross ties with big tubes in her nose to keep her airways open for over a week, and I had to give her tons of huge injections 2-3 times a day for a couple weeks too. She hated me for a long time, and before that she was such an in my pocket filly. I hated that all my hands on work I had done with her had been reversed by such a wicked venomous creature

(I was scared to death that half her face would rot off, but luckily she had no tissue loss from that bite. She made a full recovery, and was back in my pocket within in a few months. Whew!).

But that was the LAST straw right there, and thus began my war waged on the snakes, ticks and those horribly creepy furry spiders that were scurrying everywhere. It was either me (selling and moving) or them (meeting their demise). The Guineas have taken care of all these issues for me, very effectively. I also have NO fleas on my dogs or outside cats, and the flies and mosquito are minimal too. I'd put up with their noise and incessant psychosis just for their pest control benefits alone, but over the years I've learned I get more benefits out of them than I can even begin to list (they even scatter my horse manure in the pastures for me!). I know Guineas are not for everyone, for lots of different reasons, but I do not keep them with my chickens (I have Silkies only in that dept) so any aggression issues which is what seems to be the main complaint from many that dislike Guineas, (aside from their noise level) are focused on each other and nothing else. Hope you get your Guineas some day... have a broody hatch and raise them for you if you can!

Hey there Peeps!

So glad you joined us. Those turkeys are beautiful. Since you free range.. Let me know what you do about cars and neighbours. My four love both automobiles (cars, lawn mowers, trucks, anything like that) and humans. So they kind of irritate my neighbours.

Guess not everyone thinks it's cute to wake up with Tom peering in your bedroom window.. Anyway.. I'm thinking electric fence all around my property. But.. is there something else I should be doing in addition to that?

They sure are great protectors, and mine do keep the peace among the roosters. Right now they are penned up for the winter until I can get that electric fence in, as they scratched my neighbour's brand new car LOL. It's a good thing they are great neighbours, as he just laughed it off, but was hoping we could try to keep them over. I just have to keep the peace. I really like them.

Thanks Aoxa, I've drooled over your Tom and his Hens for months, and have loved all your pics!

My property (a little over 10 acres) is perimeter and cross fenced for my goats/horses/donkey (and to keep the majority of the ground predators out) with solar powered hot wire (for horses) at the top... it cost a fortune in supplies and has taken years, forever a work in progress for more cross fencing). So far the Turkeys have not hopped/flown over to leave. I've worked and worked over the years to the point of insanity on training my Guinea flocks to all stay inside the fences, by constantly correcting them/harassing them if they flew over (and only letting them out when I was positive I would be home to correct them... I work from home so that helps tons in that aspect), and since all but one of my Turkeys were hatched/raised with Guineas they learned to stay home/respect the fence boundary as well. My oldest Turkey Hen has never had a mate or another Turkey to relate to until last month, so she thinks she is a Guinea and stays with her flock. She panics/cries to get back in if she happens to wander out the gate of their free ranging area when I am moving horses or goats from pasture to pasture and ends up stuck behind a fence. (She will fly back in, but not out, lol).

I don't live in a very populated area, most places are 10 or more acre parcels out here so there's plenty of distance between me and my neighbors, and the road does not get much traffic (I'm 20 miles from "town", out a horribly rough gravel road, 3 miles from pavement). I have had no losses of any kind to the road here, ever, Thankfully. My house/garage, barn and feed shed, main coops etc are all somewhat centralized in the middle of the 10 acres, which plays a huge role in their lack of fence hopping I'm sure. I keep my Turkeys with my breeding flocks of Guineas, which are somewhat centralized on my land as well, so the Turkeys just do not stray far. (The worst of the drawback to the Turkeys being such homebodies is the big steaming Turkey poops I have to clean up, lol). I have no close neighbors, so luckily that's never going to be an issue for me. They only have one car (that's not driven much and always parked in the same spot) that they choose to jump up on, (and get corrected for every time I catch them up on it), my other car is always in the garage which I keep closed to keep ALL birds out, and my truck is a lifted 4x4, so they stay off those. All but 1 of these Turkeys are young tho, so the staying home and off the cars may all change once they start breeding/maturing. Hope not. They love their coops/pens tho (and are cooped up each night) so they stick pretty close to them and the area around the house, barn, feed shed etc.

I have no experience with wandering Turkeys and minimal issues with them getting on my cars, so I only have a couple of suggestions...
Altho its not practical for everybody, constant correction with your Turkeys when they leave your property might help help break their habits (try motion sensor activated sprinklers once it warms up maybe?), but since wandering and jumping on cars are already well established habits you might be in for a long battle. I read somewhere that putting a car cover on a new shiny car helps keep birds off of it, so maybe suggest that to your neighbor (while you are working on correcting the behavior). I'd even buy him one if you can afford it. Since they already know they can leave the electric fence may not stop them... hard to say. Penning them and letting them out to free range only when you can correct them will be no fun for you, or the Turkeys, but it may help teach them that staying home is a much better idea than going where they shouldn't. (As well as keep them alive). I saw a million pages back that you just got a pen built for them, so I'd use the snowy weather to your advantage in this case, and get a jump on the stay home training if you can! GL!

Great to see you here! Your turkeys are beautiful and I love your description of how they eat and then try to liberate more from the buckets - LOL! We're hoping to get 2 turkeys this spring. I may have to get with you about some guinea eggs... we ate our 4 guineas a few months ago because they were beating up the chickens. I think if I hatch and brood the guineas with the flock, they'll be fine!

Thanks BDM! Hope you get your Turkeys

You will love them. And Guineas are very tasty, and the meaner ones always taste the best!

(Just like Roosters, lol). I had 6 extra males processed by a mobile butcher back in 2011 for my very first dive into eating my own birds, and after lots of research and procrastinating I finally cowgirled up and processed about 20 of mine this past year (before that I was just yucked out by the whole processing/warm guts thing/eating what I raised... but that all changed as my flock numbers got huge and once I knew how good they tasted tho lol). Now that I have a little more freezer room I have a few more extra males I'm eyeballing as this coming breeding season rapidly approaches...

I agree, let a broody hatch some Guinea eggs for you and let her integrate them into your flock so they respect your chickens. As much as I'd love to, I can't ship you any eggs tho

CA has really strict poultry laws about not shipping eggs keets birds over State lines if your flocks are not NPIP certified. And with the 135 birds I have, NPIP isn't going to happen until I get my flock numbers way way down... which I just cannot seem to accomplish because I'm a hatch-o-holic and I hoard birds, lol. I do some day want to get my flocks NPIP certified tho, so I don't want any black marks on my records (which is why I don't ship eggs). Wish I could tho!

PeepCA

love the pictures and looking forward to seeing more!

Glad you liked them, but you may regret saying that down the road... lol. I tend to post a LOT of pics, to the point of overkill

Congrats on your hatch... so adorable! And kudos to you for not helping, that takes major willpower. Knowing the drawbacks is a lesson hard learned, but it broke me of helping my hatches. If your incubator is a still air (no fan), the temp should be 101.5-102ish, measured on the top of the eggs... that was probably the issue for the slow/late hatching, and lower hatch rate (besides the USPS damage to the shipped eggs).

Also I have to say that I blame this thread for my decision to start collecting eggs for my first incubator load (of Guinea eggs). I had told myself to wait until later this Spring before I started hatching, but I couldn't hold myself to that after seeing all the cute chicks!!

I hatched the 2 turkeys with my chicks. They have been raised together until about a month ago. I saw Rosie stomping some of my hens that were dust bathing. Over on the turkey thread, I relayed this story and was warned against thr Tom mating with chickens and killing them. The woman I bought the turkey eggs from said that she never had this problem but had heard of it. Even though I clip Rosie's one wing, it's only a day or so and she can hop/fly over a 6 ft fence. She and Chuch are now in a 10 x 12 ft dog kennel and are not very happy. If you have the space to let them roam, they are wonderful pets. The problem is you can't "unpet" them and have them be turkeys. I was washing my outdoor windows during deer season and Rosie was up on the ladder with me. She eventually lost interest and jumped up on the house roof and disappeared. A short time later my husband came out of the woods carrying Rosie. She had gone up in and found him. I'm really going to miss them. We only have an acre and have fenced in as much as possible.

The chicken stomping is the main reason I do not let my Turkeys free range with my Silkies... my Guineas are all pretty tough/resilient and can take it tho (plus I think its funny when they get stomped, they usually deserve it!). I'm sad for you that it's not working out for you keeping your pair of Turkeys, that's just how things work out some times. Maybe once Rosie starts laying eggs you can get a few from the person who you are re-homing them with and have a broody hatch some for you, and try again. That way the Turkeys would be more chicken friendly, and hopefully stay closer to home

newbie question: do the turkeys fly over fences? do you raise turkeys for the eggs/meat, just as with chickens? (I'm learning so much here!! )

Mine stay inside my fence lines, but I know that mine are probably an exception to the rule due to my situation, set up and acreage...

I have not eaten my Turkeys, but I may raise and process a few this coming season if my oldest Hen (Wild Turkey) and her new (also Wild) Tom breed. Last year she laid 50+ eggs for me (she had no mate tho)... I blew a lot of them out (with an egg blowing kit), and gave them to an artist that does Pysanka, with them. I froze the scrambled eggs that I blew out of them, and have been using them in baked goods/cooking as I need them. I will do the same again this season with any extras I have, but I may incubate some Turkey eggs too if my younger pairs breed/lay... I won't eat those eggs tho, I want more Turkey Puppies just like them and also have a few friends/keet customers that have asked for poults...

Ugh, Lots of editing of my typos and bad grammar. Whew, my fingers need a rest now

 

[delisha]

lol
That was a lot of typing!
Glad you made it back.

 

[Melabella]

PeepsCA is now my new best friend and idol.....

 

[Melabella]

For those of you like me who didn't know what Pysanka was.....(she even supplies the link)

 

[Mumsy]

I asked to be put on a waiting list for Heritage RIR. March delivery of ten fourteen day old beauties. Possibly eighteen hatching eggs as well. If they are from the rare Ricky Bates line? Even better. Very possibly I would have the only ones in Washington State. There are so few that raise these pure strains. It will give me a start to improve and keep them going in this corner of the world. Maybe even show again someday in a few years. Happy happy day!

 

[delisha]

I asked to be put on a waiting list for Heritage RIR. March delivery of ten fourteen day old beauties. Possibly eighteen hatching eggs as well. If they are from the rare Ricky Bates line? Even better. Very possibly I would have the only ones in Washington State. There are so few that raise these pure strains. It will give me a start to improve and keep them going in this corner of the world. Maybe even show again someday in a few years. Happy happy day!

How exciting!!
I will be looking forward to pictures!!