The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[armorfirelady]

Mumsy your DH is a def keeper....I love his out of the box thinking. That is a really cool turkey nest!!

And Mumsy & Sally8 I am following your hatching progress.....I cant wait to see the pictures of the new chicks

Delisha & Stony- You know I never would of thought to give raw meat to my hens but your comments made sense. Nothing rawer than mice or snakes

To bad I didnt see your comments till AFTER I had cooked up some ground beef lol

It was a good weekend in the hen house......the sun was finally shining with temps in the 20s.....I came home Saturday after work to find a big bare dirt spot in their run were the hens had happily spent their whole day scratching

So glad they finally decided to come out of their enclosed run

And the sun also must of recharged them since they all laid yesterday

Ordered my seeds and the electric fence catalog & got the pieces & parts for the hoop coop.....wx man is saying in the mid 40s tomorrow so maybe I will get to work on the new coop.

Of course its snowing heavily now......have to love the weather here in Buffalo....you can go from 80 & sun to a blizzard in 24 hours

 

[flagirl]

NXB161 not really familiar with traveling distances in pa, but while visiting lancaster a few yrs back I found a company called lancaster agriculture, an all natural menonite run company. www.lancasterag.com. they sell organic chicken feed. If nothing else, they mail an interesting newsletter and catalog.

 

[ocap]

I got it to work...thank you..

Adding soil or a dirt mound to the brooder does help chicks with building up immunities and cocci issues they might have once they hit the ground.

Would a big pile of fresh grass clippings in my brooder be enough bacteria for the immunities?

 

[Mumsy]

Would a big pile of fresh grass clippings in my brooder be enough bacteria for the immunities?

It is the chicken manure that puts cocci and other things like cecal worm eggs in the soil.
This is how I slowly build immunities in my chicks and will do the same with turkey poults coming next month.

I don't clean my brooder house thouroughly between batches. I rake out the bulk but I don't disenfect. I don't make it spotless. I build deep litter for the chick house the same as the barn pens. I add a couple fork fulls of the adult DL from the barn into the chick house when they are about three weeks old. Once the chicks are completely feathered out they go out in the barn in the grow out pens. I keep breeds separate so this is how I do it.
I raised four kids. They played in the dirt. Put their hands in their mouth. They drank water from the hose. They were healthy kids. Same principle.
With the turkey poults I'll do it differently by keeping them on wire until two weeks then they will go on the floor of the chick house.

This is my take. With chickens, building immunity to pathogens means letting them have access to some dried manure.

 

[delisha]

Quote: grass cli[ping might have bacteria to start it, but, you need real dirt that your chickens have used. Old poo needs to be in the dirt. If you have had chickens for any length of time, don't worry you might not see it in the dirt, but, it is in there. Bugs and all kinds of things that they need will be in that dirt plug. I do put leaves in the brooder from day one. The plug week two.

 

[delisha]

Quote: x2!!

 

[midnightroo]

@flagirl, thanks for the Lancaster link. I will look through it some more, but I like them. Wish they were a little closer, but we go up to Lancaster a couple a times a year so we could just add them on to our trip.

 

[Ashdoes]

Wanted to let everyone know Outsidepride.com is having a 20% off ground cover sale right now. I've already got my clover and sweet pea vines for the chicken run. I think I'm going to throw the clover down at the end of Febuary, and we'll start the vines along the ouside of the run in March.
Just noticed, while typing this, there's an Ad for articficial grass....on a chicken site? Odd.

 

[Melabella]

Wanted to let everyone know Outsidepride.com is having a 20% off ground cover sale right now. I've already got my clover and sweet pea vines for the chicken run. I think I'm going to throw the clover down at the end of Febuary, and we'll start the vines along the ouside of the run in March.
Just noticed, while typing this, there's an Ad for articficial grass....on a chicken site? Odd.

Those ads drive me batty, I am considering going Golden Feather just to get rid of them. Do I really want to look at some poor old man and wonder about Parkinsons disease?

MB

 

[aoxa]

Aoxa..


Got my paperwork all done for the year and taxes filed!!

I worked on it more last night. I rechecked what I already did.
My fiance is terrible with keeping receipts. Actually I am as well. It's a good thing my feed store printed out anything we were missing.

Oh my gosh! That turkey nest is fantastic!!!! Kudos to your DH!!

I am in complete agreeance! That is amazing!

Hey everyone -

A while back we were discussing the use of starter/grower feed for a flock of all ages vs. layer feed for a flock of all ages. Of course I can't for the life of me find the conversation, so - -

I want to put together something that represents opinions on all sides of this matter. Please PM me if you're interested in writing about one of the following:

• Why you only feed starter/grower to your flock (plus calcium for your layers)
• Why you only feed layer rations to your flock
• Why you feed starter/grower to chicks younger than 18-ish weeks and layer to older flock members

I want to present all views on this for educational purposes.

Delisha and Stony - weren't you two of the folks who fed just one or the other?? I can't remember who said what or fed what, so please PM me if you can help on this little project.

I only feed grower. I'd love a flock raiser. Unfortunately my store does not carry it. I'd like to have higher proteins. I do supplement.

I'll PM you more info.