The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[CoopChick719]

Very cute. We take pic's alike. Once in a while I do something amazing but don't know what I did so I can do it again. How old are they?

I hear ya Sally8. I have a setting on my camera that compensates for shaky hands. Do you think I can remember how to find that darn setting? Then I find it by accident and can't remember exactly what I pushed!

It was sunny all day today and I spent it outside with my chickens in the orchard. It involved moving lots of birds in and out of the barn and pens so that I didn't have roo on roo problems. It was so fun watching my Silkies on grass for the first time and also interacting with the other flocks.

My three month old white chicks are turning out lovely.




The surviving Grey roo Stinkus doesn't know what to do with himself but I enjoy his nutty behavior. He may well have lead poisoning but he acts normally for a six month old.




He is such a pig pen in the FF I heavily trimmed his crest, beard, and muffs. I like this guy a lot.


Judy the Broody is really tough on the rest of the flock but she seems to have a soft spot for the Silkies. Her brood would go in and out the cage to eat with the Catdance trio. I had them caged while another roo was out and about.

I had a great day!

Ahhh Mumsy...Beautiful birds!! Your silkies look like walking puffy snowballs...something that we still have a lot of here...AND mud AND yuck! Cannot wait for everything to melt & dry up. Love Judy w/the babies on her back. Great pics!

They just love FF

My 8 10 day olds are loving the FF. I feed them that in the morning along with dry chick feed. They are not happy I put the dry stuff into a regular feeder and took out the little dog dish I had been using. They kept scratching it out all over the place. I feel bad for the 1 RSL that liked to sleep in that dish.

 

[Leahs Mom]

I don't do FF, I do fermented grains, they still have there normal feed free choice, I also sprout grains. I tried the FF and it was okay they liked it and all, but it was harder on us. We have a feed bin that holds a bag of feed that they have access to all the time, it takes 2 minutes once every couple of months to fill up and forget. The grains we fill a 30gall trash bucket w/ grains and water and scoop out of it every day for them, we have had the same ferment, just adding water and grain when it gets low for almost 2 years now w/o problems. I sprout one burlap sac of mixed grains and they get one of those a day. (mostly some version of oat, wheat, boss, corn) for both the ferment and the sprouting well I seldom ferment the boss, just sprout it. The sprouting sacs contain the equivalent of about 6 single serving yogurt cups dry. I never noticed a diff. in the poop smell w/ or w/o fermented grains.

I've seen your sprouting bags and have sent folks over to see them on the sprouting thread before. I just do mine in a small container right in my kitchen rather than the bags but for me that's the "easy, lazy way"! I only have a total of 10 birds so I don't have as many going at the same time.

How many birds are you feeding?

Also - on your fermented grains, do you think you're getting a good balance with the LABs in control or do you end up with more yeasts in there? Do you smell the "tangy" acid smell or more yeasty/alcohol smell?

I keep my ferment going all the time too and the LABs are in control (have been since around October I think). Earlier I had a problem with the yeasts/molds proliferating more than they should have but I finally figured out what was going on and haven't had a problem with that since I've kept it all well under water so that the feed at the top isn't exposed to the air. The feed I use is mainly coarsely ground grains with some fish meal and fertrell - so it's not a store bought baged feed. I've never tried that before as I have never used it.

I've just kept any whole grains I feed for sprouting and the ground goes in the ferment.

Do you have a photo you could post of the large feed bin you use for your dry feed?

 

[OohLaLa]

It was sunny all day today and I spent it outside with my chickens in the orchard. It involved moving lots of birds in and out of the barn and pens so that I didn't have roo on roo problems. It was so fun watching my Silkies on grass for the first time and also interacting with the other flocks. My three month old white chicks are turning out lovely. The surviving Grey roo Stinkus doesn't know what to do with himself but I enjoy his nutty behavior. He may well have lead poisoning but he acts normally for a six month old. He is such a pig pen in the FF I heavily trimmed his crest, beard, and muffs. I like this guy a lot. Judy the Broody is really tough on the rest of the flock but she seems to have a soft spot for the Silkies. Her brood would go in and out the cage to eat with the Catdance trio. I had them caged while another roo was out and about. I had a great day!

 

[Pullet Surprise]

Flock Behavior
So last evening I took the chickens their dinner pail. It was bloody darn cold and windy so I put on a tan suede jacket I had from a few years ago...with faux fur trim on it and headed to the pen with their pail. As I got closer the roo started having a fit and the girls began to panic. I went into the pen, put the pail down for them and the roo sent up a few calls I hadn't noticed before, the girls skeedaddled to the back of the secure pen under Coop 1. They packed up in the far corner as tight as they could. The roo stayed between me and the secure pen gate, yelling and running around me and then as if to lead me off from the girls he went into the secure pen of coop 2. That's where I was headed anyway to pick up their waterer in there. He continued to dash around in there until he figured out a way to get past me and back to guarding the gate area to where the girls were.

There are a couple of things I learned from this: One - they don't like me in that jacket (I know it was a bad hair day, but honestly I didn't think I looked that bad)
2- the fear, hate or disgust of a jacket out weighs the "we're starving-feed us-now-or we'll-eat-you" syndrome that is played out every meal time. 3- their food bringer wearing a simulated dead animal is more frightening than the dreaded umbrella. and best of all - the roo knows how to defend his girls and would sacrifice himself for them. Good boy. He never once was aggressive towards me, he just wanted me away from the girls and did his best to lead me away. Observant little monsters! I never even thought they noticed what I wore. Guess it's back to the bright - red plaid - quilted - oversized shirt I usually wear. Some people's chickens just ain't got no taste!

 

[Sally8]

So, here are a couple of pic's of Thor. I'm convinced more than ever that he is a he. Swept back feathers on his head, his beak. I took pic's with him on top of the bed. DH was having a fit. I asked, How different would it be with a little chick poo compared to when we are sleeping and a cat coughs up a hair ball for us?
Then I tried taking pic's of a poult and it would run and DH would catch it before it fell to the floor. After 3 tries, I gave up. The poults are going on Craigs List as new one's hatch all the time.

 

[Adenium]

/id/5614349/width/200/height/400[/IMG][/IMG]On the silkie sexing.....ours were absurd. The black one we were sure was a boy from the posture....the comb....the wachfulness and alarming ....until I saw an egg drop from her bum.

[/IMG][/IMG][/IMG]

The white one had a total punk male hairdo. But she lays eggs too. Thankfuly they all laid at about 20 weeks so suspense was minimized. The grays are from a breeder. Due to some leghorn crossing he has a single comb but his head is a total poof. Hers is a bit bare from mating but I doubt she's naturally very full crested. Our other white hatchery hen is much fuller. Silkies are just tricky little birds.

 

[Pullet Surprise]

Ahhhhhhh...Little Thor sure has some "attitude"!!!! Absolutely loving all the pics of everyone's wee little ones. Justine, so good to see you back at it with your camera too.

 

[midnightroo]

Yes, beautiful babies all around! Such diversity of colors and types of feathering. Here is a photo of our one week olds two barred and two golden laced wyandottes

.

 

[krcchickens]

Ok I'm a newbie and my day old chicks will be 6 weeks Friday. I started "brewing" my first batch of FF yesterday. I just used water, feed, Braggs ACV with some sunflower nuts in a bucket covered with a towel. Hopefully that's ok. I guess we'll see what happens. Anyway my question other then input on the FF is, what is LABs? Also all this sprouting and grains should I be doing this? Also, I live in Colorado and its been pretty cold the last few days with lots of snow. I moved my brooder box from the laundry room to the garage. I've been leaving the heat lamp on still. I Really want to wean them off though. Anyway some chicks are sneezing... Is this normal? This is my Speckled Sussex, she's so sweet

 

[loanwizard]

I don't do FF, I do fermented grains, they still have there normal feed free choice, I also sprout grains. I tried the FF and it was okay they liked it and all, but it was harder on us. We have a feed bin that holds a bag of feed that they have access to all the time, it takes 2 minutes once every couple of months to fill up and forget. The grains we fill a 30gall trash bucket w/ grains and water and scoop out of it every day for them, we have had the same ferment, just adding water and grain when it gets low for almost 2 years now w/o problems. I sprout one burlap sac of mixed grains and they get one of those a day. (mostly some version of oat, wheat, boss, corn) for both the ferment and the sprouting well I seldom ferment the boss, just sprout it. The sprouting sacs contain the equivalent of about 6 single serving yogurt cups dry. I never noticed a diff. in the poop smell w/ or w/o fermented grains.

When you sprout grains, do you do it naturally or hydroponically? I have been reading up on "fodder" and like the idea of sprouted grains or fodder with the highest protein level being at this time? if what I have read is accurate?