The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[flagirl]

camellia, roundup is very toxic. be careful with vinegar, some research says nothing will grow in the vinegar area for a while. You can start with a modified lasagna type garden. I put down 8 layers of paper, then straw or hay. Straw is expensive here in florida, so I use hay and usually do not get much weed seeds in it. Wait a few weeks and plant right thru this layer. by the end of the season, it has mulched and is a great mulch for current lplanting. I wide row garden(3ft wide rows) and hill them some, then put paper and hay in walkways. At end of growing, I move this mulched dirt onto row and start over, constantly making good dirt. My original garden area was pure sand and this has built up wonderful dirt over the last 7 years. Of course I have a friend with horses and get mature manure by the truck load to help now.
OH and to add chickens-turn deep liter into soil also!

 

[gevshiba]

Y'all with the cats and dogs with allergies might want to read up on the affects of the GMO items that are routinely in their foods. There is a lot of information out there. Here's just a single link but there is a lot of research and vets are beginning to speak out about it.





http://responsibletechnology.org/

Also, check into reduced schedule vaccinations. Dr Dodds at Hemo Pet is one of the ones to look up. One of my dogs had a reaction to her first rabies shot. She lost all the hair on her ear tips, scratched constantly and became allergic/sensitive to everything she was eating at the time.

To keep it chicken related-she's allergic to chicken and I moved the babies to the barn today!

 

[midnightroo]

So I had to add a second feeder for the chicks they are growing like weeds . Would anyone have any photos of homemade perches I could make for them? I think its time to offer one or two.

Also For those of you who also garden. What is your take on roundup?

My landlords father in law has a tiller and is a retired farmer/cattleman and said he would till our garden for us. He said if we wanted he could treat the ground with roundup which he prefered to do only for the first year and he didnt have any issues with weeds ever again. Now Im debating doing this because it is a chemical and we would like to try to be as organic as we can(Even though we are not using any organic seeds this year). I was reading that using a mix of mulching, letting the chickens into the garden on short trips and Carefully spraying vinegar on the weeds and just pulling some can be a more natural way of weeding. Suggestions and insight would be most welcome. This is our first fullblown garden .

I agree, NO to roundup. Even if the information is only half true I don't want it in my body. It is in all corn and I only eat non organic corn in the summer for corn on the cob. If I could buy organic corn for corn on the cob I would pay $10 a dozen for it. Anyway, round up is very nasty stuff that doesn't leave your body readily and des lots of damage to your body. Straw is a good barrier and you could out newspaper down under that to further suppress the weeds. Neem oil is good for bugs or hand picking and dropping them into soapy water. In the spring or summer you could put the chickens in a tracker over the different beds to eat the weeds too.

Kassundra peanuts are easy! We did them last year and they required the least amount of my gardening time. I just weeded until they grew tall enough to shade out the weeds. Squirrels took some of my seeds when I first planted and i gave chickens the peanuts that grew. Try cotton, beautiful flowers and very easy too. Don't know how the chickens are with them, grew them before we had chickens.

Love the sfh pictures!

Christine

 

[flagirl]

They burn grass here as well thankfully most dont around where I live but in this general area people will burn the grass because they believe it helps it to grow faster...

I was reading vinegar works as well for killing weeds so long as you dont spray your plants with it. I was thinking of getting neem oil to help with some pests. We want to start a bee colony maybe next year as because he was forced to spray the area about ten years ago when he was growing tomatoes commercially it killed off the bees so any plant that needs bees to polinate dont do very well here(He warned me for my cucumbers). But the dirt itself is very rich and beautifull.

Do not spray tomato plants with neem, they don't seem to like it-everything else is fine with it. I am in florida, so things are different, but I let my native flowers like cosmos grow all around and bees love it. I also let my basil, cilantro and dill go to flower and I my large garden is always filled with bees. a friend lives a few miles away and has to polinate her squash and cukes with a brush since she gets no bees, but she also does not grow flowers to attract them. right now my cilantro and dill is in bloom, and all my squash and cukes are polinated. come end of summer, the basil is in bloom and the fall crop get polinated.

 

[gevshiba]

My friend put her two Wheaten Terriers on a raw food diet. They both started out with issues, one with chronic ear infections, the other with bad breath and anxiety. A year has gone by on the raw diet and both dogs have no more issues. Even the anxiety! And the cataracts has cleared up. Makes you really think. It would be too expensive for my big dog, but seriously consider it for my trouble kitty!

My dogs eat raw. All 5 of them. It's not a cure all, but it sure does make a difference in some things. I can feed my 5 dogs cheaper on raw than on a premium grain free diet, or pretty much any super premium diet. See if there's a raw feeding Yahoo Group in your area. We're lucky here to have a great one. We have a man with a meat packing plant who started a dog food business by request. He delivers to different areas each weekend. I also get organ trim from a local butcher, who butchers at his place. We occasionally do group buys too. I know people don't like it when I say this, but my turkeys are being raised mostly for dog food. It's worth it to me, they are my family and team mates. I want to keep them as healthy as possible.

 

[Leahs Mom]

This is like being a proud grandma or something...showing everyone my photos

Here are the 16 week old Swedish Flower Hens

Miss Grey






Miss Sweden




Rooster Boy




And the Mystery Breed...
Miss Black

 

[Bulldogma]

LM - your SFH are stunning! The blue girl is amazing... as are the rest of them, really.

 

[Leahs Mom]

Blue isn't as dark as the photo seems she is. When she's out running around she looks almost white in the sunlight. I DO love those dark greys I keep seeing!

And..thanks for introducing me to the SFH. I love the way they look and behave so far. I even like looking at their body type compared to my hatchery kids!

 

[armorfirelady]

This is like being a proud grandma or something...showing everyone my photos

Here are the 16 week old Swedish Flower Hens

Miss Grey






Miss Sweden




Rooster Boy




And the Mystery Breed...
Miss Black

They are all STUNNING.....def worth a repost of their pics.......thank goodness you dont live closer or I would be tempted to come borrow them

 

[bluebirdnanny]

Quote:
Quote:
*I would NOT use roundup. It is a toxic chemical and if you plan on letting chickens help scratch and bug-de-fy the garden they will help with the weeds that may come anyway.