The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[Child of Noah]

I told you those ducks would smell like farts!

it's funny because it's true....

 

[kian]

Yes he is pretty! I have a thing for white EEs.

I hope I can get more one day!! Especially since Ameraucanas are so darn hard to come by.

I may just get some from Goodfellow in Ontario. He does some really nice whites, but they are pricey.

It's too bad you're in Canada. One of my 12 week old White EEs was just positively IDd as a boy

 

[Mrs.SB]

Natural way just means try your best to keep to nature. FF and ACV is a great way to start. Give me your city and I will try to hook you up. You can PM the information.

Many people do the all in and all out when bringing in chickens. Is there any spacific reason why you say you can't put the new birds in with your birds
??
What do you consider pricey?

I was under the impression the bigger girls would hurt or be mean to the babies. I also don't have an ideal place to keep the babies so I though about keeping them shut in the coop until they could come out during the day.

Will PM you now, thank you!!

 

[Sally8]

SNOW? Keep it Keep it! This week end is supposed to be sunny and in the 70's, or until I heard about the snow.

I'm on way out to move poultry again. A couple weeks ago I tried and all they did was beat each other up. Even though they have plenty of room to hide, they just ran to the chain link fence and poked their heads through squawking, "Let us out, Let us out!" while the bigger chickens are pecking them in the butt. My mother used to tell me that life wasn't fair, so I'll just tell the chickens that.

 

[Mrs.SB]

Welcome to the thread!!



Check out This Link for lots of different articles - stuff we have covered in this thread... but organized for your convenience - LOL!

Thanks for the welcome and the link! That's exactly what I was looking for

 

[Mrs.SB]

It has been fairly nice here mostly. This week has been cooler and a little rainy still better than winter! I'm a summer girl myself! Hate the cold!!

Since out chick will be here in July, will it be ok for the to be in a closed in coop? It has screened windows, of course. But I didn't know if that would be to hot?

 

[Leahs Mom]

So here is my question what else should I be doing?? I cleaned out the coop entirely when I first noticed the mites but that didn't seem to help either .... should I do that again?? I'm at a loss and I really don't want my girls to suffer any more!!

I haven't had to deal with this (yet

).

It sounds like it's been going on for awhile?

HOWEVER...
-Anyone else ever had to take care of a bad case that you couldn't get rid of?
-Did you use something "less natural"?
-What have y'all found that would be the least intrusive but strong enough to do the job?

 

[countrygirl74]

Cute chicks..if that is the fresh herbs..they need them chopped fine. In the wild, they would be attached to the ground and mom would show them where it is, take a few tiny pieces off, and drop them on the ground or allow them to take from her beak.
After I butchered the chickens and iced them for 12 hours, I put them in baggies with 1/2 cup brown sugar-1/8 cup kosher salt, two springs of oregano and water for 24 hours.
rinsed them off. Baked them at 350 for 45 minutes than put them on the grill for 1 hour on top of apple wood and coals to smoke.
the coals were placed in grill in a circle and when all white..they were hollowed with an empty middle..apple wood was added, than the chicken was added in the center, to be smoked and not so much grilled. Cover placed on the grill. I painted on butter with some herbs on the inside and outside of the chicken before smoking.
They will live..they might not like it and they will by uncomfortable..but animals deal with all kinds of conditions. I would keep the nests as dry as possible and replace the bedding. I would not bother adding PDZ. Make sure they can at least roost in a dry area free from being rained on.

When you say iced, what do you mean by that? Just put them in the fridge, freezer?? Last time I butchered some extra roosters, we put them in the fridge for 3 days, then threw them in the freezer.

Hi naturalists. We eat organic and non GMO as much as possible. My feed store sells organic chicken feed but it costs more than double regular all grain feed. And there is so much waste with it compared to the crumble it ends up costing 3x more! I want to go organic but how do I afford it? I've thought of giving a small number of our birds the organic feed and eating their eggs only. My daughter sells her eggs we don't eat and people just aren't willing to pay more for organic. Should I just not worry about it?

Us too! (organic and non GMO) See my reply below as I mention how we we were able to cut our feed costs and there's NO waste ever.

Hi guys

mind if I join in?

I try to eat and use natural products myself and would like to do the same for our chickens. We had 5 but a dog killed 2 and we are having to put one down

I have 2 left right now but I just ordered 10 new babies!!! I'm so excited, they should arrive July 15. My dh and neighbor also just made my run about 3x bigger than it was! Super excited about that too!

I'm thinking about getting rid of our 2 adult girls and just starting over with the babies. I would love to keep the babies in the coop but I can't do that if I keep the girls we have now... Any advice?

I would also love to have the link with instructions on how to make that waterer with the cups on the bucket! (My dh won't be happy to have something else to make though LOL)

Is there a general post with how to get started with the natural way? I going to try fermented feed and ACV in their water and herbs in the nesting boxes. Any other ideas? I also would love to feed them organic feed but no where here sells it and the shipping is high to have it shipped! Anyone know any place that has free shipping?

I've learned a lot from everyone here! Thanks for all the knowledge!!

Welcome! I do the fermented feed with an organic grower mash from the co-op, (www.azurestandard.com) - there's no shipping. You might want to see if they have a drop in your area. I priced all the organic feed from everywhere in the area, including the feed stores, and theirs came out to be cheaper by the pound. It's about $33 for a 50lb bag. There is a place about 2 hours away from me where I can get 50lbs for $22 but by the time I pay for gas and my time, it doesn't really matter. Once I started fermenting, I cut my feed by 1/3-1/2 so it really does help! My MIL uses the same feed and does not ferment - just wets it down and still saves feed cost because they eat less of the organic than they did when she was just feeding a regular Purina feed - so I think they must have better nutritional value. A lot of people make their own feed but I just haven't done that yet.

 

[Mumsy]

TURKEYS! Yep! They finally arrived today. Six Blue Slate two day old cuties. I have them on a wee pad in the tub brooder in the house to keep an eye on them. Bought a 50 lb. bag of organic turkey starter to ferment for them. Cost as much as the poults themselves. *Yikes!* They are funny little things. I put glass marbles in the water dish. That got them started drinking right away. Put their starter on the pad to let them peck at something. That worked well so next step was offering them a bit of wet mash. They are eating that with gusto.



Orange dot on their head was put on at the hatchery. It threw me for a minute. Hah!

The weather here is awesome. Perfect in fact. Blue skies, 70 degrees, and no wind. Loving it.

I dug up a spot in the orchard for a dust bowl for the chicks. Added wood ash and a bit of peat moss to the dirt. All the chicks ignored it until I lined it in broken bricks and made it look like I was going to plant flowers in it. Sure enough. That made it irresistible and they all piled in. Double Hah!



All sixty chickens and chicks are free ranging in the yards and it is a glorious thing to see.

 

[brandislee]

I haven't had to deal with this (yet

).

It sounds like it's been going on for awhile?

HOWEVER...
-Anyone else ever had to take care of a bad case that you couldn't get rid of?
-Did you use something "less natural"?
-What have y'all found that would be the least intrusive but strong enough to do the job?

I haven't, so there's that... but I just thought of several things that she didn't list that many people use to treat mites, some of which I use for preventatives:

-wood ash; dust the chickens with it down to their skin, and dump some in their dust baths.
-use the DE! The main controversies with it, so far as I am aware, are 1) it's effectiveness when taken internally, and 2) it's affect on beneficial insects (is that what you meant by helpers? I wasn't sure). But if you dust your birds with it and use some in the deep litter and their dust bath then the effect on beneficials will be minimum (just don't apply on a windy day). Last time I checked there weren't a whole lot of beneficial bugs hanging around my coop. However, I agree DE shouldn't be used in the garden for this reason, so if you use your litter in the garden just stick with wood ash in the litter, but still add the DE to the dust bath and the chickens. Make sense?
-just skin mites? If you have leg mites, you can apply either Nustock or Bag Balm to the legs. But that won't help for skin mites. Just throwing it in.
-this one I haven't used, but there was a white wash recipe on the Natural Chicken Keeping blog that was supposed to rid a coop of mites. Do a full clean out, paint all the wooden surfaces, then add new bedding (and wood ash...). Even if you do a full clean out the actual wood in your coop will be harboring lots of mites, so it's important to treat the wood as well.

I would repeat the wood ash/DE treatments every few days for at least a week after doing a full clean out and white wash (dang, that sounds like a lot of work- sorry!). Then if you still have problems you may just need to try something more drastic!

RE: Organic feed- it varies so much by region. Organic here is $24 a bag (but it's Purina, puke...), but I buy a more local brand that is GMO free but not organic for $19. And I buy organic scratch. My priority is avoiding GMO's. I've looked into Azure's chicken grains, and it would be more expensive for me (and for me there is a shipping cost since our drop is so far- I believe our drop is the furthest East they go). There is a mill about 2.5 hours from here where you can get transitional for $15/ bag (all bags I refer to are 50lb, btw), but it's too far. I do have a friend who gets feed from them, though- she requires soy free feed because her son is super sensitive to soy, and they custom mix it for her which is awesome. But keep looking and talking to other chicken people in your area. For a long time I thought Purina's organic brand (Country pride or something like that) was my only option. But I kept looking, and eventually a friend of mine who raises broilers for her CSA told me an elevator a mere 10 miles from my house carries GMO free.