Your girls should not moult for another 5-6 months if they just turned 1 year. Most will moult around 18 months, then every 12 months thereafter.
The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!
- Thread starter Bulldogma
- Start date
Great please do I was looking at all the different varieties he has! I have lemon cuckoo orps in my Brin mini right now ( in my son's K class) when I candled they were all developing! They are my first hatch and from shipped eggs! Keeping my fingers crossed for the kids and of course ME! Haha
thanks
- Aug 20, 2012
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Our first 5 egg day! We have 5 out of 8 layers now - Waiting on 2 Easter Eggers and our Wry tailed buff (who may never start 
)
)
- Nov 1, 2012
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thanks!Lynn - enjoyed your photos! And your dog set-up too
- Nov 1, 2012
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Congrats and great pics
Very Happy for you and great shots. Thanks for the coop crawl so we can all shareVery excited over here: we have 5 out of 8 eggs hatched so far today!!!!!! They were popping out like crazy! SO SO SO cute.
I had to crawl inside the coop so the photos aren't wonderful. The lightest baby on the left is the 5th to hatch.
Happy Mother's Day to all chicken and human Mothers out there.
Happy Mothers Day
DITTO
Thak you for this important information
Those are just the cutest things ever!
My thoughts are ..you are a good chicken mommy..you are observing, picking them up, you know condition of feet and weight. You can't get much better than that. They are in good hands and your bird is fine. Some birds know they can't go to bed with a full crop or they sour.
I have a 5 year old wry tail who still lays. It is minor, but I have never hatched any of her eggs. Just keep an eye on her egg laying. If she ever starts to get odd (after a year) she needs to be culled before problems start.Our first 5 egg day! We have 5 out of 8 layers now - Waiting on 2 Easter Eggers and our Wry tailed buff (who may never start
DITTO
- Nov 1, 2012
- 1,499
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Happy Mother's Day to all the Mom's on here!!!!
Originally Posted by cywiar merch 
Two pieces of advice... first, do the math.
NEVER take someone else's recipe and take it for gospel.
There are many recipes floating around out there... 99% of them are NOT what I would advise as a balanced ration - especially for chickens.
Know what you want... how much protein, how much animal protein, what your ingredient options are, how much kelp or fish meal you "shouldn't exceed, what your constant requirements are (limestone and nutribalancer for instance).
KNOW what you want to achieve as an end result... then the rest is easy.
I look at and calculate many other rations all the time because I am always willing to work with a new ingredient... but I research that ingredient thoroughly.
I also know what I am and am not willing to do... for instance I am not willing to feed beef or lamb as a protein source to my chickens... I have too many humans to feed who need that quality protein... nothing goes to waste here. There is no such thing as "leftovers" or "waste".
Everyone has to know their own limits... my chickens don't get human food, they get bugs... that's just me.
My feeds all have 3 parts - grains, premix, and "other"
My grain portion of my ration is non-gmo corn, field peas and oats (most of the time - Barley and/or wheat every once in a while. Barley has the same protein as oats so I use those interchangeably.)
My premix for chickens is nutribalancer, limestone, alfalfa meal, fish meal, and kelp (salt and kelp etc for other livestock)
"Other" is BSF then according to how much I have that week.
All ingredients (or even possible ingredients) are entered with protein into a large, multi page, excel spreadsheet I created years ago for developing and balancing rations.
Anyone who is interesting in learning to balance rations can pull prepackaged ration balancers off the internet if they want (I developed my own because I knew exactly what I wanted and my background is in software development)
I have target percentages of proteins and min/max limits for certain other ingredients depending on the type of livestock.
(For instance the cows get a little copper, but I make sure the sheep never get any. Sheep get selenium. Chickens get BSF)
Each type of ration is entered into it's appropriate section and draws from the main data so that if I add a "possible ingredient" it affects all rations.
For instance... sometimes I feed whey to the chickens, and when I'm feeding pigs (which I rarely do - ugh!) they always get whey.
On the rare occasions I'm talked into spending several months raising out a few pigs I always make sure I do it when I have an excess of milk and am making a lot of cheese - whey fed pigs are healthy pigs.
So... all I have to do is manipulate the grains to the combinations I want... for chickens right now it's corn, field peas, and oats.
The grains are more than 3/4 the total dry weight with corn being about half that 3/4s, peas being about 3/4 the other half of that 3/4s, and oats the remaining.
Then enter the premix to get the correct combinations and there for the protein I want according to the BSF I have and the limits I've set.
Mostly this involves adjusting the fish meal amount down as the BSF level goes up.
This is important to maintain not only the animal protein levels I want but because fish meal is something I can't grow or get locally and it's the most expensive ingredient, I want to feed as little as necessary to keep expenses down.
(I personally feel that someone who believes animal protein is not necessary for chickens either doesn't understand chicken's nutritional requirements or they are making excuses to not provide a more expensive and/or labor intensive ration - just my opinion, but that goes back to knowing what you're willing to do)
The current chart I have hanging in the feed room has the same combinations of grains for chicks and laying hens.
That way I can use the same batch of ground grains for everyone and then just add the appropriate premix according to the BSF I have available.
I match the lbs of BSF to the chart on the wall... and scooping and weighing is a 10 second process... easy because all the work was done beforehand to make the chart.
I didn't used to use the chart with various possibilities, but because BSF crawl off amounts vary according to weather, I found I wanted to adjust my premix accordingly once a week and that was a pain... so just keeping a chart is easy. When BSF crawl off is high I don't need any Fish Meal at all.
One more important thing to note... Math required here...
If your premix to dry grains ratio is 1:3 (mine is not exactly that but I'll those even numbers for an example) then you need to calculate what your FF grains weigh relative to your dry grains.
For example: If one lb of your dry grains weighs 2.25 lbs after fermenting, then to calculated your premix ratio for each lb of fermented grains you need to use this relative ratio. 1:6.75 (in other words, for every lb of FF grains you need to add .148 lbs of premix)
Yes, you need to have a good scale to do this.
For me, because my BSF crawl off changes, my premix changes... so that's why I have a chart according to my premix to dry grain ration to give me my premix to fermented grains ratio according to BSF availability. I don't mind using my brain while sitting in front of the computer without distractions, but feeding several hundred animals everyday should be fairly mindless... so this makes it not only mindless... but easy for someone else to follow in an emergency.
Hope that makes sense...
Two pieces of advice... first, do the math.
NEVER take someone else's recipe and take it for gospel.
There are many recipes floating around out there... 99% of them are NOT what I would advise as a balanced ration - especially for chickens.
Know what you want... how much protein, how much animal protein, what your ingredient options are, how much kelp or fish meal you "shouldn't exceed, what your constant requirements are (limestone and nutribalancer for instance).
KNOW what you want to achieve as an end result... then the rest is easy.
I look at and calculate many other rations all the time because I am always willing to work with a new ingredient... but I research that ingredient thoroughly.
I also know what I am and am not willing to do... for instance I am not willing to feed beef or lamb as a protein source to my chickens... I have too many humans to feed who need that quality protein... nothing goes to waste here. There is no such thing as "leftovers" or "waste".
Everyone has to know their own limits... my chickens don't get human food, they get bugs... that's just me.
My feeds all have 3 parts - grains, premix, and "other"
My grain portion of my ration is non-gmo corn, field peas and oats (most of the time - Barley and/or wheat every once in a while. Barley has the same protein as oats so I use those interchangeably.)
My premix for chickens is nutribalancer, limestone, alfalfa meal, fish meal, and kelp (salt and kelp etc for other livestock)
"Other" is BSF then according to how much I have that week.
All ingredients (or even possible ingredients) are entered with protein into a large, multi page, excel spreadsheet I created years ago for developing and balancing rations.
Anyone who is interesting in learning to balance rations can pull prepackaged ration balancers off the internet if they want (I developed my own because I knew exactly what I wanted and my background is in software development)
I have target percentages of proteins and min/max limits for certain other ingredients depending on the type of livestock.
(For instance the cows get a little copper, but I make sure the sheep never get any. Sheep get selenium. Chickens get BSF)
Each type of ration is entered into it's appropriate section and draws from the main data so that if I add a "possible ingredient" it affects all rations.
For instance... sometimes I feed whey to the chickens, and when I'm feeding pigs (which I rarely do - ugh!) they always get whey.
On the rare occasions I'm talked into spending several months raising out a few pigs I always make sure I do it when I have an excess of milk and am making a lot of cheese - whey fed pigs are healthy pigs.
So... all I have to do is manipulate the grains to the combinations I want... for chickens right now it's corn, field peas, and oats.
The grains are more than 3/4 the total dry weight with corn being about half that 3/4s, peas being about 3/4 the other half of that 3/4s, and oats the remaining.
Then enter the premix to get the correct combinations and there for the protein I want according to the BSF I have and the limits I've set.
Mostly this involves adjusting the fish meal amount down as the BSF level goes up.
This is important to maintain not only the animal protein levels I want but because fish meal is something I can't grow or get locally and it's the most expensive ingredient, I want to feed as little as necessary to keep expenses down.
(I personally feel that someone who believes animal protein is not necessary for chickens either doesn't understand chicken's nutritional requirements or they are making excuses to not provide a more expensive and/or labor intensive ration - just my opinion, but that goes back to knowing what you're willing to do)
The current chart I have hanging in the feed room has the same combinations of grains for chicks and laying hens.
That way I can use the same batch of ground grains for everyone and then just add the appropriate premix according to the BSF I have available.
I match the lbs of BSF to the chart on the wall... and scooping and weighing is a 10 second process... easy because all the work was done beforehand to make the chart.
I didn't used to use the chart with various possibilities, but because BSF crawl off amounts vary according to weather, I found I wanted to adjust my premix accordingly once a week and that was a pain... so just keeping a chart is easy. When BSF crawl off is high I don't need any Fish Meal at all.
One more important thing to note... Math required here...
If your premix to dry grains ratio is 1:3 (mine is not exactly that but I'll those even numbers for an example) then you need to calculate what your FF grains weigh relative to your dry grains.
For example: If one lb of your dry grains weighs 2.25 lbs after fermenting, then to calculated your premix ratio for each lb of fermented grains you need to use this relative ratio. 1:6.75 (in other words, for every lb of FF grains you need to add .148 lbs of premix)
Yes, you need to have a good scale to do this.
For me, because my BSF crawl off changes, my premix changes... so that's why I have a chart according to my premix to dry grain ration to give me my premix to fermented grains ratio according to BSF availability. I don't mind using my brain while sitting in front of the computer without distractions, but feeding several hundred animals everyday should be fairly mindless... so this makes it not only mindless... but easy for someone else to follow in an emergency.
Hope that makes sense...
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