The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[aoxa]

Stony,

When do ducks stop peeping and girls get their quacks?

Pekin X is huge.

Do you butcher your ducks? If so, how much different is it than butchering a chicken?

 

[flagirl]

To stonykill......Your comments are always smart, useful, and well thought out.....By NO means should you imitate the cute pic, shallow, mindless "oh it is soo! cute I just don't know if I can stand it" bunch.....Some people are smart, some people are totally inane....Don't even consider "sticking to cute pics and stay by yourself" as an option....There are way too few critical thinking, open minded people...We need everyone of you...Best To You...

x2-10

 

[delisha]

Stony,

When do ducks stop peeping and girls get their quacks?

Pekin X is huge.

Do you butcher your ducks? If so, how much different is it than butchering a chicken?

I am not Stony, but this is my experience.

I skin my ducks I process myself. If I sell them processed I take them to a process plant. They charge $5.00 a duck and the client pays it when they pick them up.
I hate processing ducks. They have so much down. It is well worth it if you keep the down. It takes me over an hour to pluck them. If i had a plucker, I would do it myself. The down is valuable. You can make a pillow with three large ducks. They sell for over $20.00 for a good quality pillow.

Peking duck processing

 

[Bulldogma]

To stonykill......Your comments are always smart, useful, and well thought out.....By NO means should you imitate the cute pic, shallow, mindless "oh it is soo! cute I just don't know if I can stand it" bunch.....Some people are smart, some people are totally inane....Don't even consider "sticking to cute pics and stay by yourself" as an option....There are way too few critical thinking, open minded people...We need everyone of you...Best To You...

Somehow I just can't see Mr. Stonykill batting his eyelashes and squealing "OH! It's so cute!!" LOL!

Stony - hope you know how well you and your input are loved on this thread! We're not a ribbons and bows thread... we're a torn denim and old boot leather thread... and we're going to stay that way. Gotta keep it real.

 

[brandislee]

Wow over 1700 pages to this thread

... it's hard to navigate and find the information I'm looking for so I'm just going to ask... sorry if I'm repeating questions.

We are new to country living, actually we're not quite there yet, still in the research and development phase.

We live as chemical free as we can, I avoid vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and processed foods for my family and intend to raise my food in the same manner. It's taken me years to learn how to use herbs and nutritional foods for health. I'm really hoping I can apply the same principles to the chickens and other animals we'll be keeping.

So my questions:

Is there a repository of natural methods of curing chicken illness? I'm in the process of going through BeeKissed's thread on recouping her flock and it's encouraging, but I'm wondering if there is some kind of resource to refer to that would give me common problems and natural treatments.

Can I feed chicks something other than processed feed? Firstly we are a gluten free home and I'd like to keep as much gluten as I can out of my animals. Secondly, I'm just not comfy with processed stuff as food for anyone or anything. I've already figured out that we can let the full grown chickens forage behind the cows in the pasture (from what we've read it's recommended that chickens are two paddocks behind the cows) so we hope to avoid feed in the adults (we'll reassess this in winter, but since we get very little freeze [18" frost line] I'm expecting there should be plenty of bugs and greens all year)

Are there anythings that chickens are likely to "catch" from other animals? Like reptiles are often carriers of salmonella, if there are toads around the coup is this a concern? Is there anything else like that I need to be mindful of when planning this adventure?

Are there things from my garden/table I shouldn't feed them? Are there things from my garden/table that are exceptionally beneficial?

Can they absorb calcium from greens or is oyster shells and egg shells the only option?

Lots of people here mix their own feed. It costs a little more, but especially for a small flock is totally doable and worth it to those who do it. I want to get there, but I'm taking baby steps. At the moment I'm feeding GMO free layer that is a combo of cracked seeds and the protein and nutribalancer... basically what I would mix if I had the means. I strongly suggest Harvey Ussery's "The Small Scale Poultry Flock." It includes recipes for mixing your own feed and lists different types of ingredients you could use.

So far as avoiding gluten, I don't know if that's a good idea. Wheat, barley, and rye are all good for chickens (in moderation, obviously not as the bulk of the diet...). They don't have the same kind of digestion as us, and gluten doesn't cause them the same issues, and it doesn't (as far as I know) transfer to the meat. I have a friend who raises chickens almost solely because her son has issues with gluten (and pretty much all grains) and she avoids the corn and the soy in chicken feed. She has to drive 3 hours one way to pick up her organic special order feed. But she has wheat in her feed (organic wheat) and has no issues with it. It would be really hard and really expensive to do it without wheat, because what would you replace it with?

I've never heard of chickens getting salmonella from toads... and they're known to eat them. I think it would depend on the immune system of your flock. As with any other creature, if you have good husbandry and keep your birds in good health worrying about picking things up from the environment isn't much of an issue (although it's generally recommended to keep wild birds away from feeding areas and out of coops). So instead of worrying about what they're picking up, work on boosting their immunity by free ranging, feeding them healthy fermented feed, including things like garlic, ACV, herbs (I use some herbs in my feed, and have various herbs planted around the yard so the birds can self medicate as needed), and the like.

Especially since you're going to have multiple species, I strongly recommend Juliette de Bairacli Levy's The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable. I love it (and the only animal I have so far that it covers is chickens, although I plan to get more). It covers all the main species of farm animals and tells you how to prevent through feed and husbandry and how to treat many common ailments. Very useful.

Regarding scraps, you'll hear everything from "all scraps are unhealthy" to "I feed everything." I'm of the latter persuasion, with a caveat- I don't technically feed them to the chickens, I dump them on the compost pile, which the chickens have access to when they're free ranging on my 3 acres. When they are free ranging and they have access to lots of good things to eat, I pretty much count on them avoiding anything that isn't good for them. BUT when they're confined like in the winter (we get lots of snow here and our frost line is 4'), I'm more selective about what I give them. But even then it's pretty much only citrus, pineapple, and anything with a ton of sugar that I don't give them.

Calcium... I don't think that chickens can get enough calcium from greens. I know greens have a lot of available calcium, but think about this- you are not producing a shelled egg every 26 hours, nor are wild birds (because many people will be like "wild birds don't need extra calcium"). We have selectively bred chickens to lay far more than any other bird, and that takes a LOT of calcium. If they don't get enough they will start robbing it from other parts of their body.

That said... I only buy oyster shell once a year, in the spring. This is both because that time of the year I start saving the egg shells for my tomato plants, because they start laying more heavily in the spring, AND because I figure the bagged calcium helps make up for the net loss from the eggs that I sell (ie their shells aren't making it back to my flock). I put that out until it's gone, then that's all they get for the year. The rest of the year they get calcium in the form of all the egg shells from my kitchen, plus their is calcium in the feed I buy. So, depending on what you end up feeding, you may not need to do anything more than feed them back their egg shells. But I'm pretty sure all of Ussery's recipes include additional calcium.

Just a note for those who order meaties. I have started stock for anyone who wants to breed and raise them..them selves. It is my own version of a meat bird. It grows just a little slower but not by much slower. It can also be used for eggs, but the eggs are medium sized and not jumbo. The birds are cornich and rock crosses.

We should talk about this... I'm looking for something like this. How much slower? And how much breeding stock would you recommend maintaining to hatch out around 50 meat chickens each year? Or would you just sell the chicks for meat, not for breeding. (does that make sense?) I don't really want to maintain two roosters if I don't have to, so I'd rather just let someone else do the breeding I think...

You get what you pay for. Quality birds should definitely go for more than $8 a chick. Just my opinion. Some of these birds are HARD to hatch, and those breeders paid a ton for their birds. That said, I haven't paid more than $5 for a chick yet, but I've paid more than I care to share for a goose. For chicks I will charge $10 for a silkie. Especially my good quality stock. With those vaulted skulls, the hatch rate is not so great.

I agree with you, and like I said I am DONE with hatchery birds so I need to get used to paying more. I just think if you pay $8 a chick it's enough that you should get what you paid for. At $2 a chick I wouldn't be quite as bothered by it. And personally I'm not at all interested in the hard to hatch rare breeds, not because the chicks are more expensive but because... well, I don't know. They just don't appeal to me. I give kudos to those who like and raise them, especially the endangered breeds, but I want easy chickens- easy to hatch, easy to grow out, easy to keep healthy. Some of these rarer breeds don't seem that easy.

 

[aoxa]

I am not Stony, but this is my experience.

I skin my ducks I process myself. If I sell them processed I take them to a process plant. They charge $5.00 a duck and the client pays it when they pick them up.
I hate processing ducks. They have so much down. It is well worth it if you keep the down. It takes me over an hour to pluck them. If i had a plucker, I would do it myself. The down is valuable. You can make a pillow with three large ducks. They sell for over $20.00 for a good quality pillow.

Peking duck processing

Thanks Del.

Well that sucks to hear it takes so long. I don't mind plucking at all. I'd rather put the effort in than send them to be processed because I feel like that will put undue stress on them.

If only I had a plucker! Should have added that to the barn contents.

Only kidding...
We've been saying that a lot. "Oh I'm sure we had a hot tub in there.. and an air conditioner".

 

[brandislee]

Somehow I just can't see Mr. Stonykill batting his eyelashes and squealing "OH! It's so cute!!" LOL!

Stony - hope you know how well you and your input are loved on this thread! We're not a ribbons and bows thread... we're a torn denim and old boot leather thread... and we're going to stay that way. Gotta keep it real.

x2. And I'm sorry to anyone this offends, but all the OMG CUTE! posts annoy me a little. They're easy enough to just skip, so no one should feel like they need to stop posting them on my account (although really, do we have to quote them 50 times? Especially the ones with 10 pictures?). But we need people like you here to balance it out!

 

[aoxa]

.
I agree with you, and like I said I am DONE with hatchery birds so I need to get used to paying more. I just think if you pay $8 a chick it's enough that you should get what you paid for. At $2 a chick I wouldn't be quite as bothered by it. And personally I'm not at all interested in the hard to hatch rare breeds, not because the chicks are more expensive but because... well, I don't know. They just don't appeal to me. I give kudos to those who like and raise them, especially the endangered breeds, but I want easy chickens- easy to hatch, easy to grow out, easy to keep healthy. Some of these rarer breeds don't seem that easy.

It's not the health of the birds after hatch. They are perfectly healthy after the fact. I don't know why they have trouble making it to lockdown. I haven't lost a single one after hatch though.

With very high quality exhibition birds, you get into low fertility because of the tight line breeding. It's that way with some of the most loved Heritage Barred Plymouth Rocks, and the Mohawk Rhode Island Reds, but they are gorgeous birds and are very sought after. Both of those aren't fancy breeds like the Silkies or crested varieties.

I totally agree, whether it is $2 or $20 per chick, you should DEFINITELY get what you paid for. Or at least have exchanges readily available if a mistake is made.

 

[brandislee]

That sounded really catty... don't worry, I do like to see pictures. I've had a rough couple days (my dog is really sick...) and I'm getting kind of snippy. My apologies.

 

[aoxa]

That sounded really catty... don't worry, I do like to see pictures. I've had a rough couple days (my dog is really sick...) and I'm getting kind of snippy. My apologies.

I'm sorry to hear that. The quoting a lot of pictures also irks me. One or two is fine. But when you get into the very long quoting of so many pictures at once, it's hard to read between them.