The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[Pozees]

just a quick post to say that:

the deer got tangled up in the extension cord and it got unplugged from the meter cord, so that is why the dog bowl heater quit working. You know the first, the very first question tech support/trouble shooters will ask you is "did you check to see if it is plugged in". duh!

30 below windchill, but the air temp has warmed up to -8, and the sun is coming out! hooray!

edited to add: I love my National Weather Service forcasters: the forecast for today is "abundant sunshine" . is that a wonderful way to look at it? highs of -4.

Oh man, I guess I can't feel sorry for myself then - struggled to finally reach 10 above here in the last hour, woke up to 6 degrees and light flurries, temp dropped to 4 then started coming back up, so we've got a heat wave compared to you!

Glad the heated water bowl mystery has been solved

 

[Scott H]

Yeah, my wife yelled at me yesterday, "honey, the vacuum just quit." Check the cord....Oh.

 

[Leahs Mom]

Ok I have a question about deep litter. I cleaned out my coop about 6 weeks ago and threw a couple of feed bucket fulls of dirt out of the woods onto the floor of my coop. It is 5x8 wooden floor with linoleum... nest boxes at ground level and lowest roost about 15inches from floor. Anyway.... I used pine needles and leaves that we raked out of our yard and my moms. I have been turning them at least once a week and adding a little more. Today when I turned them it was pretty wet and had a little ammonia smell. I didnt add anymore and left the big door open to help air it out and dry it out. Do I need to just clean it all out and rebed it?

Bummer. Just wrote a whole post and my computer locked the browser

My personal experience with the leaves has been that they do stay wetter than wood chips/shavings.

I also have vinyl over wood like you describe and I also put in some dirt as well. Even in my outdoor run, I found that the leaves stayed wetter, retaining the water for longer than the chips/shavings do. When I used them alone, they were more prone to becoming slimy and slippery. Not always, but more than I liked.

If I were in your situation, I would remove about 1/2 of the current litter and then mix in some wood shavings with what's still there. Then when I added more to the coop, I'd mix it at about 1/3 leaves to 2/3 wood chips ratio. This is just based on my own experience.

 

[Pozees]

Ok I have a question about deep litter. I cleaned out my coop about 6 weeks ago and threw a couple of feed bucket fulls of dirt out of the woods onto the floor of my coop. It is 5x8 wooden floor with linoleum... nest boxes at ground level and lowest roost about 15inches from floor. Anyway.... I used pine needles and leaves that we raked out of our yard and my moms. I have been turning them at least once a week and adding a little more. Today when I turned them it was pretty wet and had a little ammonia smell. I didnt add anymore and left the big door open to help air it out and dry it out. Do I need to just clean it all out and rebed it?

Can you just toss in some dry shavings or straw? That's probably what I would try before emptying it all out and starting over.

 

[aoxa]

just a quick post to say that:

the deer got tangled up in the extension cord and it got unplugged from the meter cord, so that is why the dog bowl heater quit working. You know the first, the very first question tech support/trouble shooters will ask you is "did you check to see if it is plugged in". duh!

30 below windchill, but the air temp has warmed up to -8, and the sun is coming out! hooray!

edited to add: I love my National Weather Service forcasters: the forecast for today is "abundant sunshine" . is that a wonderful way to look at it? highs of -4.

Are we talking Fahrenheit? That sure is cold for this time of year.. We haven't hit bellow -15C yet. I haven't kept track of windchills this year. It feels much colder.

Yeah, my wife yelled at me yesterday, "honey, the vacuum just quit." Check the cord....Oh.

lol

 

[Leahs Mom]

Aoxa - I know it gets REALLY COLD where you are in winter. Do you ever add heat anywhere to take the chill off in the barn? I'm meaning bringing it up to 0 or positive single digits (F)..not heating to a warm temp.

 

[TeaChick]

I agree. Spellcheck and autocorrect don't even recognize their own names!!! >:-(

 

[aoxa]

Aoxa - I know it gets REALLY COLD where you are in winter. Do you ever add heat anywhere to take the chill off in the barn? I'm meaning bringing it up to 0 or positive single digits (F)..not heating to a warm temp.

Nope. I do heat that brooder room, but that's it.

They are really starting to get used to the cold Acclimating.

Susan was in charge of chores last night and left the pop door open (no big deal, I have done this so many times) and I woke up to this:


"You forgot to feed us this morning."

I slept in.. They decided to chastise me for it. FULL VIEW to see the look on her face LOL

 

[TeaChick]

sigh. another bad chicken keeper day.

just got home to frozen water in the coop. based on what I can see, I think the water was frozen almost all day long. left fresh water at 4am. I've been taking the water out at night to keep the moisture out of the coop when they aren't drinking so didn't know the heated dog bowl had stopped working.

its a wonder these chickens survive me. will go spend $$ on another stupid bowl. wonder if those immersion heaters last any longer?


Delisha, I've been looking at chicken feathers for a month or so during these molts moults and haven't seen a single stress line. wish someone would check my feathers, sure I have a zillion.

This is how I feel half the time!!!

What about a large steel bowl with maybe styrofoam in the bottom of it. My dog's dish sits outside and we almost never remember to empty it; there has to be a hard freeze overnight for it to even get a thin sheet of ice over the water. If you could put styrofoam in the space under the dish, maybe that would provide the extra insulation to keep the water from freezing during the day???
Here's a pic of my dog's waterdish; it's pretty much the largest we could find.
Okay, I misremembered what the dog bowl looked like, but there are ones that have kind of a "foot", if you will, to provide stability, like this one:
This is the underside, where I was talking about putting some kind of insulation:

 

[fosterson]

"You forgot to feed us this morning."

I slept in.. They decided to chastise me for it. FULL VIEW to see the look on her face LOL

BAD HUMAN! NO EGGS FOR YOU!