Whitetail Creek Farm: Starting from scratch

[KS_Chicken_Wrangler]

Here is one batch that we had to clean up. Pretty good cross section of breeds.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Good to know. I've been following a number of people who are using the wet mash/fermented feed with their flocks. Some swear by it, others have said the savings on cost are negligible and thus they don't find it to be worth the effort. I would love to get to the point of hatching my own. Not quite sure I'm ready for it yet. My daughter (in nursing school, so she loved it) and I fished out all the pasty butts and got them cleaned up. We did lose one chick, but out of 40 I suppose that is to be expected.

I do plan to order some ducklings yet this season (probably into summer), is pasty butt a thing with them too?

Don't get me started on fermented feed myths.

Too many variables.

Birds tend to waste a LOT of feed as crumble. Up to 10%. Rendering it into a wet mash reduces waste much like serving pellet reduces waste. They are more likely to see and eat the bits they spill out of the bowl when its oatmeal or pellet than when its crumble/powder. That's the only reliable savings.

After that, the benefits of fermentation are determined by what your birds are nutritionally short of, what you are fermenting, how you are fermenting, and what you are fermenting it with. Natto, beer, sourdough, yogurt, kefir, cheese, sauerkraut, kimchi are all fermented products. Fermenting "feed" is much the same. Details matter.

 

[KS_Chicken_Wrangler]

Not the best photo (tried to include as much action as possible), but here is an updated photo of the 6x9 brooder...minus the Ohio Brooder portion. It's finally warm enough so we pulled it out today and added the dust bath section, another log, and a raised platform for the food/grit (tired of shavings in there! LOL). Of the 40 I bought, I have 36 remaining; three of the four I lost were really small when I got them so I'm afraid they were just weak chicks.

 

[KS_Chicken_Wrangler]

Put some additions into the brooder this morning. Added some roosts and rearranged some things. Added more shavings and rearranged how their food/water is presented.

 

[TwoCrows]

Put some additions into the brooder this morning. Added some roosts and rearranged some things. Added more shavings and rearranged how their food/water is presented.

Nice brooder, chicks need stimulation and learning to roost early in life is important. Excellent job!

 

[ChaosMom]

Not the best photo (tried to include as much action as possible), but here is an updated photo of the 6x9 brooder...minus the Ohio Brooder portion. It's finally warm enough so we pulled it out today and added the dust bath section, another log, and a raised platform for the food/grit (tired of shavings in there! LOL). Of the 40 I bought, I have 36 remaining; three of the four I lost were really small when I got them so I'm afraid they were just weak chicks.

90% rate is nothing to be sneezed at!

 

[KS_Chicken_Wrangler]

Been a while since I've shared the goings on! Brooder layers are into the ugly dinosaur teen days, but thriving. The older layers have been closely supervised while foraging due to an obscene amount of red tails in the vicinity.

Had to run a SpecOps, Zero Dark Thirty mission just now. The roo is taking breeding season very seriously so we had to put on some saddles. Best time to do it, as far as I can tell, is after dark so on went the red head lamps and on went the saddles. I'll have some pictures of them in the daylight in the coming days. If he doesn't chill out, he might need to go on a bachelor trip...