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...

 

[KS_Chicken_Wrangler]

Apologies for the lack of updates. I've recently started a new job which is based in agriculture and guess what...it is now a very busy season for commodities farmers! Ugh.

The layers will go to their grow-out pen toward the end of next week (will provide picks once they are there). They are quickly outgrowing what I thought was a fairly nice sized brooder. The coop itself is already built; I'll be converting a very plain-Jane dog kennel so basically just painting the floor, adding roosting bars and a nesting box, and putting in bedding.

Today I will build the first of three set-and-forget feeders and then I need to purchase another large waterer to get to three. I'll have a 2-gallon, and probably two 5-gallon waterers. I need several because A) I will have between 28 and 30 birds out there (depending on how many mama wants to keep in town), and B) I work long hours so a morning and evening food/water check is the best they will get for a while.

I've got the fence energizer on order so I can have a 1 inch and 4 inch wire around the bottom of their fence. Need some sort of cover from aerial predators (dang we suddenly have a ridiculous amount of raptors these days) in their grass area. I'm thinking of using netting with support posts in the center to allow a taller person to walk underneath. Good news is, we've used the owl and crow decoys with the existing layers and we haven't seen many hawks since we've placed those decoys. Keeping my fingers crossed that they are working!

That is the initial need for that area. They will have the coop, a covered area with mulch, an uncovered area with mulch, and a grass area within the existing pen (18 feet wide and more than likely at least 20 feet long). The plan for expansion is to add a gate to the end of the pen and then be able to expand to an electric netting foraging area, much like what I have for the others. Big issue here is that there are no trees in this spot, so I'm concerned about hawks. Guessing I will have to add an owl decoy because I have some more crows sitting around.

Regarding the existing flock, Eddie the rooster has decided to take breeding season VERY seriously and we now have four hens in saddles. One is not adjusting to the saddle very well. She constantly has to find the neckline with her right foot (always the right foot!) and then stumbles and/or trips herself. I'm contemplating building a separate tractor for the roo to place in their foraging area which will allow them to be near one another, but not allow him access so that I can remove the saddles. Do I take this route or just hope that Cheese figures out how to deal with the saddle? It's been several weeks. She eats, forages, and drinks...and is otherwise in apparent good health. Am I over-reacting?

Any way, I'm now one step closer to starting my egg supply business. With hope that will take off and I can determine weather to grow that business or expand into meat birds and other livestock.

 

[KS_Chicken_Wrangler]

New layers have been in their new coop/run for about a week now. Still not fully complete as our recent hawk pressure has forced me to look into bird netting for the top of the run that is on grass. They have half of their run that is under a roof of a three-sided shed, so they can get in and out.

Once that netting is purchased and installed, they will have a run that will be roughly 50' L and 20' W, with a 20x30 section of that being on grass. There will be an added gate at the end of it with some electric netting outside of it in the future for added foraging.

Bird updated: I suspect we have two roos in this batch and one of them is already crowing. LOL

We're busy with graduations today, but I'll try to get some more photos added.