Picking up some more chicks tomorrow (if they still have them)
Cinnamon Queen
Painted Sussex
Dekalb
Blue Laced Wyandotte
They have but not really interested in-
Bielefelder
Barnevelder
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The stores around me are sold out as soon as they get their shipments in! Iād like to sell a couple of my layers and get some different hens- but as people have said, i hate dealing with FB.
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Very nice set up you created there
We have welsummer chickens, they blend in with the forest floor better than other colors and their eggs are gorgeous.
I like to feed Kalmbach full plume because it has higher protein and the pellets are smaller so I can give it to our quail as well. Itās not crumbles, just smaller pellets.
I hated having to stock different types of food, and that one works for us.
For chicks, I would mix a little native dirt with medicated crumbles, to get them exposed to and protected from coccidiosis.
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I do wonder what will happen later this year when all of the people buying out the chicks realize they do not actually want to deal with a dozen adult chickens
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I have been wondering the same.
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That is when the rest of us get a great deal on adult chickens, and chicken supplies.
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We would love to, but it gets too cold for us to do that here.
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I also wanted to say that chickens are good for so many things.
I give them bugs that we take off our plants and trees. They get produce that we cannot finish in time and discarded garden clippings. Nothing rotten of course - that goes in the hot compost and nothing poisonous either.
My husband puts forest litter inside the quail and chicken pens, and later it comes out all broken down and fertilized for us.
I love having chickens. I honestly donāt think itās cheaper than buying eggs, but it has so many other benefits and the eggs are definitely better than store bought too.
Lastly, Iām not a fan of how the chickens are treated that supply the bulk of the store eggs. Some of them have really horrible lives. And I am not a PETA member or vegetarian and Iām not anti-hunting but I am pro humane.
Putting a live creature in a tiny cage where it canāt move around and cutting off the tip of its beak so they donāt attack each other due to these conditions and also they leave the lights on 24/7 so that they lay more eggs.
Thatās just not good animal husbandry and also cruel to boot.
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@krismoriah ISAās are egg machines. Mine laid great for 3 years and then significantly declined. They have a reputation for being calm and docile, and they were with each other and me. However, every flock of them Iāve had have been absolute jerks and extremely aggressive towards any new chickens Iāve introduced.
Interestingly (at least to me) when you go digging into what breeds of chickens used to be raised by normal farm and homesteading folks around here back in the day, itās much different than what you see today. When I questioned old timers about what kind of chickens they had pre-WWII and post WWII, the most common answer I got was, āWhite ones.ā After a lot more digging, people were just raising whatever was around in the community. Folks would swap roosters every so often if they wanted some new genetics. The breeds that seemed to be prevalent were: White leghorn (by far and away the most common), jungle fowl (game cocks), and various bantams. After realizing that old folks didnāt really care what breeds they had, I quit being a breed snob and have been keeping white leghorn and mutt crosses since then.
Also, ādual purposeā breeds werenāt really pursued more than egg layers back in the day around here. Any bird that had meat on its bones and could be caught first could be dinner. In terms of efficiency, the amount of meat you get off of a buff orpigton versus a leghorn at the end of an egg laying career doesnāt justify the extra feed consumed to maintain the larger body for several years. This isnāt to rain on anybodyās dual purpose parade. I got into that for a while and really enjoyed naked necks (who are double breasted!), but it was quite the revelation to me when the old timers told me they were butchering their old egg layers that, come to find out, were small carcassed birds.
While I enjoy having chickens and getting eggs, where mine shine is in compost production. I toss all food scraps and lots of carbon in there and let them work it all up. I shovel it out of their run every so often and let it sit in a pile, and then put it in the garden beds in the fall.
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I am trying ISAās, Cinnamon Queen and Golden Cometsā¦ i gave it a go reading about themā¦some say they are all the sameā¦some say there are slight differencesā¦ some say they are only true to name from some breeders and not othersā¦ Doesnt really matter to me it will be fun figuring it all out.
I call on Fridays to see what RK and TSC has in stock and when i get there Saturday almost nothing that they said that they had is there and they have ones i didnt even go forā¦ so at this point im just buying 3 of this or that and see what happens.
Today i got some of the above, along with New Hampshire Redsā¦and Partridge Cochins
A local feed store that i called had the Painted Sussex (i never thought to ask the price) I asked how much they said- $35 per chick! I passed on it.
Im up to about 30 chicksā¦ i think a dozen more and im done for now.
I have a large hen house and a pretty large run for my compostingā¦ then they have access to a whole block of my new orchard so i figure i will have happy hens.
My next project is a chicken tractorā¦ for my other orchards. I plan on getting that up and running next year i guess. I dont think i can free range them at my other blocksā¦ my dogs are killers and i dont think they will ever not be.
My rain barrel half way filled up during a light rain so im in business on the free water.
Things are coming alongā¦
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Maybe i will try to make one (or more) of these small chicken tractorsā¦ i like repurposing stuff and i cant find a chicken tractor so far that i like.
Im thinking this would work with a dog kennel and some dog cratesā¦ and a couple of lawnmower wheels.
I think the dog crates would work better than these picsā¦ as dogs cant get out of themā¦so my dogs probably couldnt get in either. I dont see any need for the bottom to be openā¦ and when moving there wouldnt be an empty bottom to worry about.
So kinda like a chicken rickshaw.
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Where does everyone get egg cartons from? I usually try to reuse them, but not everyone gives them back. $0.89 at Ace isnt a very good price.
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Weāve become known for accepting egg cartons, so even non-customers bring us cartons at farmers market. There was only one year we panicked and thought we might not have enough when a new market started up. We ordered a box of 140 from Zellwin. They are made from recycled paper and they were not flimsy, but other than they seemed like ordinary cartons. Eight years ago, they were 25Ā¢ a box, but they had a special on surplus cartons that had grocery store brand printed on them. Blank cartons now cost about 45Ā¢ per carton for a box of 140, although they would be cheaper if you bought in larger quantities. Iām not sure what the smallest quantity is.
A friend told us a couple years ago that he had a friend who had ālots of cartons.ā Did we want them? Usually when someone says they have lots of cartons, they mean 8 or a dozen. The friend of a friend had about 200. We will be well supplied for years.
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We ask folks at church to bring us their old egg cartons and we get more than we can ever use. When we get low we just ask for another round. If we had to buy new the local Farm and Home store has new cartons for $.25 each. If I ever sell persimmons at the local farmerās market Iāll probably buy a bunch in the spring and just store them until fall.
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My chicks are doing really well, looking for your best tips on creating friendly chickens. I realize itās often genetics, but curious to know everyoneās practices.
So far Iāve been doing what I do for any other animalā¦ human hands are positively associated and certain call means ācomeā for food reward. Theyāre still a little too skittish to accept a reward while being handled, but Iād like that to be a goal in case of the need for any medical issues or treatment in the future.
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Create your own egg carton ponzi schemeā¦ by having friends tell friends to tell friendsā¦ whomever gives you 12 empty cartons gets their first dozen eggs for free.
Or if you dont like socializingā¦ just incorporate the cost into your sale.
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Im training mine now on oatmeal. the sticky oatmeal that i have been giving them as a treatā¦they are now associating my hands with the oatmeal as i let them clean it off my fingers.
I did a few trials of soaking their starter mix with sprinkles of oatmealā¦ they picked out each piece of oatmeal and ran with it and ate it selfishly as if it were the best thing they had ever had.
https://backyardpoultry.iamcountryside.com/feed-health/can-chickens-eat-oatmeal/
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Iām going to have to try that out. So far they really like chick grit, but are not at all impressed by scrambled egg, yolk, their own food on my hand, or the black soldier fly larvae I crushed and forced myself to offer on hand. They looked at me with betrayal, as if to say, but whereās our grit?
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