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Chickens
Nice. Yep, free range for sure. Too much nasty clean up otherwise.
Those are good looking birds.
Those tiny coops seem to work well for bunnies. Our neighbor keeps Virgil the bunny next to his garage door safe and well fed so far. Even so, he and I want to let him out so bad.
Northern Illinois area. Buff Orpingtons, Easter Eggers and Black Laced Wyondottes. We were talking the other day how amazing they handle temperature extremes. As long as they are dry and allowed a safe place out of wind and predators they are happy from 15 below to 105 Fahrenheit. Some of these girls have learned to walk in the snow too. As long as their feet and wattles stay dry in the cold, they do well.
Never thought of feeding beans to them. Wonder what they would do with them uncooked. Guess that is what they get in soy based feeds.
Whatever breed we get next for meat, will be curious how few eggs they lay. Feels like a few eggs a month would be more normal than a couple dozen.
Crazy. I thought calcium connection was public and only needed sign up to comment. If you want to sign up and it requires an invite let me know. Wonder if we could post an invite here for everyone. Ah these interwebs. So much to learn.
I switched my flock from tractor supply layer pellet to ground oats after one of my friends mentioned weak shells. It fixed the shells and also greatly improved their behavior, but it is a pain in the neck. Because grinding enough oats in a tiny Mr. Bean for a couple dozen chickens every day is a job. They go through two chock full of nuts coffee cans a day and clamor for more. They love the oats, and by the smell I love them also. God gives them plenty of retinol in the green growing things. These supplemented feeds are only even theoretically useful for chickens confined to cages. I had spontaneous deaths of hens in the past which were not animal attacks and which I could never explain. Whether this happens going forward is an open question. I think the eggs protect themselves, like all living things. I don't touch them anymore, though I used to love them. I keep my hens and roosters because they regulate the bugs in my semi-tropical environment, and they're fun. My "friends" love the free eggs. It would be an interesting experiment to confine a flock and feed them on nothing but oats and hay seeds, maybe hang some rotten meat and supplement them maggots also. I'm not doing it because my flock won't be confined. Lord knows I tried and gave up years ago.
Quote from Tanveen on August 11, 2025, 5:32 amThis person has been feeding chickens rice, pinto beans, larvae (and some eggs at the beginning) and the chickens seem to be doing well (he says they were heavier than others and their feathers were shiny)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UC4ZJ5fFPiw
Interesting now that I watched him. Not surprised. Ours love hot oatmeal in tthe morning. We do not eat much beans so they have not gotten any yet. We stopped feeding them mealworms long time ago. Chitin is really the only protein it give them. Blackfly larvae was a hard no too. Could not blame them given the smell.
Curious that the youtuber does not grok the prionic nature of feeding chicken protein to chickens. Farmers have known about dangers of cannibalism feed for at least centuries if not millenia. I know owls and bears are routinely cannibals. Maybe that is why they are off my menu.
His birds do look good though. I really like how cheap he has gotten their feed down to. I think much of the advantage is in cooking it. They utilize their feed much more easily when we soak it. The difference is clear, both in how they flourish and in how much they eat. Seems to bear out that cooking it in too much water improves on just soaking it.
So many good ideas here for feeds! We are in the foothills of the White Mountains of NH and occasionally we can drop to -20F and very windy with about 5 feet of snow per year. My coop that is off the ground can result in frostbite on wattles and combs. The shed-barn with dirt floor is much warmer. It could be the best thing would be to build a porch off the shed-barn. And the shed-barn allows dirt baths in winter. I guess I'm talking myself out of my raised coop now...
When you have a porch the chickens stay outside most of the day and so the litter under the roost ends up pretty similar (chickens poop a ton at night whether free range or not). Of course, now and then you might want to clean out the porch area. I throw some sun-dried hay each day on the porch for them to browse through. It replaces eating green grass. And what they don't eat becomes a bedding in there and it gets rained on and isn't as gross as you'd think. Natural processes happen on dirt.
Most grocery store "free range" eggs are actually porch-raised. Porches still allow good chicken habits like dirt baths, sunshine, fresh air, and eating small rocks! Small rocks are so important for chicken nutrition. And of course there are the occasional bugs and worms that still make their way in. Every now and then with both the dirt floors (shed and porch) you need to get some stone dust (not the kind with plastic in it from the big box stores!) and fill in holes. To be a chicken farmer is to constantly fill holes--chickens eat a LOT of small rocks, LOL. I used to get a delivery of stone dust from the quarry and have a pile so I could fix holes as necessary.
Of course where I live all of this involves a lot of winter shoveling and I'm not missing it... :O. But something right outside my door, where I already shovel, might be nice. My dirt floor shed-barn is too far away! Put your coop close to your house!
I always put "cleaning out the coop" in the category of gardening. Chicken bedding makes things grow. The stone dust that comes with it makes the soil flora grow. Add some char from the fireplace to your gardens as well. Gardening is also something I'm not into anymore because I'm sick of throwing out my back. I used to wonder why back yard farmers sometimes gave up in their sixties and now I know... So do it while you are young, it's exhilarating!
Ah @lil-chick
We are both 64. lowbackability.com and kneesovertoesguy.com and low vA are improving our backs daily. Same for the dogs' and chickens' backs and hips believe it or not. Well at least low vA is doing it for them. Have not figured how to get livestock on to kneesovertoesguy. Come to think of it they already do that stuff.
White Mountains?! Nice. We walked Little Haystack, Lincoln and Lafayette in 1990's. Saw our first golden eagle. Sounded like a drugged up turkey.
Hike leader messed up. Started too late too slow. Knew we were in trouble when we saw speed running veterans between Lincoln and Lafayette near the hut. It was already closed for the season. Guy took a look at what we wore and what we carried. Confirmed where we were going. Stopped talking. Told us to start moving. Did everything except shake his head, turn around hold our hands and drag us down. Siblings still failed to get it. No joke boulder hopping down in dark. Lost trail in dark. Headed toward Falling Water and followed stream down to parking lot.
Strobe on small plane couple thousand feet above us threw shadow. 2 older siblings led the walk. They had not read up on the history of the area. I had meteorology class ten years earlier. Got us to read up on systems there and what goes wrong. We lucked out. Beautiful in the 60's all day and 40'w that night. Got into our hotel room just in time. Beautiful and scary. Siblings had zero clue. Cold next day. So lucky.
Yeh, our coop on stilts gets one or two girls on windiest nights. Most stay in cage / run on perches. Tarps and haybales keep wind and rain out. Figure to pull all that off and put a hoop house over the whole thing. Easier to clean and more room all winter. More dirt baths. More of everything for them.
Quote from Joe2 on August 12, 2025, 11:56 pmDo you feed them crushed oyster shell? Ours get oats and barley. Without oyster shell we get jelly eggs.
No oyster shell. I'm a pretty lazy chicken farmer. I do get one or two jelly eggs a month. I used to shuck oysters for a living, for several years, so that a good bit of my driveway is oyster shells I brought home from my work. I figure they can sort it for themselves 😀
The only times I ever had soft egg shells is when I switched to a specific "organic" pellet. Weird, huh?
I would guess that chickens are supposed to get all their minerals from the small rocks that they eat that grind together in their crops.
Maybe in some places the territory isn't very calcium-rich? Tired territory. I wonder if chicken grit or stone dust would help.
I always sprinkled some baby chick grit right away. Chicken grit also helps if you like to start seedlings. It's kind of a wonder.
When you break open a rock there's fresh minerals in there LOL.
Yep they need the tiny rocks for the teeth. Crop and Gizzard. And the calcium for the shells. Kind of wonder if that has anything to do with the reduced dandelions in our back yard since we got the girls.