Chicken and the egg.

We started out with chickens nearly 12 years ago.

I adopted an unfortunate little chick brought into my ER for possible neurologic problems. Upon inquiry the avian vet determined is was actually a case of user error. 

The couple who owned the chick were young and sweet but quite clueless when it comes to chickens. They had been feeding it worms and breadcrumbs. 

The lack of a varied diet had left the poor bird with significant nutritional deficits and it no longer could lift its head or walk. 

I took it home and informed my husband that we were raising chickens. 

He's always been a good sport so off we went on the adventure of chickens. 

 

We had free rangers, several versions of a coop, raccoon deaths, far too many birds, meat birds, and decorative birds. You name it, we tried it. 

 

It wasn't until about 10 years in that we finally found a good balance in chicken ownership. One that kept the birds safe, the manure load reasonable, and the maintenance brief. 

Our current set up is a spare 8 birds. We found with more than that we were producing more eggs than we needed. 

This sounds all well and good, but selling eggs was never profitable and quite a pain in the ass. We reassessed our purpose in chickens. Eggs for us, a few eggs to share. So 8 was a good number. 

Next is the manure load. With 8 birds the amount of manure they produce is easily spread throughout our garden. Also it requires minimal maintenance to keep the flies, smell and mud at bay. 

We use a deep litter method, layering straw every few months or as smell and mud warrant. In the rainy season we spread a bale of straw once a month, during the dryer parts of the year only every few months. This keeps the eggs clean, no muddy chicken feet, the coop clean, and the chicken yard pleasant. 

 

Feed and rats. We started with free feeding our birds in large feeders, which invariably increased our rat population. Not so cool. The rats ate up a lot of our feed and then multiplied like crazy. We switched over to feeding the birds only as much as they could eat in a day, outside, to discourage rats setting up camp in the coop. By nightfall the chickens had eaten up all the feed and the rats were left with little to nothing. Rats will never completely go away in our area, but we are not encouraging them which is nice. 

All food scraps from our kitchen go to our chickens. If we eat out we bring home leftovers. Camps, family events, everything. Even neighbors bring by food scraps and garden spoils to trade for eggs or just free up their yard waste bin. All plant scraps not given to the rabbits goes in with the chickens and they either eat them or it contributes to the brown material for composting. 

Compost. Each year we dig out the coop and chicken yard and load up the garden beds. This adds straw and poop, a perfect combination of nitrogen leaching and nitrogen loading. The straw smothers weeds and adds a lovely moisture grabbing element to the soil. We no longer bother with worms bin as the straw and poop attack red wigglers on its own. We mound up the beds to a couple of feet high. They heat and decompose all winter and are ready in the spring for planting. When turning the mounds once or twice a season they are full of red wigglers doing their job. 

 

With our previous free range chickens the garden areas were destroyed and chicken poop got everywhere. Raccoons eventually realized there was food available and came in eat the birds. After the last raccoon attack we took to locking up the birds at night, a hassle but not unreasonable. Also we set a timer on a pond we have in the back yard. One of the biggest attractants to raccoons in urban areas is the sound of running water at night. They come to use the water for food and play and then realize you have chickens. One thing leads to another and you get raccoons coming at all times of the day and night looking for a snack. By simply turning off the pond during the dark hours the raccoons have stopped coming to visit.

Having a barky dog helps too. 

 

Eggs. Eggs are collected daily to discourage egg eating. We find that eggs left for too long are at risk of being broken, then the ladies catch on that pecking and eating them is a good idea. 

Routine. Our daily routine with the chickens is to bring down the food scraps from the kitchen. Open up the pop hole to let the ladies out. They get a heaping scoop of feed (about 5 cups) tossed in a garbage can lid in the chicken yard. There is a tarp cover over the feed area to keep it dry. While the chickens are eating I collect the eggs and check the water level. In the evening I close up the pop hole as the ladies have already gone inside. In all it takes about 5 minutes daily, 10 minutes weekly when I refill the water. And once a year a good couple of hours shoveling straw from the coop into the garden beds.

Watering. Watering is a serious pain in the ass with standard chicken waterers. They forever spill or come apart. We had toyed with the notion of using drinking nipples along a board piped in from a central waterer, but found that two 5 gallon buckets with screw in nipples work very well for us. One of the containers is insulated which keeps it from freezing for all but a few weeks in our mild Pacific Northwest climate. 

With just the 8 birds we find that the waterers need to be filled every few weeks. When it does freeze we use a heated pad and a galvanized bucket to keep the ladies in fresh water. This is a bit of a pain, but its only a few weeks a year. 

 

Coop. We have an open air coop which is clean and pleasant. There are three solid sides and an open meshed side. It is large and can accommodate 4 times the chickens so the poop and pecking are kept to a reasonable amount. The birds have space to get away from each other even if they are locked up while we are out of town. 

There is an outdoor caged in bird run that gets the girls outdoors. Its is protected from dogs and keeps the chickens from the garden. 

 

 

 

Fodder

Along with our research on raising rabbits we stumbled upon the growing of fodder.

I work for an animal ER and forever have rabbits coming in with GI stasis. This is when a rabbits gut is no longer moving food along at the appropriate pace. Rabbits continuously eat and produce stool. When they stop its no good. Often a diet that's largely comprised of pellets is the culprit. Owners mistakenly see the veggies given to rabbits as treats and not the staple of their diet.

In my research I have found that fodder, or sprouted grains, can provide fairly nearly the entirety of a rabbits diet with timothy hay and they are all the better for it. Our rabbits eat predominately fodder and are supplemented with pellets, black sunflower seeds and timothy hay. We do still feed our rabbits a small amount of pellets in case of any problems with feeding fodder, ie a batch of fodder goes rancid, we are out of town for a couple days, ect.

We use barley seed as our fodder base. We have tried wheat in the past but found that it tends to mold easily. The fodder system we use is a simple but cheap endeavor.

There are many commercial versions of fodder systems but even the least expensive of those are around 2k. Ours is a 5 tiered metal wire rack like what you would get from home depot. 8 storage bins, about 8 inches tall by 24 inches and 36 inches. We drilled holes in the base about every 1.5 inches and every 2 inches in the lids.

To start with every night I soak about 4 cups of barley seed in a bucket for at least 10 hours. The fodder trays are watered twice a day, in the morning when I'm taking a tray to the rabbits and again at night when I cover the trays up. The lids are really only necessary when the fodder rack is outside. It drains into gravel next to our garage. The lids keep vermin from getting into the grain and sprouts.

During the cooler parts of the year we keep the fodder rack in the garage with a plastic tent of painters plastic and a cheap, small, space heater. Fodder grows best in 65 to 75 degree weather. It slows down if it's cooler, hence the heater, and dries out easily if it's much hotter. We keep the rack in the shade and water an extra time of day if its too warm. While 65-75 is ideal, we find the fodder does just fine in any weather with a little assistance.

Tricks for keeping fodder from spoiling. If the grass sits for too many days it can go rancid. The grass part is ok but the roots will take on a terrible smell. You can still use it by rinsing it off very thoroughly. But better is to use the fodder earlier in the cycle.

Breeder rabbits who are not on free feed due to pregnancy or nursing should only get a baseball sized chunk. But if they are free feeding, ie nursing, pregnant, or are growing babies you can give them as much as they will eat. We find if the grass has gotten tall enough to poke out of the growing bin holes, it is time to use the whole tray. Some days it will grow longer without spoiling, but there is no good reason to risk it spoiling when you have rabbits that will readily use it. Also we find that the older the fodder is the less well it is utilized. The rabbits will eat the green tops but leave older roots in their cage uneaten. For best utilization and the least amount of waste, soak a new tray each day, and give the entire contents of the oldest tray daily.

Meat rabbits!

If you grow for meat, rabbits are definitely the way to go. If only they layed eggs as well!

We have some lovely friends who dove head first into rabbits. It only took a few visits before I was hooked on the idea of raising bunnies for ourselves.

I grew up eating wild rabbit and loved it, as did my husband. We took an ill thought out chicken tractor (it was one of our first prototypes) and retrofitted it for rabbits. The next day we brought home two little female bunnies, just 5 weeks old, and enjoyed the joys of raising little bunnies.

This time around, you really do learn a think or two about animal husbandry after 12 years of chickens, we did things right. The baby bunnies had a perfectly serviceable tractor to live in while we set up an unused green house as a proper bunny hutch.

I have found that most structures can be made quite sturdy, if less attractive, with random bits of materials laying around. I am a firm believer in animal fencing and zip ties. I spent a day zip tying every random scrap of fencing and hardware mesh to the greenhouse frame. Once done my handy husband built a door and a frame for the rabbit cages to be suspended from. We used cement mixing trays from home depot underneath to catch urine and feces and suspended plastic roofing under the cages to direct it down.

We purchased cages from Bass Equipment, as well as J feeders, resting mats and a watering system. By using tubing, nipples and a 5 gallon bucket we only need to water the rabbits occasionally which makes daily maintenance very minimal. I can only stress the importance of a simply system no matter what you endeavor. Nothing kills enthusiasm like hauling water and feed in a cold, miserable rain.

After a few weeks we added a male to the pair of females and moved them into their separate cages in the rabbit hutch. When they reached maturity we began rotating their breeding schedule. Rosie was bred first and gave us our lovely first litter experience. 7 live babies. They have now grown to butchering size.

Ruby, our second breeding female, was bred 2 months after Rosie. She has kindled and her babies have moved into their own cages to grown up a bit before they are moved into the larger tractor where the kits are raised to full size.

We feed our rabbits a mix of pellets, sunflower seeds, timothy hay and barley fodder (to be further discussed in the next post).

Meat chickens

Meat chickens are a little higher maintenance than my egg layers. They require more attention, are very messy and are pretty cute. Because of these we only raise meat birds once a year. 

We generally raise about 15 birds at a time which gives us 2-3 meals a month with chicken. We sometime up it to twice a year, depending on our enthusiasm and other projects going on. 

With meat birds timing is everything. Hauling water during freezing months sucks so we stick to spring and fall. Dealing with stinky birds is no fun in the summer either and they don't fair as well in the heat. 

We have an indoor broader set up in our workshop that easily keeps 15-20 chicks happy for a month. We use the same water bucket with nipples for watering, but start with the standard chick waterers for the first week. Once they are not on the verge of death by stress they figure out the water nipples readily. 

The workshops keeps us out of the elements when working with them and ensures a warm draft free home for the birds. After a few weeks they are ready to move into the big coop with a brooder guard to keep them safe from the big birds. 

The first week they live in a bubble in the coop and then small pop holes, too small for the adults, are opened for the chicks to venture out. By the time the chicks are two months old they are ready to take over and the brooder is removed. 

Once the chicks are a part of the general population we let them do their normal chicken thing until large enough to butcher, about four months old. If we are replacing layer hens, which we do about every four years, this is when we buy and raise new egg layers as well. 

During this feeding and growing time we add lots of extra food to the chicken run. I have expired foods from a friend's parent's survival stash. Its some 40 years of dried foods and perfect to boil up into a mash. I let it cool to a reasonable temperature and then pour it into a horse round feeder. The chickens love a hot meal in the chilly weather!