keeping chickens newsletterkeeping chickens newsletter published september 2013 by joan : this...

Keeping Chickens Newsletter

Published September 2013 by www.Self-Sufficient-Life.com


If you know anyone who may enjoy this newsletter please let them know that they can subscribe at: www.KeepingChickensNewsletter.com

September 2013

Vol.1

Hi Welcome to my Keeping Chickens Newsletter. Thanks to everyone who has sent in their keeping chickens tips, stories and photos etc. - as usual, if you have anything chicken related (tips, photos, stories, questions, coops etc.) you'd like to share in future issues of the newsletter or blog posts then just email [email protected] and I will do my best to answer / include them. Best Wishes Gina



Subscriber Letters

Terry : I love the newsletter! I find the advice and experiences of other chicken owners are very helpful. I do have a question for anyone who may have experience feeding Silkies. I have been told that they need a higher protein feed than regular layers. I have been feeding them ‘starter grower’ at 20% rather than the usual layer 16%. Advice anyone? Thanks, Terry My Reply : Thanks for your query - that sounds interesting, I hadn't heard that about Silkies before. I would guess that the extra protein is to help with their feathers but I wonder about the other nutritional elements they might need for egg laying such as calcium etc. as the balance of all the vitamins and nutrients would presumably be quite different for a growers feed. I'll put your query in the next newsletter and see if anyone experienced with Silkies knows :-) Does anyone know? John : Thanks for the newsletter. I was interested in your reference to chicken jail. A friend of mine has found this very effective in curbing broodiness, although one of her chickens is so dumb she spends a lot of time in jail! Marvin : I am a successful real estate broker who enjoys raising chickens and make few dollars. Just thought some of your fans might need or want to do the same. Nothing is for sale, just how I make a few extra dollars to pay on our mortgage. Been raising chickens in NW Arkansas for about 20 years. Buy from McMurray and Ideal, 100 pullets at a time, different breeds. Going to try Cackle this next spring - they have a selection of my choice 25 per breed, 100 chicks for $2.05. Buy only pullets, raise them to 12 weeks, sell for $15. ea. Brown egg layers. Costs about $3.75-$4.25 to buy and raise them. Guess my best deal is getting Rhode Island Red pullets 50/$1.65 each from Ideal and then another breed (Barred rock) $2.35. Just change around, sometimes get 50 Red Stars, Brahmas or whatever. Doesn't really matter, people buy them all. My really favorite chicken is the Buff Orpington. It's just an old man's hobby and use the profit to pay down what little is left on the mortgage. We have 2 acres. Also do small woodcraft - cedar chests, ball point pens, etc. Wife has had a custom sewing business for many years, but now just makes stuff for the great grand kids. Like I said, we are in NW corner of Arkansas - Fayetteville - Go Hogs! If you need to discuss chickens, predators, feed or whatever, just yell at me. Used to have a 400 egg incubator, but got tired of raising roosters and then selling them for $1 or free. SO now, we buy pullets. My real job is a one man real estate firm selling mainly rural property out of my house. No fancy office - too old for all of that. Marvin Shelley, NW Arkansas’ Leading Rural real estate agent/broker since 2004



Joan : This little Bantam Hen , (Japanese White/Hamburg cross), came out of the flower bed today with 9 little chicks. She sure did Labor, as this morning there was a Terrible Storm with pouring rain, hail, and wind with Thunder and lightning! Not one wet chick.

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Dale: For several years now I've been interested in the first registered Canadian Chicken Breed the Chantecler, this link will take you to an information page about the breed: http://www.cfagrf.com/Chantecler_chicken.htm. Currently the breed is considered to be rare and possibly endangered with a world wide estimated population of less than 2500 birds. I'm not sure how that number is arrived at but I can vouch for the fact that they are very difficult to obtain. After a long search I was able to get hatching eggs from a farm museum, the Ross Farm Museum, in Nova Scotia. One of my Mottled Cochin Bantams, also called Peking Bantams, was broody and she managed to hatch 5 of the 8 eggs, that I gave her. The little brood is almost a month old and doing very well. I would be interested in hearing from anyone else who has the breed with the goal of exchanging eggs to get a more diverse gene pool and preventing inbreeding. Thank you for the great newsletter, keep up the good work. Dale Calder



Susan : This is our Spike. He is a mottled Houdan cockerel that is 10 months old. My daughter recently showed him at our county 4H Fair and won Grand Champion! We love Spike because he is the silliest chicken we have ever known! When he isn't crowing, he's talking......constantly! He never stops! My 3 Cochin hens dislike him with a passion! He tries to mount their head but they usually throw him off as they are quite a bit bigger than he is. He is very nosey and loves to see what you are doing.....all the time! If you ignore him, he will try to jump on your back or jump at you! We can pick him up and carry him around like a baby for an hour. He soon falls asleep in our arms. We have held him for very long periods of time since he was a small chick. My daughter would let him roost on her arm while she did her homework so he is use to being carried around. He also likes our two border collies and often tries to "hang out" with them. They ignore him also. So, he usually ends up standing at the door wanting our attention since no one else will give him any! Love your newsletter and really enjoy hearing all the chicken stories. Susan Reilly

200 Eggs a Year Chicken Care Guide CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/200-eggs-chicken-care-guide/



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The Ultimate Survival Bundle is a collection of ebooks, audios and videos from 36 contributors (including me) covering topics around survival and preparedness. This bundle has a real world value of over $700 and covers a wide range of homesteading and survival topics from keeping goats and growing and preserving your own food to how to build a shelter and find food in the wilderness, alternative energy, alternative medicine and gun control laws. A few of the titles that stood out for me personally are 'Livestock Guardian Animals: Donkeys, Llamas, and Livestock Guardian Dogs to Protect Your Property and Stock', 'Real Food Storage', 'Build a Better Greenhouse (videos and ebook plan)', 'Making the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook', 'How to Power Your House from Your Car (audio)', 'Must Love Goats', and '101 Uses for 9 Essential Oils in a Disaster' but with over 50 products on the download page there is bound to be something (several things?) to interest everyone whatever your personal interests are in this area. I am one of the 36 contributors and have given the ebook 200 eggs per year and a chicken coop plan to the bundle. As a contributor I don’t get paid for my donation to the bundle but will get a percentage of only the sales that are made through my special link which is http://ultimatesurvivalbundle.com/gread so if you are interested in purchasing this bundle I would really appreciate it if you could use my link to check out all of the products on offer. And if you end up purchasing the bundle after visiting through my link as an extra thank-you for doing so you can also choose another one of my products as an extra free bonus. If you purchase the Ultimate Survival Bundle through http://ultimatesurvivalbundle.com/gread you can email me directly with your choice of one extra bonus from me from the options listed on the next page (if doing so please make sure that http://ultimatesurvivalbundle.com/gread is the last link you click before hitting the buy button) :

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Bonus Options if purchasing The Ultimate Survival Bundle through my link http://ultimatesurvivalbundle.com/gread

A Guide To Raising Guineas http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/guinea-fowl/ Building Your Own Greenhouse http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/building-your-own-greenhouse/ Chicken Coop Plan Collection (10 Chicken coop plans) http://www.chickencoopplan.com Common Sense In the Poultry Yard http://www.keepingchickensnewsletter.com/Books/common-sense-in-the-poultry-yard.htm Herbal Remedies Handbook http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/herbal-remedies-handbook/ Hydroponic Gardening http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/hydroponic-gardening/ Plain Cookin’, Recipes From The Heartland http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/plain-cookin-recipes-from-the-heartland/ Successful Beekeeping ABCs http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/successful-beekeeping/ Success With Poultry 900 Questions and Answers http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/success-with-poultry-900-questions/ Ten Acres Enough http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/tenacresenough/ Vegetable Gardening http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/vegetable-gardening/




Sara : My husband and I have just finished our new coop. We have a fort in our backyard that we built for our kids and we put the coop under it.



We have four chickens; two are buff-leghorn mixes and the other two are legbars.

We put an oscillating fan in the coop when it hits over 100. And we also installed Chicken Fountain water station. Sara Bostelmann of Richardson, TX.

Ten Acres Enough How A Very Small Farm May Be Made To

Keep A Very Large Family

Ten Acres Enough is a self-sufficiency classic written by Edmund Morris, and is his personal story of his journey from city businessman to farmer. In this book Edmund details the first 3 years of his 'back to the land' experience and explains honestly what worked for him and what did not.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

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Brian : Hello Gina, Once again thank you for the news letter this month, readable as always. A short while ago I asked if you could identify some breeds that I have. I have since been back to the breeders and they have given me the names of the breeds. I have added a few photos of them, (I am a chef not a photographer).

I see that someone has lost a bird through heat, it is HOT here up to 47c. so far this year, I have no problems with the heat, but, I tend to keep to Mediterranean breeds, as do all of the local poultry keepers. I hope that this might help. Keep up the good work, regards Brian Holley



John : We have four free ranging hens and we keep them out of the garden with motion activated sprinkler called a Scare Crow. They cost about $50 us and works great for deer and chickens. We recently had a brooding hen and cured her by keeping her in a separate pen with no nest for a few days. It was strange the other hens stayed by her the whole time. Love the news letter. John, California

Suzy : Thanks for your newsletter Gina. It is a great service! And I enjoyed the humorous story about raising pullets. We just got a dozen chicks. We have a fenced yard, but last time we had chickens they flew over the fence into our neighbors yard and unfortunately got eaten by their dog. So my question is how old do the chicks need to be to cut their wings, and how is it done? Thank you so much. Suzy Q in Hawaii

My Reply : There is a video of wing clipping here http://successwithpoultry.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/wing-clipping-clipping-wings-of-chicken.html (when clipping the wings it should be done to just one of them so the chicken is a bit off balance). Chicks have a couple of mini-moults at around 10 weeks and 20 weeks old so if you do it then, obviously it will need to be done again once their new feathers come in. With most adult hens moulting is yearly (from about 18 months old and onwards). Leslie : Learning as we go, being new chicken owners. My latest dilemma is one of our 4 Black Australorp hens is not taking to the perch or roost. We read that the best thing to make it of was a 2x2 piece of wood instead of a round pole so we redid ours again. This time we used a piece of wood to support the roost but we put it under the roost on top of the center supporting piece of wood of our cage, which the floor of it is a hutch style with the green poly coated quarter square. We thought everyone was taking to it well but realized that one hen was either getting kicked off (we heard a big ruckous and wing flapping one evening as they went in to bed), and found that one hen was going back into the nest boxes and sleeping, which wouldn't be a bad thing, except she was also pooping in it. One day there was an egg next to poop. NOT what you want to find for breakfast! Anyway, the other day I had my husband move the supporting piece of wood to the end of the perch and I then moved missy out of the nestbox that evening and opened the back of the hutch and proceeded to put her on the perch. She about flew outta the back of the cage as I grappled and held her legs to keep her in but did manage to get her on the perch. I proceeded to put two flat pieces of wood in both nest boxed to keep her out of there. I guess it will take some work because when I went to lock their hutch for the night, I went through the whole process again, but it was quite dark by then and I was too exhausted from having a house full of family and kids for the past week with us, so I blocked the boxes and left them to whatever they wanted to do from there.

Just thought I'd mention this learning experience for anyone else who may experience the same sort of behavior. I know I could put something else in the



nextboxes at night, and may to keep her out of them. These are the chickens you may recall that were "all" piling on top of each other in one 12x12 nest box for the remainder of the winter and why we revamped our roost to try to train them to use it instead so the smallest ones would not get smothered or injured by the two little bit bigger hens. I also have to wonder what the heck is up when one or all of them start going off and making loud clucking and baulking noise. One ran around in little circles this morning and got them all baulking and clucking their full heads off. Of course they also whine when they see me so I thought it might be a ploy for me to bring them more scratch to quiet them down, as I have on occasion. I don't know if that is what they do after laying an egg or whey exactly they go off like that from time to time. Do you? Thanks! We love your newsletter and everyone's experiences that they willingly share. It helps us all. Thanks everyone! Leslie in Berwick, PA

My Reply : Laying an egg is usually accompanied by a loud announcement of its arrival but it could be they have associated making a racket with you bringing them scratch - they learn quickly ☺ Another possible reason for running about could be if there was a fly or something like that nearby that they were trying to get (often you can't see the fly from a distance so it just looks like they've gone bonkers) - otherwise it can probably be summed up with ‘chickens are daft’ ☺ Graham We have a 25 by 12 feet fenced run in our garden for our three hens, in the middle is a weeping willow tree for shade. Can you or any of your readers suggest ANY type of plants I could grow in the run that the girls WON'T eat ?? ..the willow is trimmed to a perfect jumping height (by them). It would be nice to have some greenery in there, but I wouldn't want to plant anything that might be poisonous (I'm sure they would just eat it anyway) :) any ideas most appreciated

My Reply : Chickens do generally like to 'help' with the gardening ☺ There are a couple of subscriber suggestions of plants your chickens might leave alone here: http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/December083itur/keepingchickens_page04.htm I also have a link to a list of apparently toxic plants to avoid if possible (it is often only parts of the plants that are toxic and most will cause only minor issues such as diarrhoea if eaten, but others can be more serious so it is worth bearing in mind) here: http://www.poultryhelp.com/toxicplants.html


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