Organic Chicken Raising! Discussions here!

[Lady Henevere]

Lady Henevere,

I know what you mean about eating out of the garden vs. from the ground. I think it's the fact that they want to bite little pieces, if the plants are rooted, they can get a better bite, if it's loose on the ground, they have no resistance to the bite. I've always found if I hold the bunch of greens they go wild for them, so if you can figure a way to hold the greens, maybe hang them in bunches so the hens can nibble.....just a thought.

I tried wedging some Romaine through the bars of the run to see if they liked it that way, and they seemed to peck at it more and they tore it to bits (although they didn't eat it all). So I guess I just need to get creative with the way I feed greens. Thanks!

 

[ORChick]

I read somewhere (maybe BYC?) about someone using the little cage thingy that one puts suet in for feeding wild birds. I got one as a freebie when I bought suet earlier this year, and didn't really need another, so I've kept it aside for the chickens - though I haven't used it yet; they have enough to forage on when free ranging

 

[dancingbear]

They get ACV in their water, and vegetables when I have extra. One thng about the ACV - don't add this to the water in a metal waterer, as the acid can corrode the metal. I found a nice (though expensive) terra cotta waterer that gets a shot of ACV whenever it is filled, though I would have (unhappily) turned to plastic otherwise.

If the terra cotta is unglazed, you might not want to use the ACV in it. Acidic substances can cause lead to be leached from unglazed pottery. There was a bug deal about this when I was young, people had been getting lead poisoning, and it was finally traced to unglazed and improperly glazed pottery pitchers that people were using for storing and serving orange juice. Since then, there have been stringent requirements placed on ceramic and pottery vessels used for food.

I dislike plastic myself, but there are times when it's use is appropriate, such as for ACV in the chickens' water. I haven found any all glass waterers, and haven't even been able to find screw-on plastic fount bottoms that would fit a gallon glass jar. So I use plastic ones for use with ACV, and only have one galvanized metal one, and I only use it without ACV.

Sorry if somebody else already posted about this, I haven't yet finished the whole thread.

ETA: I also came over from BYC, hi folks!

 

[Farmfresh]

Welcome to Sufficient Self!

The leaching lead comes from the glazes used to make the pottery colorful. Plain terracotta is even OK to use when cooking people food. The chief Alton Brown uses unglazed plain terracotta for roasting chicken and lots of other stuff.

Just be ware of glazing and color in those pots!

 

[dancingbear]

Welcome to Sufficient Self!

The leaching lead comes from the glazes used to make the pottery colorful. Plain terracotta is even OK to use when cooking people food. The chief Alton Brown uses unglazed plain terracotta for roasting chicken and lots of other stuff.

Just be ware of glazing and color in those pots!

Ok, that makes sense! I have a terra cotta chicken roaster, but the bottom, that the chicken is in contact with, is glazed on the inside. Just the top and outside is unglazed. Since chicken isn't acidic, I didn't really think about it much.

Where can you get a terra cotta waterer for the birds?

On other bits and pieces, I can't call my birds organic either, because I can't get organic feed. I could order it, if I could afford it, but the cost is prohibitive. I currently have 36 adult and near adult chickens, 11 adult guineas, 9 young guineas, 2 poults, and about 36 or so chicks, of various ages. We also have 4 pigs right now, so between poultry and pigs, we go through a lot of feed. In a few more weeks, all the extra roos will be going in the freezer, as they get old enough to become a problem. As non-laying and seldom-laying hens are identified, some of them will go to the freezer, some will be re-homed, if I can find anybody who wants them as pets, and a few that we're attached to will just be on the Old Hen Retirement Program.

For the birds, I feed layer mash, mixed with distiller's grain to up the protein. I never buy medicated feed. Ever. I give whole corn mixed with a little BOSS as a treat, daily, for feather condition, to help with molting, and because they like it it lot. My whole flock free-ranges. We have 22 acres, the birds range around over about 5 acres. That's about as far from the coop as they like to get. So draw a huge circle around the coop, birds are liable to be anywhere within that area. They get lots of forage, and they get garden and tabel scraps.

The pigs get unmedicated pig grower, distiller's grain, and whole corn, plus wild hickory nuts, table and garden scraps and surplus, and they have a pretty large fenced area, including a wooded area, where they root and forage. They get excess eggs, too, when we have them.

I add poultry vitamins to the water for new chicks, especially the incubated ones that I have to raise, instead of having momma hens to take them outside so they can forage. I start adding ACV to the water when they're almost big enough to move to the coop, out of the house. They get an area in the coop separated from the rest, until they get big enough to let free-range. They get yogurt now and then, but not as a regular thing. I'm thinking about getting a bucket of pro-biotic powder that's sold for goats, it's just lactobacillus cultures, just like yogurt has.

I've bought whole wheat, feed grade, my feed dealer said it was actually "eating grade" for humans. I did clean some of it, grind it, and make bread. It was really good, too. The flavor was wonderful. The bread I made with it was better textured than the biscuits, but if I had no store-bought flour, I could easily live with this. The main difficulty was cleaning the grain. I did most of it by pouring the grain from one bucket to another in front of a fan set on "low". Then I went through it by hand, picking through like you would dry beans, to remove anything questionable that didn't blow out. Mostly some unidentified seeds, and an occasional grasshopper leg. Yeah, I know, ick, but you know, grasshoppers are edible, and I have know doubt we eat more of them than we know, in commercially prepared products. The chickens love the bits I sort out, including a few grains that didn't get de-hulled.

I don't see how people got the idea that chickens have to have only ground-up, processed feed. They're descended from jungle fowl, and nobody ground the food out in the jungle. I start my chicks on the same mix if mash and distiller's grain I feed the adults, the confined ones get some sand mixed in with it, for grit. The mash has both finely ground and coarsely ground grains in it, I sift it for tiny chicks, just for the first few days. Once they join the big birds, they are very soon eating sunflower seeds, then the whole corn.

I almost never have a bird just up and die on me. The rare times when it happens, I sometimes wonder if they ate something poisonous, or just got old and died. I have some fairly elderly hens running around.

So that's the gist of how I raise my sustainable-but-not-quite-organic-chickens. They're active, alert, healthy, and right now, a little too numerous. But the flock will be getting thinned, soon.

 

[PunkinPeep]

I guess i'm resurrecting an old thread, but i just ran into it.

I'm surprised no one mentioned raising crickets and worms to supplement feeding the chickens naturally and self-sufficiently. We are no where near SS, but part of our plan is raising our own crickets and worms to help make sure their protein is up to snuff.

Are any of you doing this?

 

[Farmfresh]

I have heard that worms can be an intermediate host for poultry worms. I know MY free range chickens eat LOTS of worms and crickets out in the yard, but some people don't feed them worms to prevent those parasites. Just a thought.

 

[Wifezilla]

I started a compost pile because I have ducks now. The worms just showed up.

When I turn the pile it is really difficult because the ducks have learned that shovel=worms. They end up hopping on the shovel or climbing in the hole trying to beat out the others for their favorite treat

I haven't tried raising crickets or mealworms, but those might be interesting to try.

I am trying to get a duckweed culture growing in my pond. The ducks used to swim in it, but now they have to stay in their aviary because of hawks. With them out of it, the plants might stand a chance. Duckweed is supposed to grow pretty rapidly so if things go as planned I should be able to scoop out the duckweed as needed while keeping a steady population in the pond.

Another thing I am going to try is to grow small plots of forage. I have cages I can put around the plots until they get established, then let the ducks at them while starting a new plot. I got red clover seeds to start.

 

[Iceblink]

I buy organic feed from a local farmer. The smart man figured out that he can make more $ grinding and selling his grains as chicken feed to local chicken raisers than selling it as a commodity crop, even though it is all organic. He does have to buy minerals and some vitamin supplements to add. Overall, it costs about the same as non organic feed from the store, about $18 for 50 lbs.

But since he is 3 hours away, I have to stock up for a long time to make it worth it. So now I have 100lbs of mixed grains, and 50lbs of cracked corn. All to feed 2 bantam hens.

Another benefit, is that he adds alfalfa and green peas as protien sources, instead of soy, which I like.

Other than the feed, my chickens get scraps, and whatever they can catch in their chicken tractors. My property isn't fenced, and I live in the suburbs, so they don't get to free range.

I haven't raised crickets for them, but there are tons of bugs here in NE, and they do their part to reduce the population, especially the nasty big black crickets.

 

[PunkinPeep]

I have heard that worms can be an intermediate host for poultry worms. I know MY free range chickens eat LOTS of worms and crickets out in the yard, but some people don't feed them worms to prevent those parasites. Just a thought.

It is my understanding (and i'm certainly not an expert....yet) that raising the worms yourself under certain controllable conditions lessens the chance that they will carry those parasites that they will likely carried if they're in your soil.