Ameraucana Eggs in the 'Bator

I have another batch of eggs going in the incubator, hatch date set for Wednesday, July 8, 2020. These are Ameraucana eggs, a mix of self-blue lavender, cuckoo and black. 

My husband says I don't need anymore chickens. I told him I'm selling some Silkies to make room for more! 🤣 I will even come out ahead.

I am thinking I will cross these with my Easter Eggers to bring up their blue. 

Blue is my favorite color. 😍

Trimming rooster spurs with a Dremel

As I was putting leg bands on my older Silkies the other day, I noticed one of the spurs on my painted rooster, Rocky, had curved backward and begun to impale itself into his leg. My husband was working in the garage, so I brought the rooster up and we immediately got it trimmed. 

I have seen another method where they put a hot baked potato on a rooster's spurs to loosen them and then twist them off. Leaving the quick exposed like that looks more painful to me. I thought I'd show you how it works to trim them with a Dremel rotary tool.

We get the little brown cutting wheels. I'm not sure the specs or part number, but see the photo below. It works like a tiny angle grinder.

You can wrap the rooster in a towel if you wish, but I just hold him tightly with his head under my arm and restrain the leg. My husband uses his free hand to hold the foot as well. It is important that the rooster holds still so you can make an accurate cut.

You want to leave about a half of an inch stub. You don't want to cut too close or flush with the leg. The main goal is to take the sharp tip down so that the rooster won't hurt the hens or himself when he walks or worse, stab someone or another rooster by flogging. It will slowly regrow. I find it sufficient to trim them once a year in the spring before breeding season hits full swing.

The great thing about this method is that it is very quick, minimally painful for the rooster and the speed of the wheel cauterizes the quick and you should have little to no bleeding. Recovery is quicker than the other methods of twisting them off and there is no need to apply medicine or isolate the bird for time to heal.

You can see from the picture below how clean the cut is.

You can see from this angle how the spur had curved back toward the leg. It made a complete U-turn. I've never seen this happen before in my 12 years of chicken keeping. Perhaps he had injured it. The other spur was normal.

All done and no worse for wear. Rocky's ready to go back to his girls. 

Chickens in the Garden

I wanted to brag on my chickens a little and show you what good garden helpers they are. 😊

This upper quadrant of the garden is a perfectly bare square of dirt since I put my bantams on it this past winter. I have 6 silkies and 2 other bantams in that coop and they have been way more aggressive getting after every green and growing thing in their area. The smaller fenced area was to keep them out of the asparagus patch. 

The big chickens further over have done a lot to keep the weeds down in their area too. They had a big pile of compost they decimated for me. I've taken to making a pile in one corner of the garden each year of all manure, clippings and scraps. I don't want to waste any of the good stuff. 

I'll lime, till and plant the top half of the garden just as soon as it ever quits raining long enough. 

I've been working with these Poultry Net electric fences from Premier1 for about 6 years now. They are amazingly effective and I can't say enough good things about them. They're super easy for me to move by myself and I've had no losses to dogs, opossums, coons, etc. since I started using them. I have lost a couple to hawks, but that was while allowing the chickens to range outside the fence. The fences are strong and haven't degraded in that time either. I have three of them now for rotating their pasture and keeping different flocks separated. Occasionally I will get some stubborn girl who wants to fly out, but I just clip the flight feathers on one wing and that puts an end to that.

So anyway, this has been an easy way for me to cultivate and fertilize my garden and I highly recommend it. Those accursed weeds can be very discouraging for me otherwise. The droppings are incorporated quickly and thoroughly enough that it doesn't get "hot".

A Tale of Two Turkeys

Hello, blog!  I have missed you and am thinking I will try to get back into the habit of posting every so often if I have anything interesting going on around here.

These are my two Bourbon Red turkey poults and they are are 6 weeks old now. These are supposed to be DH's turkeys, my gift to him, but really they're more mine. I feed them and everything. He just mentioned in passing that he'd like to get turkeys someday, so that was all I needed to hear.  ;)

I found out the hard way that turkeys have a really steep learning curve! These are the only two survivors. We started with 6 poults and very mysteriously, every few days, one would just get sleepy and then I'd find it dead the next day. A couple days later, another, then another... After asking around www.backyardchickens.com, the best answer we could come up with was a failure to thrive. I think they were getting too comfortable under the heat lamp and not eating and drinking enough. It is advisable to put a chicken chick in with them to show them how to eat and drink, since they are slow to catch on themselves, so I'll definitely do that next time. They really don't eat and drink as voraciously as chicks, although most every other aspect of their care is the same. These guys are about the size of a banty chicken now.

They are very nervous and flighty little critters. I had to cage them within the brooder circle because they kept flying out and couldn't figure out how to get back in. I got 6 poults for $40 from a local breeder, which is a really good deal (they go for $10.50 each on Murray McMurray Hatcheries website, plus shipping.) But I think the time of year now going into fall and winter isn't really the best. I will have to keep them in the garage all winter or maybe in the barn since young turkeys are said to not tolerate drafts or dampness well and our winters are usually pretty cold and wet. They'll go out on pasture with the chickens in the spring.

I was hoping to have a couple of hens to keep for breeding and I was going to get a new tom off of another breeder about an hour from here. I don't know what I'll do with them now, depending on whether I have toms or hens there. If I have at least one tom, he will be grown out and ready for Easter dinner next spring. As much effort as it has taken to keep them alive, I'm afraid I'll be too attached to them at that point. That was the plan anyway.

Meat Bird Tractor Update

I had another member of BYC ask a few good questions about my tractor, so I figured I should add that information here as well.

He wanted to know about coyotes, coons and the cost to build.  Here is my reply:

Opossums, hawks and dogs are the only predators I've had to deal with at my location in the past 7 years I've lived and raised chickens here, so those are what I planned for.

A coyote couldn't lift this tractor.  It's too heavy.  It's only movable by skidding it along with the pull rope.  I can move it by myself on dry days, but in mud it takes DH and I both to do it.  It did flip in 70 mph storm winds on Halloween, but that was because a freak storm blew through the N.E. unannounced and I didn't have time to hammer in the storm anchors (rebar) and I unfortunately had it turned facing into the wind.

Coons... I have the bottom half of the tractor outside of the cattle panels (and underneath the tarp) also covered with 2x4 welded wire fencing.  Front and back arch of the tractor are completely covered with it, top to bottom.  If you have a lot of trouble with coons in your area, you could cover the rest of the top and door with it too.  Or maybe even go with something smaller like 1x2 cage wire.

I can't say exactly what the total cost would be since I used mostly salvaged/leftover materials.  Two cattle panels would probably run you $40-$50.  The tarp I paid about $20 for.  Eight 2x4s...about $2.50 each.  32 foot of 3' high 2x4 welded wire, maybe $30.  The door was salvaged off of my old coop and made with scrap lumber to begin with.  Small galvanized staples, a box of wood screws, door hinges/latch and some zip ties...about $15.  It comes to around $135.  After having two of my layer flocks wiped out by stray dogs, it was a necessary investment for me.  I've had no invaders or losses after that.

All good questions, thanks for your interest.

Some of you probably recall the storm I am talking about from Halloween night.  A cold front moved in quickly after a couple of 70 degree days and caused quite a stir.  I had the stomach flu that day and awoke at 4:30am burning up after my fever broke and when I went to open the window to let in some cool air, I spied my 31 meaties all out in front by the road, huddled in a ditch.  So out into the rainy, dark night I went to fetch them, two by two.  They spent a day in my chainlink fenced front yard until I could construct another enclosure.  The tractor took some damage and needs repaired.  They were roughly two weeks from processing day, so they finished out in a stationary fenced area over one of my garden plots.  I did lose one when the tractor flipped, but the rest were fine.  I am just glad I found them before my neighbors had to come knocking on my door!

A note on how my meaties turned out overall this year:  The tractor system was a wonderful success and very ideal for their health and my chicken-keeping pleasure...ha.  I am not sure that the hatchery sent me Cornish Cross though.  They may have been Cornish Roasters instead, which are nearly identical in appearance, but are from a different, slower growing strain.  These birds were very active and ate bugs and grass, scratched, roosted and dirt-bathed in addition to eating their feed.  I've NEVER had CX do that before.  They had no leg problems or unexplained, sudden deaths.  I usually lose 1-3 out of about 40 chicks in the first two weeks.  These grew out about 2 weeks slower as well.

I also tried a new, locally sourced feed mix this year formulated by a pastured CX producer in my area.  It contained cracked corn and whole grains of wheat in addition to soybean meal and some other things.  It was much more cost effective for me since I could buy it in bulk.  I can get it at $26 for 100 lbs., whereas the Dumor 24% chick feed would have cost me around $20 per 50 lb. bag.  She said hers still grew out at 7-8 weeks on it, but mine did not.  There were too many variables for my flock this year...the storm, the feed, possibly not CX...so I did not bother to extrapolate my feed conversion rate or costs.  It wouldn't tell me much of anything useful for comparison anyway.

Most of my birds averaged around 5 pounds dressed weight (I did not weigh them all though.)  I kept a couple a little longer and they were huge.  I have one 9 pound (dressed) bird in the freezer that I will look forward to cooking in the turkey fryer for a special occasion or summer barbeque.  :)

My Rockin' New Chicken Tractor

I apologize that my posts are so rare and sporadic anymore. That is the nature of my life these days. I am super busy!

But anyhow, I wanted to show you my new chicken tractor...the chicken tractor I have dreamed about for the past year or so and only now had time or reason to build.

My next batch of Cornish X meat birds will come in August, but for now I have some 8 week old Easter Eggers hanging out in there until I can finish building my new coop.

I tried to put this up as a slideshow from my Photobucket account, but it won't embed for some reason. But if you click through on the picture below, you can go through each picture one-by-one and all the specs are given in the description below the pic.

Click on the image to see all the pics (11 total.)

Two things I learned on this project:  1) Wood screws with star drive bit heads rock!  And 2) Holding onto fence staples with a pair of needle nose pliers is much kinder to your thumbs.

This new tractor is going to make my life so much easier! Raising those CX might even become fun. I love the self-enclosed automatic watering bucket with chicken drinker nipples because the water will never get poopy. That means healthier birds--a substantially lowered risk for E-coli or cocci. And everything moves along WITH the tractor. No stepping into poo to take out the feeder and waterer prior to moving it.

Despite its size, this tractor is very easy for me to move by myself. Note though, it is necessary to pound on the far side of the tractor with your hand prior to pulling it along so that the birds will move out of the way and not get their feet squashed under the frame.

I took my time and really thought this one through. I think this design will serve me well for years to come.

(Read about how my 2013 batch of CX turned out in my tractor update here.)

The Numbers Are In...

 

Rosemary and Honey BBQ Baked Chicken

I am often asked if I actually come out ahead by raising our own chickens for meat.  This was the third year we've done these Cornish Cross meat birds and it was certainly the best year I've had to date as I have figured out a few things along the way and streamlined my management practices significantly. 

There are still a few things I'd like to improve.  Buying my feed in bulk from the local grain mill instead of Tractor Supply is one of them.  I kept meticulous records with this batch and now I know exactly how much feed it takes to raise them to harvesting weight.

We processed the second half of our Cornish Cross meat birds on the Saturday before last and I spent part of last week cutting up chicken and packing it for the freezer.  My freezer is full!  I don't know if I can get anything else in there for awhile.

I didn't take live weights on the birds as I raised them, although those numbers would have been useful.  I'll have to buy a proper scale if I plan to do that in the future. 

I did carefully record the dressed weight.  After tinkering around in MS Excel, the numbers are in -- I do save a lot of money by raising my own chicken AND I get a high quality, pasture-raised meat, free of medications, processed cleanly and humanely.

(Click to see larger version.)

You hear a lot about high bird losses with Cornish Cross; that they are prone to leg problems, heart problems and necrosis in the breast meat from the heavy weight of the birds.  I have experienced very little health problems with mine, other than random deaths when they are under two weeks old.  I have had a "gimpy" or two in each flock, but those seem to have been from injuries rather than overfeeding and all but two have recovered and gone on to make good weights.

I believe a 12 hours on/12 hours off feeding schedule is the best thing you can do to prevent health problems.  They also require a thick, soft layer of bedding as chicks and a very high protein ration to help them build strong legs.

I start mine out on 24% turkey chick feed and finish them off their last two weeks on regular 20% chick feed.  I had to buy a few bags of 16% layer crumbles this time around when TSC was out of the chick starter, but it worked out well.

My shipment of 40 chicks came on February 28th this year and this worked out much better than raising them to harvest weight in the hot days of May.  The heat is very hard on them.  They much prefer the cooler spring weather (although the incessant rain was not a plus.)  Less heat stress on the bird equals better feed conversion.  This also helped to get them done and out of the way before things get too busy in the garden!

One thing I've noted about Cornish Cross is that they are not likely to eat treats or forage unless they are really hungry.  This is another benefit of feeding them 12 hours on/12 hours off.  They'll usually pick around at the clover, grass, bugs, etc. as they wait for their feeders to be returned to them.

I turned my birds out into their tractor at about 4 weeks of age.  The design of my PVC chicken tractor is something else I hope to improve next year.  The current tractor is too cumbersome for me to move by myself.  I also learned the hard way not to secure the tarp too tightly across the top.

I meant to get a picture of my husband plucking chickens.  He has really got it down to a science now.  I timed him and he can pluck a chicken in 3.5 minutes.  That has to be some kind of record!  :D  We had considered building a whiz-bang chicken plucker, but now I don't think that will be necessary.  It would probably take us longer to get one built than it would to just pluck the chickens in the first place.  Ha.

My husband does the "deed", scalds, plucks and removes the feet for me.  I do the evisceration and clean them up and pack them into the chill tank.  Between the both of us, assembly line style, we can process one bird every 13 minutes.  Well, that is if we are focused and getting down to business.  I've found that talking slows us down considerably.

This has been the first year that my daughter has really been aware of what was going on.  She took it very well and even ate chicken livers that same night!  She was interested in these Cornish Cross when they were chicks, but they became increasingly less appealing to her as they got bigger.

So...my bottom line after plugging in all the numbers -- I put up 171 pounds of chicken and I got my meat at $1.77 a pound.  I forgot to check at the grocery store last night to see what whole cut-up chicken was going for there. 

Some folks we know from church sell pastured Cornish Cross chickens at the farmer's market.  The numbers I compared mine with was their pricing from last year.  I will be interested to see what their price is this year, as the cost of feed continues to climb.  I remember buying my chicken feed for about $8 for a 50# bag three years ago.

I still have chicken stock to can and I didn't price the organ meats.  We like the livers and the dog gets the rest for treats.  I didn't factor the price of bedding into the cost of my meat because I get added value out of all the manure they produce for my garden.

All in all, it was a good year.  I have a year's supply of the tastiest chicken in my freezer and now I can move on to other things.

This post is part of the Homestead Barn Hop at The Prairie Homestead.

Take a minute to visit some of these other interesting homesteading blogs!

All They Do

...is Eat, Drink and Poo.

The next couple of weeks will find me intensely involved in making sure these Cornish X chickens have a clean bedding and that the feeders don't run out during the day.  It's like a sprint to the finish line.

It can be a hassle and a drain.  I can't lie.  But the whole reason I will put up with these freakish beasties over the next month is for the mouth-watering, healthy, wholesome meat they will provide for my family's table.

It really is unbelievable how fast they grow.

Here is their current progress at four and a half weeks of age.  Note how little ol' Mystery Rooster chick is still hanging in there with the big guys, bless his heart.  I'm kind of glad now that I have him, because it does help to comparatively demonstrate the Cornish X rate of growth.

I am studiously keeping notes on their feed consumption and my other costs involved with their care.  On the last batch we did, I kept track of what I spent on feed and weighed each processed bird.  I used those calculations to discover that with a little bit of elbow-grease on my part, I can put hormone-free, preservative-free, superior tasting chicken on the table for nearly the same cost of buying factory produced chicken at the grocery store at the average going price (not sale priced).

The difference in flavor and texture really stands out.  I put mine in a chicken tractor for grow-out and they do consume some greens and weeds which improves the flavor.  I also can't stand the texture of brined poultry. 

Did you know that part of the price you pay for chicken at the grocery store is for a significant volume of salt-water that is infused into the meat?  Brining equals mushy meat, in my opinion.  A well-raised and humanely processed bird will never require brining to "tenderize" the meat.  Store bought chicken nowadays is also Cornish X birds and they are so young at process time, they can't help but be tender anyways.  I believe they mainly brine them to increase water-weight in the meat.

Anyhoo...off my soapbox.  What I wanted to show you is my new watering set up.

An endless supply of water! 
A reprieve for me from the constant chore of filling the water bottles!

I can now leave the house for more than 4 hours at a time and trust that my birds won't be suffering from dehydration when I get back.

This is a $10 stock tank float valve that I mounted to a little piece of 2x4.  I took a square bucket (left over from my horse's supplements) and cut it off at just the right height to allow the float valve to drop, which still leaves the edge of the bucket low enough for the birds to drink from it.  I slid the valve/2x4 assembly over the edge of the bucket and it holds with a snug fit, but it still allows me to easily remove the bucket for a thorough cleaning.  I hooked it up to the garden hose and put it inside the pen.  It sits up squarely on it's own.

I am so happy with this set up now.  (You figure out something new every year, it seems.)  They were beginning to consume 5-6 gallons of water a day.  That will increase as they continue to grow.

The recycled juice bottles I was using work great while they are small chicks.  Forty birds will only drink 1 or 2 gallons of water a day at that time. 

But once they start to grow...the frantic rate of cellular division requires a lot of water to support the energy expended for growth.  Basically, as much as they eat, they will drink. 

Then they poo.

But that's a whole other post...

While I'm at it, I'll go ahead and show you my nearly FREE feeder system.  No $30 plastic feeders from Tractor Supply for me - it cuts into my profits!

I politely beg free food-grade plastic buckets from my local deli or bakery.  They will throw these out otherwise (I would hope they at least recycle them).  As long as the folks behind the counter are not too busy at the time, they usually don't mind to get the buckets for you, as long as you ask nicely.  Make sure you get the lids too.

Then I hop over to the auto parts store or the automotive department of Walmart and purchase a plastic oil change pan.  These will only run you about $2.50 each.

Take your buckets home and wash them out well.  Then cut a series of one and a half inch diameter holes around the bottom of the bucket every two inches apart.  I use a large drill bit to penetrate the plastic at the center of the intended hole, then carefully cut it out with a jig-saw.  You can also use a razor knife, but I've found that to be too dangerous for my fingers.

Set the bucket inside the oil change pan, fill with feed, put the lid on and there you go.

As soon as the weather improves, I will be putting the meat birds out to pasture in my PVC chicken tractor.  I'll show you that too when the time comes.  I had hoped they would be outside by now, but we are having an unusually cold and damp spring.  For now they are stuck in my garage and they are beginning to stink!

The Young And The Roostless

Since Sunbeam's sad demise, the girls have been on lock down and I have only let them out for part of the day and only on days that I know I'll be home.  They are not happy about this and they let me know loudly and often!

Someone else who is not happy about this is Chirp, the neighbor girl's pet rooster.

He paces the run all day long, wishing he could be more valiant and come to the rescue of his lady friends.



"He's mine!"  "No!  I saw him first!"

I can live without a rooster, but the girls would rather not.  Unfortunately, I've had no luck with roosters.  All of mine have turned out to be mean.  It seems that Chirp, by virtue of not being my rooster, is a good rooster.



Even with the fenced pasture, I am still having about eight or nine hens that regularly fly over the 4-foot fence.  I was really hoping that wing clipping would do the trick, but it did not work.  About two-thirds of those I had to clip still fly over.

Garden season is quickly coming up, so I am debating whether or not I should go ahead and invest in an electric fencing system or if a few extra inches of poultry netting would be enough to do the job (I'm afraid that would look tacky though.)

Short of tying concrete anchors to their legs, I am really not sure how I am going to keep them in... I lose the benefit of free-ranging them if I can't let them out of their small run.  However, thirty chickens can't have run of the whole yard!

An egg!

I went out to feed the chickens this afternoon and what did I find?  My first little Black Star pullet egg!  (How's that for fast turn around?)

Soon enough I'll be coming back from the hen house with 2 dozen or more eggs a day.  A little overwhelming when I think of it, but surely I'll be able to find enough customers.  Since the big factory egg recall, most folks have gained a new appreciation for farm-fresh eggs laid by happy, pastured hens.

Storage is not a problem.  My mother-in-law got a new fridge recently and gave me her old one.  I've got it set up in the basement and have been using the extra space to rest processed chickens before packaging to freeze and to hold extra produce that I can't squeeze into my upstairs fridge.

I've been tracking my egg production on a simple spreadsheet for almost a year now.  I've found it helps me spot problems early (like egg-eating).  It also gives me some numbers I'll be able to play with later on. 

I also want to factor in my feed costs, which I am recording with a handy little program called Chicken Trackin' that I came across over on BYC.  Although I got my copy free as a promo, after using it for nearly a year now I feel that the $14.95 for a licensed copy is well worth it.  If you sell your eggs, you need something like this to help you determine if you are pricing them right.  I will be punching some numbers before I put up my Eggs for Sale sign again.

I've made a few mistakes in the management of my flocks over the last three years I have been keeping chickens.  (Putting up with mean roosters longer than necessary has been one of them.)  I got these Black Stars late in the season because I didn't plan well enough and I wanted to wait until I had money in the checkbook for them, rather than putting them on the credit card.  I was afraid that since they were hitting 20 weeks of age during the winter there would be a chance that they would not lay until spring.  That would have ruined me!  I can't believe how often I am filling up the feeder.

I am currently pondering ways that I can reduce my feed costs.  I will definitely be looking for another feed dealer where I can get my feed in bulk, like 1000 pounds at a time.  Thirty-one chickens eat a lot more than you'd think.  I am also planning several additions to my garden that will supplement their feed next summer.

I have a few ideas for articles to write on managing your small flock poultry.  That will be coming up after Christmas when things slow down a little here on my one sunny acre.