'natural chicken' blog now at 'permachicken'

Hi everyone,

in case you haven't noticed, or are coming to this blog from elsewhere, you can find the blog now at www.permachicken.com, with the forum there as an extra tab ('forum').

I'll leave 'the natural chicken' blog here and check in from time to time, but the new blog ('permachicken') will be where I make all new posts.

Thank you to Blogger for its useful software and hosting.

Thanks,
Erica

meat x layer x layer chicks, natural diet

Just an update on my bunch of 21 (meat hybrid x leghorn) x commercial layer chicks.

These birds are growing exceptionally well on the home diet, which contains wheat, corn and pea sprouts, sunflower seeds (whether sprouted or not), lucerne (alfalfa), seaweed meal, salt, shell grit and of course my favourite, kefir made from powdered milk.

Bearing in mind they're a day short of 7 weeks, I think you'll agree the growth is really good so far:

Gobbling grass.

Very like a leghorn, this fellow.

We like to know what's going on...

Strapping pullet.

Nicely grown cockerel; remember these birds are only one quarter meat hybrid, and the rest is leghorn and layer.

Oof, he's a big fellow!

A nice pullet, again taking after leghorn.

Accessing the feeder as well as the greens.

Pleasant day in the sun.

Happy in the tractor, not having to be on the alert for aerial predators.

Another pullet.

Inquisitive cockerels looking at my shoe. As I took the photo another jumped on my shoulder from behind. Charming!

Last but not least, sunbathing pullet doing a great impression of roadkill. :)

Permachicken is now up, and will stay up.

www.permachicken.com

All right. It's been a long saga and I'm soooooo sorry to all those who joined only to find the website disappearing!

What happened was that iPage couldn't serve it properly, so there were long load times (up to 30 seconds at times) and at other times it simply wouldn't load.

I've now moved it to a new host. It's hard to find a good host (that's affordable) when so many review sites are faked. In the end I spent a whole day researching hosts to try to find one that was reputed to be good specifically for forums. Fingers crossed that the one I found is good.

So once again, I'm very sorry for the inconvenience and the stop-start-stop beginning to Permachicken. It will be a  great forum! Hang in there. :) And don't forget, it's now just 'www.permachicken.com', so you don't need to type 'forum'.

Best to everyone,
Erica

Permachicken forum for permaculture chicken lovers

UPDATE: Permachicken forum is now at www.permachicken.com/forum.

milk-fed chicks feathering at super rate!

These chicks are 2 days short of 3 weeks of age. Note the advanced feathering (please forgive the tragic pen floor, but it rained unexpectedly last night)! Actually you should have seen them a week ago as then the advancement was more obvious.

Their parentage has a little to do with the amount of feather, but not everything. The father was meat hybrid x white leghorn; the mothers were a mix of commercial layers (black, white and red). While both parent birds could be expected to mature quickly, the feathering on these birds is quite advanced for such a young age.

Now as it happens, these birds have been raised with more kefir in the mix than usual. This is because I bought a new kitchen chopper just for processing sprouts etc for chick food, and for the machine to work the mix must be fairly wet.

The benefit of doing things this way is that I can mix up the adult feed, keep a bit leftover, bring it inside and add kefir and sometimes extra soy meal to make it higher in protein (and easier to digest) for the little ones. I'll admit the extra liquid caused a couple of cases of pasting (unusual otherwise) but all were fixed, and the benefit of quick feathering has been enormous.

I'm pretty convinced that the extra (100% natural) methionine in soured milk has caused these chicks to grow faster and feather earlier than usual. What a nice byproduct of feeding only natural vitamins!

Now to shift the chick tractor so the poor things aren't standing on wet soil!

useful bucket trap for rats

Since rats have been perching on the bucket rim to take soaking grains, I thought I'd have a go at making a bucket trap.

I've made a few in the past following internet directions, but none has worked. Rats are more than anything else creatures of habit, and the sudden appearance of an oil-smeared bottle sitting above a water-filled bucket makes them wary. I suspect these traps only work when there are so many rats around the place that some (particularly young ones) are absolutely desperate for food.

Last night I filled the soaking bucket so the water sat about 7.5 inches or 19cm from the top. Then I sprinkled a layer of sunflower seeds to float on top.

This morning I collected 3 large dead rats from the water. About a third the sunflower seeds had been eaten, so perhaps the seeds were a little too close to the top (some have probably eaten their fill and gotten away), but still, it's a good result.

I doubt this will work for long if I keep setting the trap in the same way. However every few nights I'll make sure the grain is right at the top of the bucket so any remaining rats can obtain a feed. Meanwhile of course I'm removing all other food sources before nightfall.

Hope this works for others as well!

chick diet

Just wanted to show my current chick diet for the 9 week olds. They're extremely well grown and are doing well on it, having been gradually introduced to larger kernels (so I no longer have to grind anything for them).

Ingredients are sprouted wheat, corn, peas and sunflower seeds; soy meal (non GM); lucerne (alfalfa) chaff; seaweed meal; salt; and soured skim milk.

Of an afternoon they also get fresh greens to pick at. I'm extremely happy with their growth (below).

Some malay coming through in the bird on the left. Her mother was the ISA brown x malay game.

Leghorn x red layer, well grown and healthy at 9 weeks.

A little bit of malay game gives this cockerel a nice shape and stance. He's heavier than the cockerel in the previous picture, even though he's trimmer to look at. His mother was the ISA brown x malay; his father was leghorn.

These birds are well grown for 9 weeks of age, and have nice temperaments to boot.

home grown extras for chickens

Chickens love comfrey, yet seem to know their limit. It grows well in shade as well as sun, and supplies a variety of vitamins including B12 (though whether it's the most useful form of B12 I'm not sure). It's also a rich source of minerals and was known as 'knitbone' in former days. Much is made of its toxicity (it's apparently got some chemicals that are liver-toxic) but I've never seen the chickens gorge on it, nor have they come to harm. (They never had access to comfrey when they showed liver damage while eating lupins, or perhaps I'd have suspected comfrey.) I think chickens are extremely good at knowing what to eat or not eat, and I trust them on comfrey.

Overgrown zucchinis make great chicken treats. Just slit them lengthwise and watch!

...my rotting wheat update, and more on rats...

Unfortunately this post also concerns rats.

Recently I had major trouble with wheat not sprouting, and going off in the sprouting bag. My first assumption was that rats were climbing over the bag, contaminating it with droppings and urine, and thereby causing the wheat to go off. However after I'd dealt effectively with the rats nibbling through the bag, the off wheat continued, so I felt it must have been pre-germinated or otherwise damaged before purchase (see my other post about off wheat).

Once I stopped rats getting to the sprouting bag it seemed there could be no other source of micro-organism contamination. My soak times were always 24 hours, never more, and the ratio was 3/4 water to 1/4 grain (important to prevent fermentation). My feed bins were in good shape and generally air-tight. The wheat was brought fresh. Weather wasn't a problem as it hadn't been too hot. Perplexingly, shortly after being soaked, the wheat smelled rotten, not mouldy. I couldn't understand where the contamination was coming from, but it did seem bacterial.


Then I had a little thought. I looked at my soak-bucket and realised some of the grains (ones still trapped in a hull, and occasional sunflower seeds that had gotten mixed in) were floating on the surface of the water. I suddenly realised that this might be attracting rats to the water-filled bucket.


So that night, I put a lid on the bucket, and the next morning the lid was sprinkled with rat droppings. Then when I drained the wheat and hung it to sprout, it sprouted beautifully.



So this is what must have been happening all along:

- I was leaving the wheat to soak overnight without a lid, thinking that nothing could harm wheat sitting at the bottom of a water-filled bucket! The soaking wheat was a good 40cm below the water's surface. The water came right up to the brim.


- Apparently rats were perching on the bucket rim to snatch food floating on the water overnight. Some of their droppings would have fallen into the water.


- The rat droppings were causing the wheat to break down and rot faster than it could sprout.


This was a very sobering discovery, not least because the birds were sickened by eating what should have been perfectly good feed. And goodness knows what germs I'd been bumping into while handling the bag of feed and the rotting sprouts. Needless to say I owe the feed store an apology for casting aspersions on their grain.

I must admit, I'm astonished at the ability of rats to find food (and foul it). Unfortunately the neighbour's property provides ample cover (there's a huge lantana patch crowding against the fence) and these are tree rats, so very agile. But at least I can stop them fouling the water I soak my sprouts in!


Since adding a lid I've had no more smelly grain, no sick birds and plenty of eggs!

rats and how to deal with them

Confession! I have a persistent population of rats. They live in the scrub behind our back fence and slip over the fence during the night to eat any fallen food from the ground. I have to be very careful not to leave food lying around.

Every few weeks I rebait the trap and usually catch a few, but of course the really wary older rats are too clever for that little ruse. They won't touch baits, and although I'm scrupulous at cleaning up spilt food when I'm trying to catch them, they're amazingly smart.

Some time ago I realised they were shinnying down the 40cm long wire hook my sprout bag hangs on, and nibbling at the sprouts. I kept trying new places to hang the thing, only to see telltale bag-holes a few days later.

So I did this:

For a little extra detail, here's a close-up of the top arrangement:

The silver thing is an upturned stainless steel bowl bought cheaply from one of those two-dollar stores. I made a hole in the bottom and slid the wire through (after straightening it temporarily). Then I wrapped a rubber band around and around the wire just below where I wanted the bowl to sit. The rubber has a good purchase on the wire, so it doesn't tend to slide down, but to make sure, I added a layer of glue. Then I sat a disc of foam matting (purpose-cut and also threaded over the wire) to help ensure the stainless steel bowl doesn't tip too far when a rat climbs on top of it.

Since rats are coming along the beams in the shed roof and then clambering down (rather than jumping onto the bag from below) this is an effective barrier. They can climb onto the bowl but they can't get over the lip of it to reach the wire again.

There have been no more rat raids on the hanging sprouts!