Hey folks, came across this cool little video. I’ve been fielding questions via email for a few weeks about this so I thought I’d post a video since this seems to be a popular topic.
Do you have anything you’d like to know? Email me or comment below and I’ll try to find an answer if I don’t know from experience.
I read an article recently about a three year old autistic boy in Florida who has therapy chickens. I’ve had a few people email me about therapy chickens the past couple of months so I’ve done some looking into it. Most people think of therapy animals as being dogs or cats, maybe even horses. But in recent years chickens have become an incredibly popular therapy animal for people with a number of different disorders from autism, to blindness, to seizures.
Most of us already know how much our personal flocks can lift our spirits just by looking at them. Chickens are hilarious! They have little personalities and do some really silly and just downright stupid things. They chase each other around, chase us around, maybe sometimes chase the dog, too. Nothing makes me laugh more than to see our great dane run away from a flock of chickens. That’s some therapy, there.
But aside from their entertainment value, chickens have been found to be especially helpful to autistic and asperger’s kids. The little boy in Florida I mentioned previously, his parents have said that the hens have helped bring him ‘out of his shell’ metaphorically speaking. He makes eye contact now, his personality has calmed down, and he laughs and smiles more easily than before.
The chickens, which he calls his ‘ducks’, run around the yard with him, and let him cuddle them. His parents apparently picked very docile breeds. I think I spotted a Faverolle in one of the pictures somewhere but maybe I’m wrong. They’re a wonderful breed for therapy.
This boy and others like him aren’t the only ones who have been benefiting lately from therapy chickens. Since chickendiapers.com rolled out and invented the chicken diaper, it seems to have really expanded the places chickens are going these days. Many therapists are starting to take chickens into nursing homes to cheer up elderly folks. They’re going into hospital burn wards. They’re going into children’s centers where the majority of the kids there are in foster care.
So apparently the world is catching on to something we already know: chickens rock!
Those of us who are extra picky about what goes into our bodies (especially via our chickens) have probably played around with the idea of making our own chicken feed.
Ideally, chickens deserve pasture and plenty of it. Rooting around for bugs, worms, and the spare blade of grass makes them happy and healthy, which in turn makes us the same. But when the sunlight goes dim and the nights lengthen, the blades of grass usually shrivel and turn brown. Those lovely little insects and worms get more difficult to find since they’re further underground, which makes our chickens sad.
Or perhaps you don’t even HAVE pasture land for your chickens! That’s a common problem for urban farmers. The ¼ acre per hen goal isn’t always possible.
Then there’s costs to consider. Trying to purchase organic, non-GMO feed without corn or soy can be a nightmare. If you aren’t lucky enough to be able to purchase it from your local buying club via Azure Standard, then you have to mail order it. The shipping often costs as much as the feed itself.
A frugal person with a DYI attitude will turn to making their own feed. The benefits are numerous. Cheaper, better for your chickens, and you can even add supplemental herbs to the feed to increase nutrition and prevent parasites.
First things first, keep your weeds.
Do you have nettles overgrowing patches of your yard? Dandelions? Alfalfa grass (avoid the GMO variety of this). What about that pest to all farmers, pigweed (or lambsquarters as they’re also called)? A great solution is to let them grow tall, harvest them, and feed them to your chickens. With lambsquarters, the chickens don’t have much of a chance in the early spring because I beat them to the punch and eat at least half of them myself. They are a darned tasty substitute for creamed spinach!
Later in the fall months of course, weeds don’t taste as good for human consumption. This is prime time for letting the chickens at them, as well as storing them up for the winter months. After you harvest, simply hang them up to dry and grind them for a supplement. These are all ‘weeds’ that happen to be very nutrient dense. The seeds of lambsquarters are even called ‘fat hen’ in some places, and for good reason. Even the Romans would make cakes from those nutritious seeds to eat on their long marches.
SOME of the wonderful weeds that may grow in your yard near the flock:
lambsquarters
nettles
dandelions
comfrey
plantain
cleavers
mint
mullein
catnip
wormwood (great for worms, who’d have thought!)
Until you can harvest your weeds, you can purchase bags of nettle and dandelion from places like Mountain Rose Herbs. They’re fairly cheap and you can get huge bags for not that much. A one pound bag is enormous and will last you all winter for most smaller flocks.
Recipe for homemade chicken feed:
6 cups oat groats
4 cups hard red wheat
4 cups rye
2 cups black oil sunflower seeds
2 cups soft white wheat
2 cups split peas
2 cups flax seeds
1 cup sesame seeds
3/4 cup kelp granules
3 TB sucanat (molasses granules)
2 TB garlic powder
1/2 TB cayenne pepper powder
½ cup fennel seeds
1 cup dried nettle leaves
1 cup dried dandelion leaves
I generally give the grit and such separately, but throw in as much as you like if you add it directly to the feed.
The garlic and cayenne in this will help prevent internal and external parasites, including worms. The nettle and dandelion leaves will add extra nutrients, as will the kelp. Not only that, but the fennel seeds are enjoyable for the chickens AND they boost egg production.
You may have to tweak this recipe for your own flock. Some flocks aren’t partial to peas, for example! Maybe they want something else and you need to find another protein source. But this is a good standard layer feed. If you want to add some hot water and cook it up for them as a mash, they’d probably love it even more. Especially in the winter months.
If you’re looking for resources, try Azure Standard for grains. Mountain Rose Herbs tends to carry all the other things at very reasonable prices and great quality. I’ve even ordered bulk from Whole Foods of all places and it was quite reasonable. Generally WF gives you 10% off if you purchase a ‘case’. They usually just charged me what it cost them to purchase the bags of grains or whatever else I purchased.
For a good starter blend, take the recipe above and remove the cayenne and reduce the garlic by half. Take out the nettle leaves as well since chicks don’t need that much calcium. Add 2 cups of lentils to the batch. Grind it all up so it’s a fairly homogeneous crumble that can be eaten by chicks. For grower, do the above but also remove half the split peas and make it a bit more chunky so they can have fun with it. Simple enough to do.
The protein in the first formula is about 18%, the starter formula is 19.8% approximately, and the grower feed version is about 17% give or take. If you want to lower the protein content you can. It depends on your flock’s needs. I found a really great calculator tool here.
And if you’re not quite sure how to figure out the percentages of protein to overall calories, there’s an easy formula for it. Find your grams of protein and times it by 4. Then divide protein by total calories, then times that all by 100. So it would look something like this:
731 grams of protein * 4 = 2,924
2,924 / 14,771 total calories = .197955 * 100 = 19.79% protein
With luck, you can not only use the above homemade formula for your chickens, but you now have the confidence to do this on your own!
Warning: this subject can be upsetting to some people.
It’s hard to take a life, even if it’s necessary. There are many reasons why you would need to know how to kill a chicken. Sometimes if they’re injured and need to be put down. Sometimes they just get old and it’s time to cull. Or if you’re raising chickens for meat, you’ll need to know this valuable skill.
Most importantly, you don’t want to say to yourself that you’ll never do this to YOUR chickens and then be put into a situation where you MUST.
First it was butter. It started ‘the health war’ as I like to think of it.
Butter is bad!
No wait, butter’s fine but margarine is bad!
No, we retract that. Today margarine is all right but butter is the root of all evil.
Technically, butter and margarine are both bad and you should only eat olive oil.
Butter’s okay now, but you should really eat more olive oil!
Wait! Olive oil is fine as long as you don’t heat it! Try coconut oil if you want to heat it up!
Does any of this sound familiar to ya’ll?
I figured out some time ago that there will never be ‘perfect’ foods for the human body. Paleo eating comes close, but I also think micro-evolution in humans moves quicker than people realize and some people can eat more modern food like grains with no ill effects. Or perhaps only some grains.
There are a couple of foods that unfortunately I’d say 80% of the population just shouldn’t eat even if they’re organic. If they’re NOT organic then that goes to 100%.
Corn and soy.
Two foods that are in 90% of all processed foods and almost all chicken feed. It is worth your time to make a corn-free/soy-free chicken feed or purchase this from a reputable company.
I can go on at length as to why GMO foods and corn and soy are not foods that most humans should eat, but I’d prefer to save my breath and let you see the neat charts and hear from the experts. When watching this I’d like for you to keep four things in mind:
– I don’t believe in scaring people into doing things, but at the same time this is scary and people need to be aware!
– What your chickens eat is what YOU eat
– I don’t have a political agenda and I try to stay neutral here. Mostly because I think they’re all pretty darn corrupt so please don’t view this as a political statement
– 50 years ago, doctors were promoting cigarettes as healthy and safe
Abridged Version of Genetic Roulette
Back when I wrote a couple of posts about egg refrigeration, I mentioned egg bloom quite frequently and promised an explanation later. Well, later has arrived so here is an explanation:
Egg bloom is the protective layer chickens internally coat their shells with that seals the pores of the egg to prevent contamination from bacteria and to help prevent moisture from escaping. This is all to ensure that the egg lasts as long as possible. It’s really amazing if you think about it. It’s just another way for Mama Hen to keep her eggs safe from harm and in turn it helps us.
Provided that bloom is still surrounding the egg, this is one of the reasons why I feel perfectly safe eating an unwashed egg from my backyard. I only wash them if they’re actually dirty and then they go in the fridge or are used right away.
Commercially, eggs are washed right away and then coated with oil. This doesn’t make a lick of sense to me, but I know most people who have never seen a farm animal in their life would prefer a washed, shiny egg versus a possibly dusty, matte egg that might have a feather sticking to it. This seems to me to be yet another example of our germaphobic culture, but that’s another story for another time.
Just like factory milk, we tend to hear a lot of scary stories about salmonella outbreaks in eggs. Where do these eggs come from? Generally from chickens raised in poor conditions (Ever visited someone who lives on a commercial chicken farm or close to one? Ugh!) these eggs are first given a chemical wash to remove dirt and the bloom, then recoated with a sort of ‘synthetic bloom’ as I think of it, which is mineral oil. Between the washing and the recoating and the already ill chickens, do these commercial eggs really stand a chance to be safe by the time they make it to the store?
Aside from chemical and bacterial invasions, though, the bloom also prevents the nutrients from escaping! If the bloom is intact there is no exchange of gases or evaporation of vitamins. No oxygen is getting into that egg, or in such small amounts that they’re miniscule. The egg will last longer and be healthier for you in the end. Once the gas exchange occurs, your egg starts to slowly rot and will not last half as long as it’s unwashed counterpart.
This task is both as easy and as hard as it sounds. Mostly, you just want to make sure you do it RIGHT to ensure that your birds are not injured. I found a great video that details how to do this simple task.
When fall comes around it’s a great time to do some of those little projects that get put off during the spring and summer. Now that you’ve harvested all or most of your crops for the season, you have the time to turn your attention to things which can be done in advance of next year. A little work now means less for you in the spring!
Having chickens can be a big blessing when it comes to your garden. I’m not only talking about all the free manure but also how chickens will take care of that summer bug problem for you without needing to spray them with anything, organic or otherwise. Then the chickens leave little presents for the plants. Something for everyone.
However, we’re not all able to let our flocks run willy-nilly as we would like. In urban and suburban areas where yards may be a decent size but we still have to worry about neighbors, a chicken run is a better solution than letting them run around as nature originally intended.
An easy project to do for the fall months is to build an enclosure around your garden beds to ensure that chickens don’t run into neighboring yards or otherwise out of bounds. I can tell you from experience that chasing a chicken through your neighbor’s back yard is both funny and embarrassing. Especially in these days of Facebook and Youtube.
There’s another tip for you, don’t forget to clip their wings!
Anyway, you can purchase garden fencing from any local home improvement store fairly cheap. A lot of it is recycled, which helps, and plastic fencing is usually sold in rolls so it’s a matter of putting posts at the corners and a couple in the middle for support. Then wrap the fencing around and staple it in place.
I do suggest making actual gates, one on each end if you’re making it a rectangular enclosure. So two solid posts with swing gates or even child latch lattice ones. The latter worked quite successfully for us for a couple of years until the weather finally got to it. As cheap as they are, it worked for us to just replace it. You can also get a small metal gate door instead if you want to spend the money.
We had one gate coming down the path from the house, and the other gate connecting our garden to the end of the chicken run. After spring planting had passed and the bugs came out in force, we let loose the girls to have all the squash bugs, slugs, and whatever else they wanted to eat. The plants were grown, so they wouldn’t scratch up the seeds (that’s what chipmunks are for) and they really weren’t interested in more than an occasional peck at a broccoli leaf or a bit of spinach. Why would they when there were such fine specimens all over the plants?
Previous to this, we had dusted our squash plants with wood ashes, set out little beer traps for slugs, oil traps for earwigs… Wasn’t really necessary any more after the chickens were connected. Weeding, watering, and harvesting are hard enough without pest control, so build an enclosure and let your flock run free next year. This idea works really well with our mobile coop plans and the Chicken Fun Run, however the enclosure you build can be modified to adjust to any coop you want. You can even build it to connect to a greenhouse!
If you build a garden enclosure, drop us a line. We also love pictures!
Opening a bad egg is never pleasant. For my wife, opening a bad egg is usually followed by a trip to the bathroom and an avoidance of all eggs (or any food) until she doesn’t remember the incident anymore.
So how can you tell a bad egg from a good egg? For that matter, how long can eggs be safely stored (either in or out of the fridge)?
If you look at a good egg and a bad egg, from the outside they rarely look different. Inside is another story. There are a few ways that eggs start to rot:
Once the egg has sat in one position so long that the yolk starts adhering to the inner membrane you are on the road to rotten eggs. This is why I always flip my eggs once a week to prevent the yolk from settling. If you do this, eggs last almost indefinitely.
When the bloom of the egg is washed away, viruses and bacteria may enter and cause mischief. To prevent this, either don’t wash your eggs or wash them, dry them, and lightly coat them in something like sunflower seed oil to create a seal. About a century ago, they just rubbed the eggs in butter.
Look for hairline cracks in your eggs. Feeding plenty of oyster shell to your hens helps to build stronger eggs, which will help prevent this problem. But if I get an egg with cracks in it, that egg goes straight to the dog that very day.
The older an egg is, the larger the air pocket at the top between the inner membrane and the shell grows. This is why if you dump an egg in water, it will float when it gets too old to safely use. Eggs, safely stored, can last up to a year (yes really!) The best rule for this is to test any eggs you are unsure of by dunking them in water.
Floaters immediately are thrown away (or saved until Halloween, shh!)
Eggs that only have one end touching the bottom get used in baked goods because they’re still good but perhaps don’t taste as fresh.
Eggs that are solid on the bottom are newer and perfectly safe to eat.
When roosters mix freely with the hens, you sometimes run into situations where there are half-grown chicks inside the eggs and you just aren’t aware of it. Maybe it rolled away without you realizing it and you find it again, not knowing it wasn’t laid that morning. Things sometimes get mixed up. It happens. To prevent this, shine a flashlight through each egg before you store it to ensure that you aren’t stealing a little chicken baby.
In a future post, I’ll discuss more about what egg bloom is and why it’s important.
Hi folks! An awesome guy named Ken Lang contacted me recently and let me know about the brilliant things he’s doing in his back garden. I asked him to write about it and provide plenty of step by step pictures.
“My name is Ken Lang and my wife’s name is Tina. We have been thinking about raising chickens for a long time. Our relatives eventually made up our minds for us. My sister-in-law purchased four Ameraucana chicks for us. Three out of four were killed by predators (coyotes and raccoons) This is when I decided to build a 99.9% predator proof coop. I lost the plan I ordered from John, but here is what I based my coop on. As you can see in the following article, I made a few changes, to fit my needs.”
“I started with 4×6 posts, stapled hardware cloth to it, and added 1×6 to the bottom for strength. Then I dug ditches for two reasons: first to level the floor and second I filled them with concrete to discourage digging.”
“Everything is screwed together to allow for somewhat easy removal. Next, I started the framing.”
“If you look real close, this is where I installed the roost. Also I framed in the place where the nesting boxes will be later installed. (left side) Again, everything is screwed together.
Then, I put the siding and roofing on. We had some scrap cedar siding and some left-over roofing tin. This saved us a lot of money!”
“Then I started on the run. We had some 1’ x 2” lumber left over from a cabinet shop. Did I mention, I am a cabinetmaker? You don’t have to be a cabinetmaker to do this. I made 3’ x 4’ panels from the lumber and hardware cloth, screwed them together with a 1” x 6” backer for strength, and made the run.”
“If you look close at the door, it is on a pulley system that is activated from the outside. There is also a door on the back side. It is double-locked to keep predators out. As you may know, raccoons are very smart and can figure out how to open just about anything.”
“This is our finished coop. I estimate this coop would cost about $375.00 to build if you have to buy all materials, but we had a lot of scrap lumber so we only spent about $250.00.”
“We have since started adding on to the run. We learned that when you get new chickens they have to be acclimated slowly to establish a pecking order.”
“I just added an extra one to what was already there. I cut a hole to match the opening in the left-over cabinet front found in my scrap pile and add a door. This will allow for separation at first, and then you can open the door when the new girls start getting along with the old girls.”
“Just another view. This part only took me a day to complete. The girls love it and it is also 99.9% predator proof. I know this looks nothing like the original plan, but I had to improvise to suit my needs. Almost all dimensions match the plan. That is the beauty of it, you can use John’s plans and suit them to your personal needs. Thanks again John!”
Ready to start your very own chicken coop project? Just click the link below to get your hands on my world-famous plans 🙂
