Homemade automatic chicken feeder

October 22, 2012 Posts 2 Comments
Automatic chicken feeder

Chicken bucket waterer
A
week ago, Mark and I went to visit Missy and Everett from Living a Simple Life. 
They kindly took us on a tour of their new homestead, and we snapped a
lot
of photos of their automatic chicken feeder.



Their turkey and
chickens run free most of the time, but now and then
Everett and Missy like to leave home and shut the flock in to protect
them from predators.  They installed two of our chicken bucket
waterers to keep the
poultry hydrated, then constructed their own
automatic chicken feeder so the birds will never go hungry.



The feeder is simply a
collection of sections of PVC pipe and elbows
that allows chicken feed to fall by gravity into a trough at the
bottom.  If you fill up the entire pipe with feed, you can go out
of town for several days without worrying about your flock.



In the turkey pen,
Everett has a slightly different setup — he placed
an elbow on the bottom of the vertical pipe so that the turkey can
stick in her long neck and peck up the feed.  However, when Mama
Turkey hatched out a chicken baby, the new chick just wasn’t big enough
to poke its head in the elbow and find the food.  Instead, Everett
turned the elbow downwards.  So that side of the coop no longer
has an automatic feeder, but it does have a handy shoot through which
Everett can drop cups of feed without having to walk into the turkey’s
pen.

Foraging patterns of six week old chicks

October 22, 2012 Posts 3 Comments
Chicks and oilseed radish

Four to seven weeks is
my favorite chick age.  They’re just barely starting to get into
trouble — hopping up on the porch, scratching mulch — but mostly
are simply growing like crazy and rustling up lots of their own grub.


Chickens in the garden

Each morning, the flock
has to make a hard decision — which delicious morsel to eat first!


Chicken and asparagus

Oilseed radishes and
asparagus berries are favorites right now.


Chicks in raspberries

After breakfast, it’s
time for a short siesta.  The raspberry
patch makes a safe
haven for napping.


Chicks on the porch

Then they’re back to
work!


Chicks in mulch

The straw I used for
this kill mulch clearly had more seeds in it than it should have. 
“No problem,” said my chicks.  “We’re on it!”


Evening chickens

They forage until dusk,
then put themselves to bed. 


Chicks going to bed

All I have to do is
close the door.



(If you were looking for
a little more substance, you might want to read this
post about the advantages of free range chickens, and this
one about the flip side of the coin.  For more fun chick
photos, check out this post
from a month ago.)


Our chicken waterer keeps our
flock healthy with lots of clean water.

How to choose the best egg-laying hens

October 19, 2012 Posts 2 Comments
Bringing chickens home

As I mentioned in my
last post, we had a lot of chickens to choose from at the Animal
Swap.  So how
did we narrow down the options and zoom in on our three Rhode Island
Reds?



Our primary purpose was
to increase our egg production, so we were
looking for point-of-lay pullets.  These hens should be around six
months old but should definitely already be laying.  Be very leery
of
sellers who tell you their pullets will start laying “any day
now.”  If
they’re not already laying by September, chances are very good the
hens won’t churn out any eggs until spring.



On the other hand, you
don’t want to get saddled with old hens.  One
year old hens are okay since they probably just started laying this
spring, but two year olds are over the hill.


Chickens out of the box

Breed is also important,
of course.  It’s worth checking the variety you’re interested in
against Henderson’s
chicken breed chart. 
We chose our Black
Australorps for
their foraging prowess and broiler
characteristics and our Cuckoo Marans for their (supposed)
maternal
abilities, but this time around we were looking for straight-up
egg-laying prowess.  Rhode Island Reds (aka RIR) and White
Leghorns (aka Whiteleggers) top the charts among heirloom
egg-layers, although you should also look for Golden Comets and Red and
Black Sex-links among the hybrids.


First egg

We were very lucky to
find these seven month-old Rhode Island Reds who are so ambitious one
even laid an egg on the trip home!


Feeding chickens

After age and breed, the
last thing to consider is how healthy your new hens look.  The
feathers of young hens will shine a bit in the sun — scruffy-looking
chickens are probably older or malnourished.  If your hens are
missing feathers on their heads or backs, that could simply mean that
they’ve been kept in too close quarters with a rooster or with a mean
hen, but it’s better to leave those birds on the table if you have
another choice.


Egg yolk color

Our trio looked
top-notch and their previous owner told us that they were great
foragers, ranging quite a distance from the coop to hunt for
food.  When I cracked open their first egg the next morning,
though, it wasn’t nearly as orange as our ladies’ — but I don’t think
anyone else takes pasturing quite as seriously as we do.  I
suspect our new hens’ yolks will orange up within a week or two.



The final question you
might have about buying laying hens is cost.  Six years ago, we
got young hens for $5 apiece, but these girls were $9 a head.  I’d
be curious to hear from others who have bought laying hens
recently.  How much did you pay?


Our chicken waterer keeps hens laying with
copious clean water.