Annual chicken pasture with oats and peas

October 7, 2011 Posts No Comments
Chickens grazing oats

We planted one of our
over-grazed pastures in oats, Austrian winter peas, oilseed radishes,
mustard, and chicory on September 9.  The oats, especially, grew
quickly, although I noticed that the leaves were a bit sparser than I’d
hoped — I think that on rough ground, I should increase my seeding
rates.



Chicken eating mustardIt’s a tricky topic to decide
when to turn livestock into annual
winter pastures. 
On the one hand, young grains are most nutritious before the stems
start to elongate, a change that occurs within about a month if the
weather isn’t too cold.  On the other hand, tender plants are more
likely to be totally eradicated by grazing rather than just losing some
top growth and rebounding during the following rest period.



Conventional information
on grazing annual winter pastures comes from studies with ruminants,
but chickens have the additional habit of scratching up the ground,
which would make me inclined to let the pasture mature more before
turning in the chickens.  On the other hand, chickens have
stomachs that can’t deal with very much roughage, which would make me
inclined to turn the chickens into the pasture when the grass is even
younger than is optimal for cows.



In the end, my decision
was a bit random — I just opened the fence one day and let the flock
in.  Here’s what the pasture looked like on October 2:

Oat pasture



And the next day on
October 3:

Chickens knock down oat leaves

As you can see, the
chickens did a bit of trampling damage in the first 24 hours. 
I’ll keep you posted when I have more of an idea of whether I should
have waited longer, how long the chickens can spend in the annual
pasture without causing long term damage, and so forth.  Right
now, our fat and happy pullets are lazily resting along the fenceline
— I think I need to cut back their storebought feed.


Our chicken waterer makes it easy to rotate
chickens through pastures — fill a five gallon bucket in each pasture
and forget it.

What to do with wet chicken feed

October 5, 2011 Posts 2 Comments

Light Sussex chicksWhat should you do if
your chicken feed gets wet?  In a perfect world, this never
happens, but the reality is that sometimes rain will leak into the
trash can where we store our chicken feed and the pellets in the
bottom of the bag will go moldy.  If you catch the damp chicken
feed on day 1 or 2, there’s no problem — feed it right to the
flock.  But after that, you’re risking the health of your birds by
giving them food in which disease-causing bacteria may have had a
chance to grow.



Previously, I’ve played
it safe by composting the problematic feed, but I accidentally stumbled
across a better solution last week.  We had dumped the bedding
from our brooder in a pile outside, knowing it was full of spilled
chick feed lost in the leaves but not wanting to find a way to carry
the poopy mass to the adult chickens to be picked through.  Weeks
of intermittant sun and rain passed, and then I decided to see how our
five week old chicks would do free ranging through the yard.  Four
of them made a beeline for the old bedding and I ran right after them,
worried they were eating spoiled grain and making themselves sick.


Chick eating maggot

Dirty chickI should have given those chicks more credit
for good sense.  With a yard full of late summer insects and
garden debris, they weren’t interested in rotten chicken feed. 
However, the maggots that had been eating the damp feed were top notch
protein sources.  The chicks ate until they nearly popped, and I
patted myself on the back for finding a way to turn that lost chick
feed back into food for our youngsters.



In the future, I think
I’ll try to replicate my success whenever I end up with moldy feed
during warm weather.  Mixing wet feed in with leaves keeps the
area from going anaerobic, which allows maggots to thrive.  The
only trick is to let the flock in to scratch through the pile at just
the right time so you don’t instead end up with a bumper crop of flies
to plague your days.


Our chicken waterer solves another problem —
POOP-filled waterers.

Chick curled toe

October 3, 2011 Chicken Health, Chicks 7 Comments

Chick curled toeAs I mentioned before, one of our chicks hatched with a foot problem.  The toes on one foot were curled into a fist that remained closed even when the chick started hopping around.

There are two potential causes of what’s known as “curled toe paralysis.” If toes on both of your chickens’ feet are curled up, chances are the bird is suffering from a riboflavin deficiency due to a malnourished mother hen.
The solution in that case is to provide a vitamin supplement to that
chick immediately, which in many cases will cause the toes to naturally
uncurl.

Transpore tapeIf your chick has curled toes on only one foot (meaning it probably injured itself in the egg) or if you provide vitamins and the toes don’t uncurl, you’ll need to splint the chick’s foot.  Splinting is best done as soon as you notice the problem — I waited until day 3, but think I would have seen even better results if I’d splinted on day 1.  Mark helped me by holding the chick still during the operation and I highly recommend you find a helper before trying the procedure as well.

Holding a chick for splinting

Splint a chick's footI’ve seen various splint methods on the internet, but the one that worked for us was to use two pieces of 3M Transpore tape to sandwich the chick’s toes into a flat position.  Various people have had good luck with using bandaids and cardboard, but I didn’t think the bandaids were sticky enough, so I opted for the breathable but stickier Transpore.  The extra stickiness made it easy to uncurl one toe at a time, laying each one against the tape to stay in place while I worked on the next.

The first day we splinted the chick’s foot, we learned another lesson — make sure the tape covers every bit of his toes.  Our chick wasn’t pleased to have one foot turn into a flipper, so he pecked at the tape, which prompted his siblings to follow suit.  I had left the end of one toe exposed and that spot was soon slightly bloody.  Wrapping the tape all the way around the foot worked much better the next day.

Chick curled toe followup

Healed curled toeWe replaced the splint 24 hours later, at which point it was clear the toes were starting to uncurl but
weren’t there yet.  The second splint stayed on for two days, which seemed to be just long enough to make sure the chick was able to walk flat-footed rather than on a fist.  His toes are still slightly crooked, but the deformity doesn’t seem to slow him down — I have to sit and watch the brooder for five minutes before I can even pick him out.  I’m glad to have been able to save such an intrepid chick!