How to choose a chicken variety

February 9, 2011 Posts No Comments

Buckeye chickensHow do you choose the chicken variety best
suited to your backyard?  Many backyard chicken-keepers turn to
rare heritage breeds, but Joel Salatin warns that these specialty
chickens have been bred to do well in a very specific suite of
environmental conditions.  Unless you can come up with a heritage
breed that arose in your neck of the woods, you might be better off
looking in another direction.



Large- and medium-scale
chicken-keepers turn nearly unanimously to hybrids.  The Cornish
Cross is just about
the only chicken raised for meat in any appreciable number in the U.S.,
while White Leghorns are the standard for egg-layers.  If you
still want productivity in the egg department but would like brown
eggs, you might consider Production Reds (a cross of two strains of
Rhode Island Reds), Black Sex-links (a cross of a Production Red and a
Barred Rock), or some of the brand name hybrids like Golden Comets. 



Golden Comet henWe started out our adventure with
Golden Comets, and we have to admit that they are great birds. 
However, as you try to make your flock more self-sustaining, you’ll
butt up against the problem that these commercial hybrids don’t breed
true.  Robert Plamondon provides a tip for backyard chicken
keepers who want high productivity while still being able to raise
their own chicks — consider the breeds that were used by large
chicken farms in the first half of the twentieth century before hybrids
took over.  Non-hybrid, pre-1960s broilers include New Hampshires
and White Wyandottes while the commercial laying hens were primarily
Rhode Island Reds, White Leghorns, and Barred
Rocks.



Unfortunately, in the
last fifty years, most of those breeds have been selected for physical
beauty rather than productivity, so you might end up with duds (like we
did with our seldom-laying Plymouth Rocks.)  Joel Salatin comes to
the rescue here too, suggesting that we should each be breeding our
flocks for what he calls “nativized genetics” — birds that Chickens foraging in the snowdo well in our particular
micro- and macroclimate.  If, like us, you’re looking for great
foragers, he even has tips for selecting the best birds within your
flock.  When choosing who’s going to be breeding stock, isolate
hens who lay eggs with the darkest yolk and broilers with the darkest
fat.  These birds are the most aggressive scavengers and may pass
their good habits on to their offspring.



And don’t forget to
invest in our homemade chicken
waterer to keep your
chicken-keeping chores clean and easy.

Homemade chicken waterer for various sizes

February 8, 2011 Posts 2 Comments

Nipple chicken watererWhat do you do if you want
the simplicity of an automatic chicken waterer, but you have birds of
several different sizes?  Michael Kenner sent me photos of his
ingenious solution with this description:



“I used a 4′ piece of 2″ PVC pipe with
two ninety degree elbows and a
four foot vertical pipe at each end that is outside the chicken run and
easy to fill. I threaded 5 Aqua Misers into the pipe and added a slope
to it so that there are waterers at 8″, 10″, 12″, 14″ and 16” high. The
different heights make it easy for all the birds to drink, no mater how
big they are and a three-foot capped piece of PVC serves as a float to
show us when the water is getting low. The water misers are really
good, have not clogged up, or worse, clogged open. The Water Misers
have really made keeping clean water for the birds a snap with no more
messy watering pans, trays, or “automatic” waterers that clog up with
poop and feathers.“


Homemade chicken watererMeanwhile, he threw together a
quick and dirty two gallon jug waterer, mounted on a board with a clamp
for easy re-filling.  Michael’s chickens have more options than
any other birds I know!

I always love seeing our homemade chicken
waterer kits turned into inventive, unique waterers.  Email
your photos to me at info@avianaquamiser.com
and make my day a little brighter.

How to make deep bedding for chickens

January 26, 2011 Posts 2 Comments

Cross section through deep beddingIn my last post, I pointed
out that well-managed
deep bedding is healthier for chickens than constantly giving them
fresh litter. 
But how exactly do you manage a deep bedding system?



First of all, think of
your deep bedding system like you would think of a compost pile. 
If you smell anything or if the deep bedding is wet, you’re doing it
wrong (probably not adding enough bedding or cramming too many chickens
in a small space.)  This photo is a cross-section through our deep
bedding, now about a foot deep, and it just looks like a mass of
slightly chopped up leaves.



Start out with about
four inches of litter on the floor of your coop.  This litter can
be anything that’s high in carbon, like chopped straw, ground corncobs,
cut or shredded corn stover, wood shavings, wood chips, peat moss, cane
litter, shredded paper, or autumn leaves.  Recently, I tossed in
an old bag of lawn clippings and I’ll let you know how that more
nitrogenous bedding does in comparison to the straw and autumn leaves
I’ve been using so far — I suspect it will need more frequent
refreshing.



Grass clippings as chicken beddingSince some of the benefits of
deep bedding depend on microbial action, you never want to clean the
entire coop out at once.  Instead, your goal is to keep
a constant ground cover of six to twelve inches of bedding, removing
and adding litter as needed to keep from hitting your head on the
ceiling and to keep the bedding from getting soggy.  How often you
add fresh bedding will depend on your coop size and number of chickens,
but be sure to add bedding before you start seeing poop all over the
floor and smelling ammonia.  An inch or two of bedding is
sufficient when refreshing the litter.



While deep litter can be
good for chicken health, mismanagement of deep bedding can make your
chickens sick.  Manure caking on the surface of the deep litter is
a bad sign — you can use various chemicals like hydrated lime (no
longer recommended) or absorbent clay as long as you stir it in so the
chemical doesn’t burn the chickens’ feet, but you’d be better off
fixing the problem by adding more litter or giving your chickens more
space.  Excess moisture is another big no-no since it can lead to
conditions that promote the growth Chickens on deep litterof
bad microorganisms in the bedding.  To prevent wet bedding, add a
fresh layer on top, reduce the number of chickens, use one of our homemade chicken
waterers so you
don’t get leakage on the floor, and provide ventilation in your coop.



Despite the potential
for problems with deep bedding, I have to admit that in our well-sized
coop, with bedding added every week or two, I haven’t noticed any
problems at all.  I’m looking forward to removing a few inches of
bedding in the spring to go on the garden, but meanwhile my work on the
deep bedding system has amounted to about five minutes per week.