Chicken-assisted composting

November 22, 2010 Posts No Comments

Pile of autumn weeds outside the chicken pasture composts slowlySpring weeds seem to melt
into organic matter in the compost pile, but by autumn, the plants have
lost their succulency and have more staying power.  Depending on
who you talk to, a well-built compost pile will have a carbon to
nitrogen ratio of
between 15:1 and 30:1 — at this proportion, your plant matter will
decompose rapidly without losing nitrogen to the air as gas. 
Spring garden weeds clock in at 12:1 — a bit higher in nitrogen than
optimal, but not bad, meaning that they’ll compost quickly all on their
own.  In contrast, fall grasses have a C:N ratio closer to 50:1 (a
lot like autumn leaves or straw), meaning that you need to add a lot of
nitrogen to the autumn compost heap to get it to decay.



As chicken keepers,
we’re lucky to have a high nitrogen material at our beck and call —
chicken poop.  Chicken manure has a C:N ratio of 6:1, which means
that it has so much nitrogen it melts into the soil without leaving
much organic matter behind.  Mix your high nitrogen chicken manure
with your high carbon autumn weeds and you’ve got the recipe for good
compost again.



Chickens add nitrogen to the first layer of the compost pileMy method of autumn
composting consists of laying down a layer of old autumn weeds on the
ground in a high traffic area of the chicken pasture, letting the flock
work through it for a couple of days, then repeating until my pile is
built.  If you’ve got chicken manure from a coop stored up, you
can mix the whole pile at once and might find it useful to use Klickitat
County’s compost waste calculator to determine the right
proportions of each ingredient.  Using that calculator, I figure
that 20 parts autumn grasses and 1 part chicken manure make the perfect
compost pile.



The only problem I’ve
found with using chickens to add nitrogen to my compost pile is that
they tend to kick it relatively flat in the process.  Since we
have plenty of space in the pasture, I just let the pile spread out,
shoveling the edges back on top now and then (and turning up tasty
worms for the flock in the process.)  Composting goes much more
quickly with the aid of the chickens, and I’ve already used my spring
and early summer compost on the garden.


Treat your hardworking flock
to a poop-free chicken waterer.

Dried sweet corn as a chicken toy

November 19, 2010 Posts No Comments

Chicken eating dried sweet cornWe still have one hen in a tractor, destined
for the pot once we get a pause in our busy autumn schedule.  As a
sop to my conscience, which doesn’t feel bad about eating her but does
feel bad about putting her in solitary confinement beforehand, I like
to give our loner treats.  Her current favorite is dried
sweet corn, hung by
its dried husk through the top of the chicken tractor without securing
it in any way.



Our loner hen picks a
kernel at a time off the cob and it takes her quite a while to make it
through the ear of corn.  I suspect that urban chicken-keepers
could use a combination of dried sweet corn and sunflower
heads to keep their
chickens occupied, a bit like inside dogs are often left with those
peanut butter-filled chew toys when their masters have to be gone all
day.  Add in our homemade chicken
waterer and you have
a recipe for active, healthy chickens rather than a picked and pecked
on flock.

How to sex chickens

November 17, 2010 Posts 2 Comments

Rooster comb and narrow feathersAlthough everybody can tell a
hen from a rooster when they’re fully grown, it can be difficult to
disentangle your cockerels (male) from your pullets (female) if you’re
raising straight run (un-sexed) chicks.  Assuming that you only
have space in your flock for one rooster, the sooner you identify the
other males, the better.  Broilers (up to about two months old)
are the tenderest and tastiest, roasters (3 to 5 months old) are good
but need to be cooked slowly, and any chicken older than five months is
very tough unless you stew it down or grind it into sausage.  Even
if you can’t handle the thought of killing and eating your own
chickens, it will be much easier to find roosters a home while they are
still in the broiler or roaster stage than if you wait until the fall
when they’re old and tough.



Long, narrow rooster tail feathersSo what kinds of clues can
you use to identify your rooster at a young age?  Folk lore
suggests that if you hold chicks upside-down by their feet, the males
will fight harder than the females, but that sounds not only cruel but
also unscientific.  A more accurate method can be achieved by
mating barred females (black and white striped feathers) with
non-barred males — the offspring will have barred feathers if they’re
male but not if they’re female.  Other types of sex-linked
chickens will have other color patterns, but will be similarly distinct
between the hens and the roosters.  Or you can sex your chicks the
way the pros do by peering at their vents, but this is no task for an
amateur.



Rooster spurThe best way to sex chickens,
in my opinion, is to watch your birds mature in their second month of
life.  The males will nearly always start showing a comb before
the females and will already be larger — this is much easier to tell
if you have multiple chicks of the same breed and age to compare. 
You can be positive your chicken is a rooster when he begins to crow,
at which point he’ll start to grow into his manliness and will prompt
frosty morning photo shoots to capture his beauty.  Look for a
comb that continues to grow much larger than a hen’s and an
extra-toe-like spur on the back of each foot.  His neck and tail
feathers will change from rounded hen-like feathers to long, narrow,
shiny feathers.  I find it useful to peer at adult roosters, where
the differences are much more distinct, so that I’ll be more adept at
chick sexing when the next brood comes along in the spring.


Keep your flock healthy and
happy with a homemade chicken
waterer.