Author: Anna & Mark

Chickens are the dumbest animals in the world…

March 24, 2010 Posts 2 Comments

Homemade chicken waterer using a hoseDrew
emailed me to let me know that he’d put some photos of his version of
our homemade chicken
waterer up on his
website.  I
like his elegant use of aquarium-type tubing, and his description of
why he wanted to switch over to the Avian Aqua Miser:

 

Unlike
bees, chickens are the dumbest animals in the world. I would put them a
step under goldfish. Give them a bowl of water and they will take a
drink out of it, then stand on the edge of it until it tips over, and
then terd into it. It has been a constant battle between the chickens
and I to keep them with fresh unfecaled water. I have been searching
for some time for some sort of solution that would solve the problem
once and for all, and I found it. The Chicken
Nipple. I
got a piece of tubing from lowes and a few fittings and made a five
gallon waterer that they will never knock over. So that solves my
issues with them for now…

 


Thanks for sharing,
Drew!  I also loved the description of your farm, which sounds a
lot like ours.

Chick delay

March 23, 2010 Posts No Comments
Dark Cornish chicks

Three weeks ago, we
ordered 15 Dark
Cornish chicks from
Natures Hatchery, to be shipped the next week.  Then waited, and
waited, and waited.  I called the post office — any
chicks?  “Nope,” our nice postmistress said.  “Have you tried
calling the hatchery?”



So I called the
hatchery, got voice mail, left a message.  Waited a few more
days.  Still nothing.  So I emailed the hatchery. 
Nothing.  Called the hatchery again.  Nothing.  By now,
it had been two and a half weeks since I ordered our chicks, and a week
and a half since they were supposed to ship.  I finally gave up,
left the hatchery a message canceling my order, and looked elsewhere.



Unfortunately, everyone
else was ordering their chicks while I sat around trusting Natures
Hatchery to come through.  My new choices were to order all male
Dark Cornish to be shipped soon, or wait over a month to get some
females.  We chose the former route so that our forest
pasture experiment
can start rolling along, and will order some hens to round out our
flock in the summer if the breed seems to fit the bill.  (Or maybe
we’ll get lucky and there’ll be some mis-sexed birds in our first
flock.)



Just thought I’d let you
know why we haven’t posted any chick pictures yet — and to warn you
off Natures Hatchery.  By the time you read this, our new chicks
should be in the mail!  Our brooder and chicken waterers are ready for them.

Avian Aqua Miser news

March 22, 2010 Posts No Comments
Me and Mom

I’ve been enjoying
working through my thoughts on homemade chicken
feed, chicken
pasturing systems,
and chicken
varieties over the
last few weeks.  But in the process, I’ve let a few things
slide.  So, this week I’m going to post all of those backlogged
entries that didn’t make the cut in previous weeks.



First of all, I want to
welcome my mom to the Avian Aqua Miser team!  Mom needed a job and
we needed some help, so it’s a perfect match.  She’s been hard at
work burning CDs and preparing do it yourself kits, just in time for
the chick season to get underway.  She was also responsible for
the blog post a couple of weeks ago about wild
chickens in suburbia. 
Thanks, Mom!



In other news, Mark is
engrossed in another chicken-related invention.  I think that his
new invention is every bit as exciting as the Avian Aqua Miser.  What
is it?  Well, I’ve promised not to tell until he works all of the
kinks out.  Stay tuned!