Feeding pumpkin to chickens

Carving Pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns is the sure sign that Halloween is here! I had great fun carving a chicken into mine this year. (ok, I do that every year! lol) We cleaned and roasted the seeds for snacking, but what to do with all that orange goo that's left over? Feed it to the chickens of course! 

The best part about feeding fresh pumpkin to chickens is that you don't have to cook it or even carve it really. In fact, if you use real pumpkins for Halloween decorations your chickens may have already taken a few bites out of them! If you want though you can cut the pumpkin up for the chickens. You can also puree it, but that takes more work.

Why feed chickens pumpkin?

Well,why let it go to waste, right? Besides, pumpkin is one of the healthiest treats you can give chickens! 

Pumpkin is high in Vitamin A which is an essential vitamin for chickens. Vitamin A deficiency in chickens can cause pale combs and wattles, nasal discharge, poor growth and poor feathering among other problems. Pumpkin also contains vitamins B, C and zinc which can benefit chickens. Pumpkin seeds contain vitamin E.

Pumpkins with personality!

It's that time of year again.....pumpkin carving time! I'm sure everyone here has a basic knowledge if pumpkin carving....so I won't bog you down with details! I ordered a pumpkin carving kit last year so I just drew on my design and used the assorted knives and scrapers in the kit to carve it out. This year I decided to carve a rooster in my pumpkin. I drew a picture and voila! Lol

Halloween chicken pumpkin!

I added a candle and placed it on the front porch just in time for Frankenstorm!

Happy Halloween!

~L 

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Spraddle leg, the band aid fix

Unfortunately, when raising chicks sometimes things go wrong. Some problems in chicks are very easy to fix and such is the case with spraddle leg, also called splay leg. Spraddle leg is when one or both of the chicks legs slip out to the sides making the chick unable to stand or walk correctly. wiki It's not difficult to get the chick walking right again, if you start while a chick is still small, but it must be done immediately! The longer you wait, the harder it is to fix!

This is one of the most common problems in chick hatching. Spraddle leg chicks can happen for a few reasons. Sometimes the chick just hatched like that, often with one leg sticking out to the side.

Other times it occurs when the new chick cant get a good grip in the incubator and both legs splay out in opposite directions. Spraddle leg can even occur the first few days in the brooder if the bedding gets kicked away and the chicks feet slip on a slick brooder floor.

Either way....it's easy to fix spraddle leg in chicks if you get to it right away. This is super important! The longer the chick stays splay legged the harder it is to fix.

I'm a bit late on posting this! I took the picture at the time and the post just didn't get written *sigh* busy busy! Back in September, the Mother Earth News Fair was in Seven Springs. Brinsea was there with a booth full of their awesome products. 

They had incubators, brooders and even one of  their new Clifton coops! It was pretty awesome. For us the best part was.......our chicks were in the Brinsea booth! Silkie and Marans chicks, and guinea keets hopped about happily underneath their EcoGlow 20 and even more babies were hatching in an Octagon Advance. 

 
We had also brought several eggs in the first week of incubation. Visitors got the chance to peer into the eggs using the OvaScope. I have one of these and absolutely love it for candling! (it even works on the super dark Marans eggs) 

So if you happened to peep in on them while incubating....this is what they look like now: 

Brinsea chicks have hatched!

(there are more under that brooder!) It was a really fun and informative weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the Brinsea people! They were just the sweetest, nicest, easiest to work with...well, I just can't say enough good things!!! 

We're looking forward to attending the Mother Earth News fair and working with them again next year! This was just too much fun, and I got the chance to check out the new Clifton Coop. Hubby had looked at it online and had some questions. I enjoyed seeing it in person, being able to feel how sturdy it is and seeing how easy it will be to clean. I think this would be a perfect choice for a small urban flock. Or a breeder pen. 😉

Have a great morning!

~L 

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Using fall leaves in the chicken run.

When I put the baby Guinea fowl into the chicken run again this morning I noticed they looked kinda, well....bored! These little keets go in the covered run every day by themselves till they're big enough to play outside without the big kids picking on them. I suppose after awhile that would get boring, so I decided to find them something to do.

These little keets had so much fun, I decided to rake a few piles of leaves into both the silkie runs and the big guinea run. 

It's important to try to alleviate boredom in chickens and guineas, especially when confined.

Boredom can cause: Feather pulling to themselves and others
Pecking each other
Pecking order problems
Bullying
Injury to the bullied chickens
Egg eating

Obviously none of these are desirable in a confined flock. The obvious solution would be to alleviate their boredom. You could go the fancy route and buy swings and toys but I prefer a more natural (and free) approach and so that's how I ended up with the leaf solution to flock boredom.

Tiny egg inside an egg.

I found this bizarre egg in the nest box one day this summer. It was a banty egg....but slightly smaller then normal, with a coarse shell. Otherwise it seemed about normal. However when I broke it open a tiny egg fell out! Hard shelled and about the size of a dime, it even had a miniature yolk inside! This is the first time I found a whole egg inside another egg! Cool, right?

Tiny egg inside and egg

The odd thing was that there was no yolk inside the larger egg! Just the tiny egg. Weird. This has never happened before or since, so I'm just going to assume it was a glitch in the plumbing. I'm not even really sure who laid it (with a dozen Silkie hens in that coop, there's no telling who it belonged to!)

We've had huge eggs, wind eggs, 'non painted' eggs, odd shaped eggs and shell-less eggs over the last few years. Guess this is just one more for the 'weird' list!

~L 

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Gardening with chickens...the clean up

It's that time of year again. Our first light frost just passed and with more to come, it's time to salvage what's left of the garden and get it ready for winter. Thankfully the chickens are always willing to help in the garden so this time we're talking about gardening with chickens: letting them into the garden to clean up extra seeds and bugs!

In Gardening for chickens I talked about planting a special feed garden just for the chickens. Today though, we're cleaning the regular garden out! The last set of broccoli is still doing well, so that will stay and get covered on frosty nights. The corn is completely done. We cut that down for decorations. 

Admittedly it's not as full as the stuff you can buy at the store. Ours is missing the corn. I've either cooked it, canned it or fed it to the chickens. They still look pretty darn good for free....with the addition of a spool of Dollar Tree fall ribbon, that is! 

Let's get back to the garden though. I've pulled down most of the fence that normally keeps them out of the garden and let the chickens and guineas in. I'm pretty sure this is their favorite time of year. It's exciting to them, like when Peter rabbit finally gets into Mr McGregor's garden! 

Buy it by the ton

I have to admit I'm always looking for the ways to do things cheaper. Especially in chicken keeping! Feeding all the critters we have here is probably the second highest expense we have (coop building would be #1, but thankfully I think we have enough space for the next year or so!) Lets face it, 80 feathered friends can eat a LOT of feed! 

I try my best to give them lots of extra produce, leftovers and other 'free' types of food, but their main diet is layer pellets. The way we used to do it was to buy a few bags whenever we ran out. It would come out to like, 3 bags every few weeks. 

One of the main problems with this method is that we live 1/2 hour from the feed stores. Hubby would pick it up on his way home from work sometimes, but mostly we would just run down to TSC to get feed. It often ended up with dinner out and grocery shopping, since we were down there, ya know? 

Add all these expenses and I realized that we needed a better method. I tried to anticipate their needs and buy when I was there but it never worked quite right. There had to be a better way.

Buying feed in bulk to save money

Then hubby saw a sign in TSC that said "Buy by the ton and save". He asks some questions and told me that they offer a 5% discount on orders over 20 bags. Well, I wasn't sure if 5% was going to be worth the storage space issue. I thought about it for a few days. 

I still wasn't convinced when I went to our mailbox one day and found a TSC flyer with a '10% off your complete purchase' coupon. NOW I started liking this idea. We headed out to TSC that night, coupon in hand. We asked and were told that yes we could use both discounts together....and that is how we ended up buying our first ton of food.

Now it's a twice yearly event for us. We wait for the coupon to arrive and buy a pallet of food. That's 40 bags. All I did was click 'create account' on their website. It asked me to enter my name, address and email address. I never did place an online order. Ever since then I get these flyers in the mail. 

We haul it home and store it till we need it. In the summer, feed lasts a bit longer then in the winter. I'm sure it's because of the free ranging and extra garden scraps. We try to save where ever we can, and an extra %15 off feed really goes a long way. 

The coupons come about 4 times a year, so you can choose which ones to use. You can get the volume discount on as few as 20 bags...so you don't need to get the full pallet like we do! It's just one small way to save money on these cute little feather balls we love so much!

Happy hauling!

~L

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Guineas eat stink bugs!

Stink bugs have been a big problem up here in Western Pennsylvania the last few years. Mostly in the city. Pittsburgh has had tons of them the last few years, but miles away here in the country we've seen very few. Oh we get our share of ticks, cicadas and other insects, but not too many stink bugs. Until today. 

Right now as I sit here at my desk I can see at least 40 of the creepy mutant shield looking things sticking to my back screen door and hanging on the porch ceiling. I'm sure if I look behind me, the front porch and door would be the same. EWWW! 

They are so freaky looking. I do have to admit that I've never noticed the smell, even though my husband swears they stink when you squash them. I get grossed out just by looking at them and honestly, isn't that enough??? Well,actually I smell fresh cilantro when stinkbugs are around, but that can't be what they're supposed to smell like!

Earlier today while a customer was here, there were several stink bugs above one of the open brooders and I flicked them in to the chicks and keets. They had a great time playing chase and finally eating the little mutant bugs. 

Yes, guineas eat stink bugs!

Which gave me an idea! After emptying the vacuum cleaner canister, I vacuumed a bunch of stink bugs up and dumped that canister in the guinea pen. They loved them! Now I know what the free ranging guineas have been chasing all day! I could see them out there in the yard chasing bugs, but didn't realize they were probably after stink bugs. 

I always knew that bug eating was one of the main Reasons To Raise Guineas, I just didn't truly appreciate it till the stink bugs came to town! I am so grateful for my army of  bug eating clowns right now! I'm off the vacuum up some more bugs for them!

Have a great day!

If you have any other questions about raising guinea fowl you might find the answers here: Guinea Fowl 101 or feel free to leave a question down below and I will answer it as best I can! 

~L

Want information on raising chickens sent right to your email weekly? Click right here to join my list and get new posts sent directly to you the day they're published. You'll also get the free download 25 Ways to save money raising chickens.

Frontline for chickens?

This came as a surprise for me, but earlier today I was on a chat page and read a post about using Frontline for dogs, on chickens. Now, I had never heard of this but let's face it....they don't have many chicken products out there. There are a few products created specifically for parasite control in chickens, but not many.

Thankfully chicken products are becoming easier to find and more are being created every day. If you can't find specific poultry products though, medications formulated for other livestock can often be used. 

You might have to do a bit of math to figure out the appropriate dose, but generally most products that are safe to use on food producing animals can be used on chickens.

However, it is NOT the same with products formulated for pets!