Today I pose a question to you: What is your biggest frustration in chicken keeping? I ask for 2 reasons...mostly I'm just curious, but also maybe we can find solutions to our problems together! Sound good?
I'll start with my number 1 frustration: How do I get the chickens to stop pooping on the patio? It drives Mr Roboto nuts! The patio
and the front walkway are the most bothersome. They know we come out
those doors though and they wait for us to come out. They think we
should give them treats every time we come outside. They don't always
get treats, they just think they should!
My number 2 frustration: How to get the dog to quit eating the chicken feed? Why on earth does she want to? Her feed has pretty colors and 2 flavors with different shapes! Why layer pellets? They can't taste good, yet every time she walks down to the coop with me I find her face first in the feed trough *sigh*
This is the time of year when the chickens just get to go crazy eating fresh produce. The ones that can't free range especially love it! They get to 'help' me garden by eating up all the produce that I deem not fit for human consumption.
This can include a tomato that split, some cucumbers that something or other crawled all over and ate trails into, corn that the corn worms found, zucchini that hid under a leaf until it grew too big and seedy or even peppers that got knocked off the plant too soon. Everything gets chopped up and fed to the chickens.
I cut off any moldy spots, but if I find some corn worms or cabbage worms...I just leave them. That's extra protein! I chop the whole bunch of veggies up and add in any weekly leftovers, stale bread etc. The chickens and Guineas love it and as I've said before: the more free feed I can give them, the more the feed bill goes down.
I also grow a few plants just for them. Mostly 'volunteer' tomato plants that just sorta pop up on their own. I'm sure it's from tomatoes dropping the year before, but the seedlings grow wherever they want and I tend to just leave them if I can and then harvest the veggies for the chickens. This year I forgot that I started green pepper plants from seed and bought some seedlings at the nursery. I planted the extra seedlings and fed the extra peppers to the chickens.
I just wanted to give a quick reminder that the Mother Earth News Fair is coming to Seven Springs, Pennsylvania this weekend: September 20-22! I will have the honor of providing chicks and hatching eggs to the Brinsea booth to help showcase their products.
What better way to see how well something
works then to see it in action, right? Chicks will be hopping around under
the EcoGlow brooders and hatching in the incubators all weekend long!
Last
years Mother Earth News event was awesome of course! There were just rows of booths set up
outside, and in several ballrooms inside. Not to mention the
presentations! I got to visit with several local and international
vendors. Without too much chat...here are a few phone snapshots from
last years event:
Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs
Maple cotton candy. For realz! It was amazing!
I loved this greenhouse design. This might be the direction I head in when I get one next year.
Alpacas!
Is there a cuter face anywhere? This was even better because as I tried
to snap the picture the critter gets up and walks over to smell my sons
hair. He doesn't want to turn around till I'm done with the picture but
he just knows something is going on behind him! I about died laughing
It's
really an amazing event, and if you have any interest at all in organic
practices, sustainable living, off grid living, farming, homesteading
or even the more mainstream practices of gardening, natural healing and
backyard chickens...this is the place to be this weekend!
A
quick word about Brinsea. I am not an affiliate. I don't get paid to
tell you how awesome they are, in fact I already had bought 4 of
their incubators when I met them before the fair last year. They are
truly a great company both to buy from and work with! I cannot say
enough good things about them and I think they will be your favorite
incubator company also.
I love the fact that I never have to fiddle with
dials or switches on their incubators. The smaller ones (like the Octagon 20) are factory
set, just plug them in and go! The cabinet bators (like the Ova Easy 100) are fully adjustable
and run perfectly once adjusted. It is an absolute advantage to be able
to rely on that! There is no 'it's a warm day today, turn the incubator
down' or worse yet, humidity fluctuations! Never! I know you're gonna
love them...and if you decide to give them a try you can enter the code
word MURANO at checkout and get 10% off your order. Awesome, right?
Alright folks, I'm out of here....have a fabulous week, and I hope to see you at the fair!
~L
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I'm going to start by saying that I don't actually know if they are wood mites...that's just what I was told and it certainly looks like it from the pictures online. They don't look like the chicken mites I've had the misery of knowing, but thankfully I've only dealt with the Red Mites and only once.
These bugs do look like some of the poultry mites I've seen in pictures though, so they very well could be. Read on to see why it's so confusing!
Mites in the poultry coop bedding
This story starts a few weeks back. I reached into the nest boxes in the silkie house and noticed there were these little bugs on the eggs. Tiny little brown things. Gross, right? Just a few, but I checked every bird every where and nothing.
So I decided to empty the nest box bedding into the fire pit. More on this here: 6 Ways to Dispose of Coop Litter. I wiped them out, put a layer of DE in and more wood shavings and called it done. Days went by without another sighting, admittedly I kept checking the birds not the bedding.
