Andy, I'll buy some of your eggs, to help take the edge off your costs incurred. We eat a lot of them at our house.

Salmo. Good stories about your livestock career. It sounds like it worked a lot better than my Cascara bark career, and definitely better than my little wild blackberry carreer (Made $2.50/hr, and scratches over 85% of my body).

You'll have to get the eggs from the boys. I told them that anything that was earned after paying for feed was theirs. Start saving your egg cartons.

I just got handed a few items from my father-in-law's pheasant project, plus a home depot gift card for supplies. That should take an edge off of the price a bit. First chicks show tomorrow, then another 4 or 5 Wednesday and Thursday as the different stores get their chicks in.

Brooder done.




The spaces are adjustable. The brooder is set up as a 4x4 box, with two partitions. I can decrease the size of the pens, separate different arrivals (I'll have three separate sets, but they'll only be a week apart total) and then take out all of the dividers and give the chicks run of the entire box once all are up and running. I'll build a better light stand that will be permanently attached to the side of the box once I figure out where they like the heat and food, and how high I need to have the lamp. They are in the shop office, which is heated already, so the heat adjustment should be pretty easy.

First set of chicks arrive tomorrow, sex-links.

chickens in moveable pens ("pastured poultry") are good for turning sod in to garden soil. they'll tear up the sod, especially if you are a little wasteful with food and just throw it down for them to scratch out.
They'll crap a lot, and that'll add a ton of nitrogen, which goes with your garden thread. meat and eggs from birds who are pastured have been shown to be more nutritious, and may save you feed money.

I've been cultivating 100'x8' wide strips for a couple years, planting cereal rye and winter wheat over the chicken pasture with great results.

the pens I have are 8x8x2 made of firring strips. chicken wire perimeter, but not on bottom. a piece of scrap tin covers half the top for shelter and shade. i hang a galvanized feeder and a gravity fed waterer plumbed to a 5 gallon bucket. with up to 6-8 birds, they'll need to be moved every other day. you want to move the pen before the crap "caps" the dirt. Unless you want bulk crap to shovel into a composter.

you can put any old box in there (I've used those brown recycling boxes, and an old dog crate) for a nest box if they're layers. if meat birds, they won't need a nest box.

if you want fertile eggs to hatch, add one rooster per 3-5 hens and if you have more hens, you may want 3 roosters. 2 roosters will fight, sometimes to the death. fertile eggs can be hatched in a homemade incubator, and will be a more 'sustainable' approach to buying eggs every year.

there're ways to determine if you have a lazy hen, one that's not laying. It happens, and they make excellent chicken enchiladas and stock.

couple weeks ago my biggest rooster got out and attacked me. Stuck him with my Sebenza and we had Coq au Vin for 2 days, and 4 quarts of stock for all kinds of stuff, including an excellent home grown black beans dish. it ain't city livin', for sure.

So there you go: pastured poultry, chicken tractors, fertile eggs, non-industrial meat.

btw, my 10/22 with carbon barrel, hogue stock, surefire and eotech gets used about twice a year for pest issues. I'd prefer my .223 with a can and safe backstop, but...

http://smallfarms.wsu.edu/animals/poultry.html
http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/soilmgmt/SusAg_PasturedPoultry.htm
http://www.eatwild.com/products/washington.html

Wow........Go Cougs!

Thanks.

I thought about a chicken tractor, so I will build my coop with rear wheelbarrow wheels on a common axle.

Ike,

I understand about just having fresh eggs. Yeah, FFA big time, dairy and poultry.

RR,

$2.50 and hour!?! Heck, when I finally figured out I couldn't make $0.50 even if I stole the feed from the ranch I worked at, I got rid of my birds and told my mom to buy eggs at the grocery store like most people do.

DougT,

Oh, do I remember those "attack" roosters. Had a couple of them at different times. The first was a great big red one, used to sneak up and jump on our backs while we were milking cows. My younger step-brother got fed up, and he and his buddy provided an afternoon's entertainment chasing that darn bird all around the barn and barnyard, finally catching it and tormenting it with a super dull cleaver, having it get away, and they chased it repeatedly until they finally caught it and whacked its head off. My mom made chicken soup with it, but it was still tough as boot leather.

Fortunately it all provides better memories than it did an actual childhood. I hope Andy's boys have some valuable experiences with this project. But no matter how many chicken stories he posts, I'll remember that I hate chickens and will never raise or keep them again.

Sg

We'll have to swap FFA stories next time we see eachother Steve. The only time I spent in Pullman (beside two Apple Cups) was at the State Convention. My specialty was judging dairy as well. I still have those peculiar flavors of tainted milk embedded in my taste buds...rancid, sweet, sour, malty, bitter, etc....yuk!

I wouldn't trade growing up on a farm for anything though; no need to have the birds and the bees explained to you when you grow up on a farm...you see 'em bred, you see 'em born, you raise 'em....then you kill and eat them. We raised every animal, both feathered and furred, except horses...can't eat horses.

I did my first "chicken project" when I was 15 year old freshman. Raised 225 Cornish Cross, the stupid white meat chickens. All went well until it came time to butcher them. I started butchering them when they were 3.5 lbs and about 7 weeks old....every day after school and every weekend for weeks on end. Ended up employing my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and any/all friends.....even had an automatic chicken plucker. By the time I finished they were 11 weeks old and weighed nearly 6 lbs, basically small turkeys. Back then I got $2.25/lb for them though, and did turn a profit.

Attack roosters? The reason I cautioned Andy about buying straight run chicks is from personal experience. I bought 25 straight run Rhode Island Reds hoping to get about half hens for laying and half roosters for eating...ended up with ONE hen and 24 very nasty, mean attack roosters. Meaner than a pack of pit bulls, I kid you not.

Ike

I am a chick magnet!

Picked up my first 10 chicks today, 5 Barred Rocks and 5 Austrolops, and I'll pick up a mix of Rhode Island Reds and Gold Sex-Links tomorrow, depending on availability at the other feed store tomorrow.

Cedar the Yellow lab (on a leash at the time) was interested in meeting his new family members.

I'll build my own coop big enough to handle up to 16 laying hens with wood that is left over from the house, as that is what we will have to start with. The one thing I couldn't find was an average mortality rate on chicks. I would hope to bring all 16 to maturity, but want at least 8-12 regular working girls in the stable. The first 10 have all found water at least 3 times, and they are all eating, so I guess that is a good start. We put any chicks that found water into their delivery box, waiting for the remainder to find water on their own after showing them the way a few times. Guess it worked.

We are on the way. With the heated office, a space heater, and the IR light, the chicks moved away from the heat lamp after an hour, so I raised the heatlamp up a bit. I'll check in a bit to see how they are doing. Acting like a mother hen I am.

Andy, throw some fine grit down, maybe in their food or on a sheet of newspaper.
Recent studies have shown that adding grit from the get go helps the birds develop better digestion, which aids maturity. Especially important for your meat birds of any feather.

For mortality, most of my birds have croaked when older and out on range. I haven't lost any chicks in 10 broodings.

I lost one turkey poult, but he was noticeably sick when I brought him home.

My cornish cross meat birds have weighed 10 lbs! (14 week old roosters, butchered), which is an enormous bird. I cut up 6 of those peckerheads and ate the wings. 4 wings were a meal all by themselves! Our family can eat for a few days on one of those carcasses.

If you go with meat birds, you might want to look into building a Whizbang Chicken Plucker. Google and youtube it, and if you're interested I'll send you the plan book.

it makes butchering go a lot faster when you've got a auto plucker. I can do about 7-9 per hour.

+1 on the chicken plucker. DougT have you raised any of the Colored Rangers? I may buy some this spring. They are slower growing and don't have the leg problems that the Cornish X do.

I want to do something other than the white crosses, like the rangers, but honestly I haven't had any issues with legs in over 150 birds. I've had a couple die on hot days, but that's when they're at that 12-15 lb stage...huge birds...they just keel over, literally.

I think the leg problems of those birds are somewhat mitigated by making them move in the pens daily. They get more exercise since they're eating grass and bugs, not just squattin' by a feeder all day, which they will.

the main reason i want another meat breed is to get fertile eggs from.
i have a "homestead" breed, hens are black and cocks are red, that has layed through 95% of the winter with no extra light (my first homestead criteria), and they're hearty (they lived in an open sided pen through the winter with no other shelter) and they're meaty (heavier even than a "heavy layer"). now if I can get them to hatch, and see what the finish weight is at 10 weeks (hopefully at least 5 lbs), I'm on to somethin'.

Chickens, bees, asparagus, rhubarb, winter squash, garlic and rosemary are homestead musts in my book.

Also, man, if you got the room, grow a couple of Embden geese. These birds grow fast, are good to watch, and not only incredibly tasty in the winter, but give some amazingly high quality rendered fat for cooking/baking/storage. I get about a quart of rendered goose fat per bird. Its pure white, a lighter grease, and excellent in the kitchen.

just a plug for my favorite bird.

We have used the chicken tractors and move the birds daily. The pasture sure benefits from having the birds out there. The nice thing about the White X is that you have a nice 4.5 to 5 LB broiler in 8 weeks versus the 11-12 weeks for the rangers.

I got some fine grit for them at the feed store the other day and topped off the feeder trough with a few sprinkles of it, and will do that every day. A teaspoon is what I was told to add to their feed each day.

Works good for Turkeys as well ! ! I have the video to prove it ! !

The plucker that is .. . .

VOTE FOR PEDRO

Bought a turkey from a Boisfort farm during elk season, got my bill of sale and headed back up to elk camp. Pulled in as if I was going to stop at our camp, then tore off down the road about 60-70 yards, out of sight of my hunting partners. Jumped out and fired 4 rounds into a dirt embankment with my .40 S&W pistol,...... pop, pop, pop, pop, then a short pause and ...................................................pop... another round.

I headed back to camp and pulled in, took off my boots as if nothing had happened, and got myself a beer. One of my partners asked, "What was that shooting all about?" I told him, "Nothin', I missed a grouse."

Ron then goes to his his truck and retrieves his grouse, tosses it at me, and says "Clean my bird, Bitch."

I go to my truck, grab the turkey, that I had shot a mile down the road so they wouldn't hear it, and tell him, "This is a real bird. You clean mine, I'll clean yours." It was a domesticated turkey that looked just like a Merriam. The look on his face was priceless as the blood dripped off of the turkey's head.

So I proceeded to pluck the turkey in camp, feathers everywhere, and my elk camp buddies were shittin' big bricks, thinking I had just poached a turkey. The gamey had been by earlier in the day.

After a while, I showed them the receipt for the bird. Don't ever want to pluck a turkey by hand again.

Heads up on using shavings/chips on teh brooder floor. If they get kicked into the water dish, they can marinade a brew that's deadly to young chicks.

don't know how much it affects chickens, but on my pheasants and quail...chips are an absolute no-go.

Placed the water dish on a block an inch higher than the floor and it solved the chip in water issue. After an hour they had kicked a fair amount of chips in there, so I know what you mean.

Also, cedar chips are bad (oils), pine shavings are fine. I am using pine.

Andy
Addicted and I considered raiding your place today. We got a late start and figured at 9 am we'd be safe. Hey Zues we had no idea you had those things installed at your gate.
Won't bother you again.
ps river was rising all day and didn't work well with our goals.