Fresh as Daisies
This past Saturday I cleaned out the chicken coop. I follow the deep litter method here, as outlined in Harvey Ussery’s book The Small-Scale Poultry Flock. Once a year, usually in the fall, I clean out the coop. That happened last Saturday and now it’s fresh as daisies.
I actually enjoy cleaning out the coop because I know I’m harvesting loads of great manure for the garden. This year I put the bedding onto my asparagus bed. Once I spread this out I’ll add an additional layer of shredded leaves on top to help speed the decomposition of the shavings.
When I clean out the coop I always wear a respirator, these things come in handy for a wide variety of chores around the house. I love this one because it works for fumes and dust – it’s also comfortable to wear for long periods of time.
The chickens are always very curious when I’m cleaning out the coop, they like to come in to see what I’m doing. No doubt they’ll appreciate the nice clean bedding and I appreciate all the valuable garden fertilizer they provide in addition to eggs.
What’s your favorite garden fertilizer?
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Too Cute
These ducklings are simply too cute. I’ve said before that ducklings are my favorite little animals, ducks are one of my favorite adult animals as well. It’s hard to get anything done around here with so much cuteness walking around.
I try to keep an eye on these guys to make sure none of the cats are going after them. Mama duck is one tough cookie, she’s even threatened to attack Tara if she comes too close, but I still like to make sure she’s not getting them too far away. We had an eagle flying very low yesterday and found her with the ducklings way down the driveway. The ducks are the only animals we have that aren’t behind an electric fence for protection. They aren’t behind a fence because they simply fly over it.
I love how the immediately take to water, if I had a deep enough pool they’d be swimming already. On a sad note, none of our guinea keets have survived. The cold weather was simply too much for them to handle, which is what I figured would happen.
Could you get work done with these cuties around?
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More Babies
It’s really interesting how things happen around here. Earlier this summer, our broody guinea and mama duck hatched out their nests on the same day. Last month, both the guinea and the duck starting sitting on nests once again. Yesterday, they both had their first hatchlings. That means we’ll be overrun with babies once again.
When I checked on broody guinea’s nest yesterday I saw an empty egg shell, but no keet. This little thing was off with the adult guineas pretty far away from the nest. Guineas are notoriously bad mothers, but I plan on letting her brood this batch. I will try to keep an eye out to make sure nothing goes terribly wrong, but I want to see how guineas raise their young. The ones that do make it will be strong little guys and should make great additions to our flock. It will certainly be difficult not to step in though!
When I noticed mama duck off her nest yesterday I decided to check for babies, since last time her eggs hatched at the same time as the guineas. Sure enough, there were three tiny ducklings and five eggs pipping (there are 15 eggs total in her nest). If you notice, her nest is in a plastic pet kennel. These are great to use because they’re easy to clean, have great ventilation, are lockable and they’re easily movable just in case you ever need to move the nest.
We still haven’t gotten rid of any of the first hatchlings from these two. There are 9 ducks (6 male, 3 female) from her first hatch and there are 10 guinea keets that have survived (initially there were 15). We plan on slaughtering most of the male ducks and a few of the guineas. The rest will be kept for breeding and insect patrol. Looks like fowl is the name of the game here at Chiot’s Run! I’m thinking the future I’m going to have mama duck hatch out some chicks for me.
Would it be hard for you to not intervene to keep the keets safe in the case of our guinea hen and here keets?
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Crazy Chickens
Our broiler flock is CRAZY. This coming week we’ll be butchering all the roosters (we’ve already butchered a few). There are five lucky ladies that will be integrated into our laying flock, a few of them are already laying eggs.
These chickens decided long ago that roosting in the old apple tree was much more fun than roosting in the portable coop we built them, go figure. I don’t worry much because they’re surrounded by an electric fence to keep them safe from predators. They love roosting in the tree so much, that the other day I found an egg perched perfectly on one of the branches.
Chickens are crazy animals, but entertaining as well. Hopefully when the ladies are moved to our new flock they’ll decide roosting in the coop is much nicer, we shall see. At least our main laying flock coops up nicely every night.
Do your pets every do anything crazy?
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More Pets – Kind of
This past Wednesday I received 5,000 meal worms from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm.
They’re alive of course, and I put them in a container on the back porch filled with wheat mids. I’ll be using them as my starter colony to grow meal worms for my chickens and ducks during the cold winter months.
After doing some research, chickens are supposed to lay better in the winter if they have a more natural source of protein. I’ve read in various places that people have great success giving their chickens live meal worms and red wrigglers from a worm bin in the cold winter months when they can’t scratch for their own live food. Even if they don’t lay more eggs my chickens will sure enjoy them as snacks and they’ll make the eggs they do lay much healthier! This is all part of my effort to close the loop of what comes into my garden, should be an interesting experiment.
Do you grow any feed for your animals?
