Our chickens

We keep chickens.  And this year, a number of people have asked me about our set-up... mostly about the whole grain feed I use.  So I've wanted to write something I could point them to.  But I also wanted to share an outline of my journey with the whole chicken thing, because it's been such an interesting learning experience for me.  So I'm going to just outline the things we've done so far, and talk a bit about the feed I use too.

When we bought our place, we knew we wanted to raise both vegies and animals for food.  Since we have so much fencing and barn work to do before we can get most other animals, we figured chickens would be a great place to start out.  But other than the wonderful pasture-raised ideology I gleaned from reading things from Joel Salatin and others, I really didn't know what I was doing.  (Clearly, or I would have realized that chickens need fences to keep dogs out.  But we live and learn...)

First, I checked out the book, 'Chicken Tractor' from the library.  It goes on about how wonderful a portable bottomless pen is for raising chickens (see ours below).  The benefits are many.  For one, no cleaning the chicken coop.  And another is you can give birds access to fresh grass and clover to eat.  I decided that I would become more self-sufficient for our meat by raising meat chickens in this.  Steve didn't have time to build me a year-round chicken coop needed for layers, so this would have to do to start. I ambitiously thought I'd do 2-3 batches of 20 my first summer (ha).  And I would slaughter them all myself (ha ha ha).  I mean, I am reasonably skillful with knife, I've got some transferable skills and I'm not easily grossed out.

Stage I: Build tractor.  'Hello, Dad, this is Karen.  Would you like to work on a project with me this winter?  Great.  Here are the plans.  Thanks Dad.'  The book has the plans.  You can make it however you like, but plans are a nice way to start and my father was really kind to help me out.  (My parents have been dragged into a number of crazy, overly-ambitious plans of mine over the years.)  He also added a few useful things like a stick to hold the lid up and ropes at the end to help lift it.

This first summer 2009, we raised 25 meat chickens.  Freedom Rangers, which are a nice alternative to the usual Cornish Cross meat chicken.  Better foragers, not so crazy with hyperspeed growth.  With the help of equally unskillful friends Robin, Larry and Pat (and I mean that in the most grateful way) we butchered about 5 in a day.  The rest (that weren't killed by a neighborhood dog... thanks to my lack of adequate fencing) I had done by a mobile abertroir.  I did make a point of hanging out with the guy and asking lots of questions about the process.  I learned a lot from him and was grateful for his patience with all my questions.  You can only learn so much by watching videos on Youtube, but it was a good place to start.  It took me hours to kill, pluck and eviscerate a single chicken that first year.  That is too long.

BTW, the chickens were really good.

2010: Same chicken tractor.  I felt really traumatized from killing those chickens the year before and did not relish going through that again.  And the mobile guy was not doing poultry anymore thanks to some new regulations.  So forget the meat birds for now.  I was going for laying hens and Steve PROMISED me winter accomodation by October.

So March 1st I bought 6 chicks from Wilco, our nearby farm store.  3 Dominique and 3 New Hampshire Reds.  Good dual purpose breeds (meat and egg).  And good thing, because 2 of those reds were roosters.  We kept all of them until that became one rooster too many.  One Dominique wandered over to neighbors barn to hang w/ the dog (bad idea) and the rest made it.  We also adopted 6 middle aged hens from another farm in the fall.  This was not such a good idea, but it's done now.  I really like the Dominique breed.  They are busy foragers in all weather and lay right through the winter solstice.  One of them, we call her Bessie, is my broody hen.  She regularly stops laying and wants to become a mother.  So we periodically call her 'Broody Bessie' or 'Bitchy Bessie', Bossy Bessie... whatever fits.  More about her in other posts.

Fall 2010:  So by October... as promised... Steve completed the mobile chicken coop.  We have a plan to use our 5 acres for rotational grazing of sheep, and goats along with a mobile chicken coop.  My father kindly gave us his old, but still functional, utility trailer to convert into a coop.  Check out the pictures of it, I think Steve did a nice job.  For now it's near the barn so I can get water and, when it's super cold, keep the water from freezing easily.  But it will move soon.  I use straw as bedding and just sprinkle a bit of fresh straw on all the poopy bits every morning when I feed them.  I use a deep bedding system, which means I just keep adding more and more until it's nearly up to the perches.  As it piles up, it composts without a stench as long as there is enough straw.  The layer of straw both insulates the bottom of the coop AND the composting generates a bit of heat that makes them more cozy in the colder months.

Inside wee put 2 perches across.

On this side, Steve put the nesting boxes (sometimes used as 'resting boxes' )

We covered it with a hinged roof so it could be vented in summer heat and painted it to match the barn.

KILLER COMPOST: So every couple of months... depending on the time of year, I clean out the coop and make a new compost pile.  I layer the straw/chicken manure with my accumulated garden/kitchen waste and some lime and rock phosphate.  This summer, I brought 2 yards (a whole truck load!) of old horse manure from the horseback riding camp up the road (for free!) and layered that in too.  Then I water it, cover it and turn it once or twice.  I will try to continue this practice. I think if I do, it will give me enough compost for my whole garden next year.

The middle bin is the new compost pile.  Happy chickens are having a go at all the worms and bugs uncovered where the kitchen/garden waste was.

2011: This year I bought a 10-hen jelly-bean assortment at the feed store.  2 Leg Horns, 2 Plymoth Rocks, 4 Golden Sex Linked and 2 Speckled Sussex.  Only one rooster in the lot.  Stan, a leghorn.  He was a mean little guy from the beginning.  Attacked all the kids so we ate him pretty quickly (not good eaters, those leghorns.  I skimmed absolutely NO fat from the stock I made from him).  His sister, however, is a super star laying hen.  At this writing in mid-November, she has not missed a day laying an egg.  She's slim, fast, and curious.  I'm anxious to see how she does during the winter.  The Sussex hens are super cute.  We didn't handle this batch of chicks very much, but these 2 hens are naturally very curious, calm, and easy to handle.  They do have a tendancy to put on wieght, so while this might make them tasty, it could hinder their egg-laying.

9, 10 a big fat hen.  Funny story about a fat Sussex hen named Dottie (shown at the bottom of this page)... we looked out into the field last month and found a HUGE hawk standing over a pile of brown feathers.  Uh oh.  I ran out to chase the bird away, and when it left, Dottie, the fat Sussex hen, got up and legged it back to the coop and into my arms.  She lost a lot of feathers, but was otherwise unharmed.  I'm pretty sure she was just too fat for the hawk to carry back to her nest.  Good thing too, she is my son's favorite hen to cuddle.

At the end of the summer, I started to cull all the older hens who were 2 1/2 years old and older.  From my adopted hens, I've found the older hens really are more prone to dying from mysterious ailments, so I'd really rather make use of their lives for our meals then have to bury them in the ground after they get sick.  After a life of such high-quality feed and pasture, it's really a great food for us.  While killing animals is not my favorite activity, I'm please to report that I can go from kill to the oven in under an hour... single handed!  I'd really like to post more about the whole process of killing your own animals... both the physical part and the emotional process.  It has been a really long and challenging process going from being a vegetarian to eating meat to killing our own animals.  Some of you might be able to relate to that.

Whole Grain Feed:  So being a nutritionist and one seemingly bent on doing things differently than everyone else, I've got a different way of feeding my chickens than most.  I'm not absolutely certain that it is the best way for my chickens or anyone else's chickens, but I want to keep working with it because I like the idea and so far so good.  I feed my adult chickens a whole grain mix.  I buy 25-50 pound bags of individual whole grains, seeds and pulses (from Azure Standard) and mix them all together myself in a big metal garbage can.  I got the idea from a website that sounded good to me and just went with it.  http://www.greenerpasturesfarm.com/chickenfeedrecipe.html  You kind of have to have the space to store all this and mix it up, and we do.

We store bags of grain in big garbage bins.  So far, no mice... but the cat might have something to do with it.

I try to source organic seeds, grains and legumes.

 I roughly follow the recipe from the above website with modifications:
All organic: Wheat, barley, oats, millet, quinoa, corn, sunflower seeds, split peas, green lentils, flax seed, kelp meal. This costs me about $22/50-lb bag.  Free choice grit and oyster shell calcium.  I do this for a few reasons.  One is that this allows chickens to adjust their own diet to suit their needs.  I have no proof this actually happens, but I like the idea and am trying it out.





One reason I think this works for me is that my chickens are free range all daylight hours and have access to 4+ acres of mixed pasture, and I feed them lots of other goodies from our garden and kitchen.  I see them land not only huge grasshoppers, but also small rodents and snakes on a daily basis.  I'll bet you didn't know chickens caught and ate small mice!  I didn't either, but it's great on so many levels.  I've had good health in my hens, but my oldest hens are only 2 1/2 years old.

All mixed up, it looks beautiful. And I can tell you the corn is the first thing to go.

Raising chicks:  For my chicks, I buy them a freshly milled feed mix that I buy from an organic farm co-op up in British Columbia.  Jacqualine at Friendly Have Rise Farm organizes quarterly orders that are shipped down by the pallet and the feed smells so good and freesh.  I'm pretty sure I would cook it up as porridge and eat it myself.  If you are in the area of SW Washington/PDX, you can get in on it too if you send her an email.  They do feed for other types of livestock as well.

I think I'm a bit harsh on chicks, but so my method has worked for me.  I get mine the first of March.  I keep them in a brooder inside the house with heat lamps for one week... maybe 10 days.  I really, really dislike having them inside the house, but don't have a nice brooder set up in the shop... yet.

Nothing better for the kids than having new chicks to play with on cold rainy days.

Cat likes new chicks too.

Fun to do on a sunny day and have the neighbors over to help.

Then in the middle of March, the chicks go out on the grass in that bottomless chicken tractor!!  Yes, 2 week old chicks outside.  I put the tractor near the house and run extension cords to it so I can have 2 heat lamps on them (in case one goes out).  They are sheltered from the wind, and I give them a box set on its side for extra shelter, which they like.  And I've NEVER lost a chick.  On sunny, mild days, they wander out and soak up the sunshine, and soon enough, they're busting at the seams to get out.  From day one, I feed them garlic, whey, apple cider vinegar and chopped greens.  I want them to get used the flavors so I can use them as medication in the future, and to help them grow up healthy.

I don't let the chicks out of the tractor at all until they are big enough to put the cat off.  They need to be about blue jay size. Then only when I'm out.

This is Lottie, a speckled Sussex.  Her sister Dotty is in the background with a few others.  Taking a dip in the pool they sharewith the bees!

Today: We currently have 12 chickens and they are comfortable going through the winter in the coop during the long nights.  I could comfortably add 3-5 more, so next year I will get another 10 or more chicks.  Because I allow free-range hens, I have to allow for losses due to predators like hawks and other animals during the day.  Every year our fencing gets better, so our losses are fewer.  A set-up like this means I let the chickens mostly take care of themselves by foraging.  I don't have to clean the coop but once ever few months or so and they generally stay healthy.  Now that I'm feeling more confident in my skills and speed at slaughtering my own chickens, I think I'll buy more each year and cull for the dinner table or sell the hens to people keen to start this too.