Star anise is perfect feed.. when you've strained it from your batch of chicken pho. 😁 My flock LOVES pho strains. Star anise, onion, cinnamon sticks, cardamom and coriander.. point is, chickens are adorable garbage disposals. They mostly instinctively know what they can eat. If they don't, you...
Electric door for the coop at night. Opens during the day. We set traps for raccoons because they can be relentless.
Unpopular use for raccoons: Skin and pressure cook them to feed to the chickens. They LOVE it and it feels like a balance in karma. 😏 I have an old electric pressure cooker set...
Sometimes chickens get out and they can't officially call the chick a specific breed and will send it as a freebie bonus chick. If you like all they sell, you might just have a mix you'll love. 😁
Doesn't have to be pricey. Example:
GARDEN CLOGS!
Not overpriced "Crocs". Ten dollar garden clogs from Amazon. Put them on to walk your yard and take them off before you go back in your house. Too many times I dragged chicken (or dog!) crap around on my shoes. Cheap solution. 😁
Keep the nice one. Also keep your eyes peeled for people looking to give away tame roos they can't keep if he doesn't quiet down. Lots of people look to give away roos.
Second piece of advice (for cold climate): Cull the roos with very large combs/wattles.
That roo I mentioned before? I named him "Crazy Comb". In the end, he survived winter just fine, but he no longer has a crazy comb or dangling, huge wattles. Lost it to frost bite and healed without issues...
I never thought to mention the house animals or garden. 1 small old JR terrier, two cats, about 15 fruit trees (pears/plums/apples/serviceberries/cherries), grapes, raspberries, rhubarb and we grow tomatoes/peppers/winter and summer squash each summer. And a pantry full of pressure canned...
Eight then. I'll have 2 or three times more mature girls this year but I'm keeping some (smaller) roos that hatched from blue eggs. I want multi-colored eggs.
I also kept two roos. The bigger one kept the other one away from the ladies but he started sneaking up on humans too often so he became...
I was snooping your info for SnGiggles. Saw some IT/gaming posts. Not that familiar with the BYC forums. I have a small IT background from a couple decades ago, but my husband is an IT/electronic professional. Is there a subsect on these forums for that? The posts I saw didn't link back to a...
Looking at your signature... chicken is tasty and it doesn't make you a bad person.
Want proof? Offer some chicken to your chickens.
Better proof is harvesting a chicken your chicken shared a coop with in the yard and watching them come up voluntarily to peck out its eyeballs and organs. 🤣...
You're smart. You did your research. You honestly thought you knew better. You found out you didn't the hard way:
Don't keep too many roosters/don't keep your larger roos.
Guilty. I thought keeping a big roo if he was kind would be beneficial genetically since I was raising dual purpose birds...
Most humans don't put that much thought into what they consume and I'd rather have happy chickens that eat what they crave of what I offer. They love kitchen scraps and protein, I give them kitchen scraps, protein (cooked offal/BSFL/sardines), commercial chicken feed and scratch grains. They...
I started with meat rabbits!! Then honeybees. Then chickens. I swear I have control. I can stop whenever I want! 😂😂
After I get my Katahdins and pond full of mudcats.
It's called "Chicken Math" I think. Buy an incubator and see what happens. I had ten chickens last year. I now have 65 because I collected eggs over my school winter breaks. 😏