If you have mice, insects and other small creatures freely moving through the world around your chickens, you’ve made a HUGE mistake.
BUY SPRING SEEDS HERE!
https://clearwatervalleyfarms.com/
WE LOVE OUR PATRONS!
https://www.patreon.com/AnAmericanHomestead
Vegetable Fermentation At Home!
https://www.perfectpickler.com/
OZARK COFFEE!
https://www.shepherdscrookcoffee.com/
First Time Discount 25%: ZAC25
Reorder Discount 10%: ZAC10
ZEAL – Sign up under SMART SUBSCRIBE and save $10 off your order. Every purchase helps the homestead!
https://www.zurvita.com/anamericanhomestead/en/us/item/20025/Zeal-Canister-Wild-Berry/
TIMES TALES: Our favorite program for young kids learning their times tables.
https://timestales.com/?rfsn=1892343.28b68d
Not argueing at all, if you range your chickens they will leave the food alone and find their own. I am not the resident chicken farmer so its just my observation.
Start feeding the chickens green smoothies. Summer squash as long as you build the proper environment for it will over produce over and over especially if you plan for early set Inosculation. Low matience crop, toss those zucchinis into the blender. Add whatever fixings like worms and fly larve, left over corn mill. It will keep them full enough to keep producing eggs but motivated enough to hunt that mouse. Like Chinese food, they’ll be hungry again soon.
Saw a homesteady with a ton of chickens, and all he has to feed them is a giant pile of compost & manuer under a raised roof 😀 Also, meal worm compost buckets. Heard someone else talk about in the winter catching rats and squirls, cutting em open & throwing them to the chickens (and there’s some really effective mouse traps out there like the water bucket teeter todder traps, see The Mousetrap Channel). And other than that, deep mulch, etc, chickens are good scavengers.
Great subject, thanks! Yuba City, CA is famous for the local feral chickens in town. One day I was walking into the Winco and a frightened woman sidestepping some chickens told me “they were so violent !” I said “No they aren’t, they’re just having sex”. The look on her face was priceless! The recognition followed by her snickering was so funny!! 🙂
OK quick question how do I balance out the feed when they do not have a large area to be in. They’re out of the coop during the day but they are in probably 40 x 40 space because I live in a development.
Yeah its why we got out of Commiefornia 8 years ago. We live on 10 acres in SW Washington now. Its pretty here as long as Seattle aka San Francisco 2.0 doesn’t try to F up the state.
Part of this may be that they don’t know what to do with the mice, at least the first time or two they see one. I had to raise some chicks and because I was the mother hen in their eyes, I had to teach them to eat the little grasshoppers I brought them a couple of weeks ago. They hadn’t foraged much yet because it was still winter although they have a sizable fenced pen outside their enclosed pen. I put down a couple and they managed to hop away. Then I just hand fed a couple to them and then they understood and ran all over and got all the rest I dumped out for them. Now they run for anything that moves! LOL
I try to let my chickens forage as much as possible. But here in Minnesota we have 5 months where there is little for them to forage. Usually the ground is frozen and covered with snow and ice. I often wish we had moved south. This year had been unbelievabley warm. My girls have loved getting out most days.
So weve been having a hard time financially while I’m transitioning into a new job. We used to keep the chickens in the coop with feed until like 1pm each afternoon so didn’t have to hunt to find the eggs. Now since we’ve run out of feed we let them out all day every day. The interesting thing is their yolks are so much darker since that change and it’s almost like I can tell they’re happier I know that sounds weird lol
BUY SPRING SEEDS HERE!
https://clearwatervalleyfarms.com/
WE LOVE OUR PATRONS!
https://www.patreon.com/AnAmericanHomestead
If my girls hear me crank up the rototiller, they will do a jailbreak out of their acre pen to come help. lol
If they are eating unclean things is it still OK to eat the meat chickens or is this view just OK for laying chickens and eating the eggs?
Not argueing at all, if you range your chickens they will leave the food alone and find their own. I am not the resident chicken farmer so its just my observation.
Start feeding the chickens green smoothies. Summer squash as long as you build the proper environment for it will over produce over and over especially if you plan for early set Inosculation. Low matience crop, toss those zucchinis into the blender. Add whatever fixings like worms and fly larve, left over corn mill. It will keep them full enough to keep producing eggs but motivated enough to hunt that mouse. Like Chinese food, they’ll be hungry again soon.
Saw a homesteady with a ton of chickens, and all he has to feed them is a giant pile of compost & manuer under a raised roof 😀 Also, meal worm compost buckets. Heard someone else talk about in the winter catching rats and squirls, cutting em open & throwing them to the chickens (and there’s some really effective mouse traps out there like the water bucket teeter todder traps, see The Mousetrap Channel). And other than that, deep mulch, etc, chickens are good scavengers.
Post collapse, keeping neighbors from stealing my chickens will be the biggest problem
Great subject, thanks! Yuba City, CA is famous for the local feral chickens in town. One day I was walking into the Winco and a frightened woman sidestepping some chickens told me “they were so violent !” I said “No they aren’t, they’re just having sex”. The look on her face was priceless! The recognition followed by her snickering was so funny!! 🙂
https://youtu.be/Mwy4X4F3mB4?si=A_nMpmKoSJz3pl-q
Cat looses mouse to chicken.
Being in Florida our chickens hunt will rodents and even more reptiles.
OK quick question how do I balance out the feed when they do not have a large area to be in. They’re out of the coop during the day but they are in probably 40 x 40 space because I live in a development.
Yeah its why we got out of Commiefornia 8 years ago. We live on 10 acres in SW Washington now. Its pretty here as long as Seattle aka San Francisco 2.0 doesn’t try to F up the state.
My chickens have eaten snakes.
Part of this may be that they don’t know what to do with the mice, at least the first time or two they see one. I had to raise some chicks and because I was the mother hen in their eyes, I had to teach them to eat the little grasshoppers I brought them a couple of weeks ago. They hadn’t foraged much yet because it was still winter although they have a sizable fenced pen outside their enclosed pen. I put down a couple and they managed to hop away. Then I just hand fed a couple to them and then they understood and ran all over and got all the rest I dumped out for them. Now they run for anything that moves! LOL
I try to let my chickens forage as much as possible. But here in Minnesota we have 5 months where there is little for them to forage. Usually the ground is frozen and covered with snow and ice. I often wish we had moved south. This year had been unbelievabley warm. My girls have loved getting out most days.
A broody hen wil barely move off her eggs. Period. She would have eaten that mouse if she wasn’t broody.
my chickens will fight for a mouse.
So weve been having a hard time financially while I’m transitioning into a new job. We used to keep the chickens in the coop with feed until like 1pm each afternoon so didn’t have to hunt to find the eggs. Now since we’ve run out of feed we let them out all day every day. The interesting thing is their yolks are so much darker since that change and it’s almost like I can tell they’re happier I know that sounds weird lol