Feeding, or Not Feeding, the House Birds

Winona, the Wyandotte, and Sassafras (aka Sassy), the Silkie, trying to get broody on the same clutch of eggs

We keep three hens, one rooster and five guineas in a chicken coop near our home. We had a question on Facebook a couple days ago about how much we feed the birds. It turns out that the poultry are really the only animals that we don't keep a good track of how much they're eating. I had to answer honestly, "I don't know".

There's a couple good reasons why I don't know. The first is that we don't feed the birds very much if bugs are still around. If I find a tick in the yard chances are pretty good they won't get any feed the next day. The purpose of the chooks is to lay eggs and eat bugs. The guineas are 100% for eating bugs. Notice how both have "eating bugs" in the job description? Gotta make sure they earn their keep.

Elvis, our silkie rooster

The second good reason why I don't know is because our non-LGD yard dog, Ginger, is an avid chicken feed fan. I see her over at their little feeder licking up grain all the time. We correct her frequently and she always stops.... but she also always comes back for more.  

I do, however, try to give the chooks a little bit of feed every morning to make sure they stick around. I fill up about half a quart in a mason jar and screw it on to their little feeder. If Ginger doesn't get to it there will always be some left at the end of the day.

I guess they're just spoiled by the freedom and the apparently great taste of our bugs.

The Case of The Terrified Chooks - Part II


Got your man on camera chooks, now what?

Lady Guinea, bald rump and all, was at least accounted for. All day the chooks had been going about their business, foraging and taking dust baths as usual. Elvis crowed all day, Winona followed us around squawking, just the usual day for a chook on the farm. Or at least we thought.

After wrapping up chores and watching the sunset I went back into the barn only to see ALL of the birds up in the rafters roosting for the night. Crap! After months of them happily living in the coop this one incident terrified them to the point of abandonement. I wasn't about to let them get in that habit, so I took a plastic rake and shooed them out of the barn and rounded 'em up into the coop. They weren't happy about it, but it's better not to get them started on thinking the barn is their new coop.

The next day I went to check the nest boxes for eggs, and to no surprise, no eggs. The hens were either too frightened to lay eggs (which can last for weeks or months), or they were laying elsewhere. This would be harder to crack than the roosting problem. How do you get a hen to start laying in its coop again? No, seriously, how? 

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Shade and Water for Rotational Grazing

One of our blogger friends/fellow aspiring farmer left some great questions in a comment on our Of Guineas and Guard Dogs post. You can see the questions in the comment section, but here's the gist of it:

I was kind of astounded by the idea of using a poultry tractor for shade for larger grazing animals. One issue we've had with the fence is that since it's SO hot and humid here and since the majority of our pasture is just that- pasture- with no trees, the sheep get very overheated if we leave them in all day. We've taken to letting them sleep in there if it's not going to storm and graze until about noon. Then we bring them in the barnyard for a siesta. Later on we put them back out.

How tall is your tractor (note: tractor is short for chicken tractor, or guinea mobile in this instance)?Do you think one needs to be a minimal height to provide shade?

Also, do you have any creative ideas for transporting water to the far parts of the pasture? Right now we're still experimenting with how much they'll eat in how little time, so we've kept them close to the house. But in the future they won't be within reasonable walking distance to carry gallons and gallons of water by hand.

Shade for the Goats on Pasture

Firstly, I think that bringing the animals in and out of the barn if you don't have an option for shade is a great idea. The animals need shade. There's A LOT of farmers around here that disagree and do not always provide shade for the animals. I don't fall in that camp. 


Guineas enjoying the new veranda

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