Category: Art-earnative Life Farm

Chickens not laying eggs?

There has been a lot of talk lately about possible causes for chickens not laying eggs. There are a number of reasons why, and many have more to do with time of year and weather than the situation with Tractor Supply Feed.

We did change feed, and I think our chickens getting back into production has a lot more to do with higher protein than anything else. We haven’t been feeding TSC feed exclusively, but rather had been following some other advice for cutting feed costs and improving chicken health.

We added crushed oyster shell and diatomaceous earth to both supply calcium and eliminate any pests and parasites.

Some chicken wheat and black oil sunflower from Azure Standard has also been added. While Azure Standard is more expensive than TSC, I think the fact that none of their products have any GMO “food” is worth a few extra dollars. I’ve also become less trusting of anything to do with big pharma and big farm. I still need to read the analysis of the suspect feeds.

I am also going to be buying from our local mills rather than TSC until I can get enough home grown feeds going to feed our birds and rabbits.

The plan is to plant several strips of sunflowers, squash, beans, wheat and oats. Sweet potato vines are vigorous, corn leaves and shoots are enjoyed by both rabbits and chickens, and I will be sprouting a number of seeds for our eating as well as the animals.

We’re going into the coldest part of the winter here, so I can get some sprouts going in my homestead office and the kitchen alongside the seed flats.

Mother Nature is a psycho.

We’re going to go from single digits to highs in the 70s in less than a week. While I’m grateful for the more moderate weather, this past week has not been kind to most of the country. I’m glad we didn’t have to travel in that mess!.

More clement weather makes me think of spring and planting. I’ve been giving more thought to garden design as applies to our odd-shaped property.

Most of the plants will be in raised boxes about the size and depth of two or three five gallon buckets. I’ll have a group of them outlining the sunniest corner of the property, a 20’x20′ area between the front porch, the south end of the house, and the Homestead Office shed. This is where I plan to have at least six Climbing Triple-Crop tomatoes, multiple pepper plants, and some summer squash.

The Kellog’s Breakfast tomatoes will be in a planter at the other end of the house to try to keep from inadvertent crosses.

I’ll have two lines of planter boxes going from the shed out to the mailbox on either side of the walkway that comes down to the office. Eventually, we’ll have the front porch expanded northward along the front of the house. I’d like to not have to move the planter boxes out of the way of that expansion.

Rahn has mentioned only building eight planter boxes. Sadly, he’s thinking too small. Either we’re going to need a lot more planter boxes, or we’re going to have to till open a number of beds, and more plants are going to need to be trellised.

The image above is the “before” and I have a mind’s eye view of the plants during this summer.

Farm Projects and Progress

Progress? Slight and hard-fought is the first reaction.

A couple mistakes where made with this year’s garden. The biggest one was that the grow bags I had were too small to allow for enough water retention. Consequently, when we got a prolonged dry spell, everything dried up and died.

The second part of this was inadequate water storage. We had gotten more barrels but they were not hooked up yet. (Still aren’t, to be honest)

The biggest part of the solution is to build a number of raised bed boxes that have much more soil in them. The plan is to build boxes to equal the volume of two to four five gallon buckets. These will be placed in a double row from the front door of the Office northward across the yard. The plan includes connections to both sides of the front deck at both the current stairs and the stairs that are planned to head to the Office. Another planned addition is to build a connecting trellis to arch over the walkway.

With the upcoming cooler and rainy weather I’ll be planting starting pots for a number of fall crops. Some plastic covered frames to protect the grow pots may also get done.

Elsewhere on the property, the chicken coop is nearing completion, and more cages for rabbits are being built.

The chickens are doing fairly well. The birds we got this past April are nearing lay. Our older birds have laid pretty consistently all year.

I downloaded an interesting YouTube video that shows over 200 chicken breed annual egg production. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/OgmPp74suvA

The egg production has been such that we need to preserve eggs for the winter. We ordered a bag of of pickling lime and will start waterglassing eggs.

The rabbits came through the heat far better this year. A lot of attention was put on improving cages, shade, plenty of fresh water and ventilation. We got a big shop fan from the pawn shop

One goal of the garden is to raise more of the feed for the rabbits and chickens. Feed costs have gotten pretty out of hand. We’re to the point that we are spending nearly as much on feed for the animals as we spend to feed ourselves..

Other people have come up with some interesting ideas that we are examining. Fermented feed is allegedly a practice that can cut feed costs. Another idea is sprouting feed to provide daily sprouts of various bulk seed varieties. Others are able to get spent brewery grains, produce tossed by grocery stores, restaurant produce trimmings.

Since all of these either need equipment and supplies we don’t have, or daily trips to town that we don’t do, I have decided on developing home garden crops that will also feed what feeds us.

Winter storage squash, plants like cabbage that have leaves that people don’t eat, sweet potato vines are fully edible by both people and critters. There are quite a few others. Tomatoes that get blossom end rot, extra peppers, lettuce or spinach that bolt, etc.

Tomorrow should be a good day to do some planting between rain showers.

Some Chicken Activity, and Some Gardening

The grow bags are doing well. Need to get some more filled and planted. I plan to concentrate on the peppers, onions and tomatoes until we get some more bags and pots filled.

The yard is in serious need of getting mowed. I’ll see if I can get the lawnmower started once the rain stops and the yard dries out.

We moved the chicks to the larger brooder in the barnyard yesterday. They were getting too crowded in the tub in my office.

They are three and a half weeks old now, starting to flap short distances. I can tell what they need by the volume of the cheeping.

The older birds are laying well – about a dozen eggs a day.

Continuing look at living within our means.

Chicken math.

The cost of eggs and chicken is skyrocketing in the stores. We’re happy to be ahead of this curve. We have fourteen one year old chickens, and just got twenty-seven more birds two weeks ago. The older birds are laying over a dozen eggs a day, and the new chicks are “straight run” – meaning that they are males and females.

We plan to keep two or three of the roosters, but the rest of the roos will be sent to freezer camp. Since these are all large breeds, we get large eggs in at least three different shades.

We learned our lesson about letting the birds free-range. Having lost all our birds to predators last year, all the birds are under wire and a large coop is nearly finished.

The younger birds are currently in a brooder tub in my office, and will go outside to a separate pen in the farmyard in a couple more weeks. There they will be away from the older birds, but all of them will be able to see and hear each other for a couple weeks. We hope this will limit the pecking order fuss. We’ll also mix the two groups after dark in the coop.

Then there are the rabbits. The cute factor is something to be considered. Rabbit meat is a great deal easier to process and can be self sustaining with minimal inputs.

I am growing a great deal more of the rabbit feed this year. The Three Sisters planting I did a week ago should go a long way towards deleting the feed bill this year.

The rabbit cages are getting some badly needed expansion and upgrades right now, and we plan to manage the breeding much more closely once the upgrades are done.

Some progress on the gardening!

I planted a number of grow bags a few weeks ago, and they are doing well.  A dozen more grow bags and a few pots are ready to get planted.

The main reason that I am doing grow bags and pots is simply that I don’t have any decent soil on the property. It’s all sandstone gravel. While I’m thankful that our rains will not turn our growing area into a quagmire, it makes gardening harder.

The rabbit cages all need to get cleaned. This will get mixed with soil and some aged compost. Rabbit manure is not “hot”, so it can get used directly in the garden.

I have quite a bit of vegetables I still want to plant, and the fiber and dye plants need some more general areas.

I did plant a half-dozen “Three Sisters” groupings in some tires south of the camper trailer. The big part here was to keep anyone from parking there out of sight of the house. It’s also an experiment.

I’ve never tried “Three Sisters” before. Corn to provide support for beans to climb, beans to provide nitrogen, and squash to shade the ground and conserve moisture.

I probably wildly over-planted the tires, but there is quite a bit of space for the squash vines to run.

I planted  winter squashes – Blue Hubbard, Striped Cushaw, and Pie Pumpkin. Beans included Vermont Cranberry, Jacob’s Cattle, and Lima beans. The corn is a heritage type sweet corn that was unlabeled in my storage. I’m hoping it’s a red corn, but I’ll be happy with what I get..