Poultry Concern

I'm an emotional spender. I know this, I deal with it. But on my very worst days, when I'm feeling a wreck and happen to be at a store (which I try very hard not to do when I am emotional) I tend to well...over buy. Even if it's just a couple extra things from the dollar section. When I had to rehome the goats that was a very sad time for me. I compensated with poultry. Something tangible I could have. While they were a cheap investment initially, I am realizing these large water fowl are eating more than I was prepared for.

Ducks, Geese and Turkeys eat a lot. They are meant to get big, fast. Part of the over buying was due to the non-sexing the three hatcheries I bought from didn't offer. The turkeys came from a guy with a local hatchery a few towns over who sold as a straight run. The others from two different feed stores that also bought straight runs from the hatcheries they ordered from. Apparently, vent sexing these fowl is different from a chicken though I haven't had luck doing that myself either. So, I bought enough to cover any day-old losses and crossed my fingers I got some females, planning to sell off or eat whatever extra males I ended up with.

A few months later I have been able to get the ducks and the turkeys gender figured out. Mainly because they have distinguishing features. The flipped sex feather on the rump of the ducks. The pouffed out strutts on the turks. The geese? I'm still unsure of.

Out of six turkey poults I have four toms and two hens. I have a friend interested in one of the Toms for Thanksgiving and one will be ours for that day, too. I wanted to keep a mated pair or whatever females and 1 male to try and breed out for next year, these heritage poults go for $10 a piece at a week old, $12 for 2 weeks and so on. It seems like a good investment. That is, if the Toms will stop chasing the dog.

Instead of selling off one Tom -which really wouldn't put a dent in the food consumption- I think I'm going to ask for those interested to put a small deposit down on the bird of choice. Maybe $10 that would go towards a bag of feed and give me a guarentee that we would have a buyer for these twenty pound beasts come November. I need to research free range butchered turkey prices.

The ducks I wanted only a mated pair and out of four I got two sets of boy/girl. According to a farmer in the check out lane at Tractor Supply (where all the best information comes from), one duck eats as much as nine chickens in a day. Even without the paper backing, that I believe. I'm trying to find a home for one of the duck pairs now. Feeding the equivalent of 18 chickens in a day when they aren't contributing yet by eggs, is a little rough. We would dispatch them and eat them, but we're not big duck fans here. They were never meant to be food at our house anyway.

The little chickens I bought we only lost one day-old, so we will have 23 hens laying soon. I have been having a hard time finding buyers for the extra dozens of eggs I get each week (we're up to 6 eggs a day now, on average), so I am trading five of them for two weeks of organic produce at a nearby farm. The five little hens don't eat a whole lot, and since we free range them on 10 acres, they forage for much of their food but keeping track of them and feeding them is still in the cards. I'll still have 18 laying hens by the end of July.

This weekend we're dispatching at least one rooster and the last of the Christmas meat birds. The poor dear hen has started laying. When I saw her in the nest box, the expectant nervous look she gave me said "See, I'm contributing!" I've been adding one of her pretty brown eggs in with the blues and greens that I have been selling. We *may* keep on the smaller rooster just because there is an opportunity for us to sell fertilized eggs but I'm not sure it's what I want. We came out here to sell healthy food to those around us, science research is great. I'm just not sure it's what this litte farm is about.

Out of all the animals we have the poultry and fowl really are the easiest to care for and mainatin. Other than our one hen still nursing the injury from the roos we've been very lucky health-wise with our birds. So, for now we're downgrading a bit on the number of animals we have and planning out what to do with the rest. I'd advertise more loudly that we have eggs for sale but I've heard so many horror stories of people getting caught selling eggs without a license (that is very hard to come by) that even the little bit of word of mouth we've been doing has me on edge.

It makes me sad to think we live in a country where trading eggs or milk from your farm to someone else for money or other food is a crime. The regulations make it difficult for anyone without a subsidy or a bank loan to get a foot-hold in the Ag community. I'm doing what I can.

Nibbles of Affection

 

The geese are absolutely fantastic. I know I go on about them but I just didn't realize just how fabulous they were before. If I had to choose only one breed of poultry to raise hands-down it would be geese. But I couldn't eat them. I just...can't.

They are a RIGHT.IN.YOUR.FACE. kinda animal.

I respect that.

Whether it's because they are larger than any other poultry we have or they are just predispositioned to be fearless of huge beings with forward facing eyes, they are the complete opposite of any other barnyard animal I've owned thus far.

Even after having them for 4 weeks, sitting with them for hours and giving them treats, the goats weren't even a tenth as friendly as these guys.

I've named them Sam and Jam (I reserve the right to change Jam's name later). Both are non-gender-specific names since I still can't tell what sex they are. And I have to call them something. "Here geesey geesey!" or "goose, goose, goose" just isn't working for me.

Today when I was out chopping up beet greens and lettuces from the garden into their blue swimming pool for their afternoon snack my two guys started biting me.

It didn't hurt, not really. But I had to come in to check if they were loving me or warning me.

Geese can be mean, it's one of the reasons I got them.

Apparently, nibbling is a sign of affection.

They love me, they really love me.

I love them too.

Poultry Housing

The ducks, geese and turkeys are getting too big for the pallet brooder we made a few short weeks ago. I still can't believe how fast those geese grew. With their long necks extended they're up to my knees and still haven't fully feathered out.

I looked up Toulouse sexing and apparently the males and females are identical in coloring, behaivor and honks. I am sure now that we have 2 male ducks and 2 females. A set of Peach beaks and a set of Bright Yellow. We won't be eating these but one of the males might find a new home. I'm not sure yet. I like them all so much, only time will tell when personalities really emerge near laying/mating age.

But they all are too big to brood and we need the barn stall for hay and feed and other supplies. Ducks and geese are messy. A new house was in order. Our neighbor made a semi-circular brooder out of PVC and we saw a tutorial on Instructables.com for one as well. It seems a good, easy design. Quicker to build than the week-long chicken coop I built and less expensive.

Here is the PVC frame. We scored a Livingsocial.com deal for Ace Hardware which we bought the chicken wire half price. Our supply list included PVC and fittings, 2 sheets of plywood, 2 25ft rolls of chicken wire, and hinges. We used other things we had on hand from other projects to finish it off; a tarp, scrapwood, a bolt, wire. I think total we spent about $65 and have an easily moveable, built in a day, 10x4' poultry house.

Sorry for the half photos, I had the wrong lens on my camera and couldn't get far enough away to get the whole thing.

We'll be picking up a larger tarp later this week, this is all we had on hand and didn't realize it wouldn't go all the way around. For the ducks and geese this is fine. They are very hearty animals that are waterproof (once they get all their feathers). They thrive in inclimate weather. It's the turkeys we need to watch out for.

The PVC married to the wood makes it sturdy but still easy enough for me to pick up an end and carry around the yard. Since all our birds free range we can tarp the whole thing as well if we wanted to. I am considering making a smaller house to keep a pair of ducks in the garden, moving between the rows to help with bugs and weeds but for now this is where everyone will live. Hopefully happily.

Poultry Intimacies

One of the issues with buying straight runs is that you never know what you're going to get. I am not an experienced poultry sexer (but my rabbit sexing skills I think are quite good). I bought these four Pekings from the feed store hoping I got at least 1 female from the bunch. I bought the geese that way too, hoping for a mating pair. My idea was keeping all the hens and 1 drake and selling the rest since we don't care for duck meat. I only got 2 geese, they're more than twice the price of the ducks. Fingers were crossed big time hoping for a mating pair.  

If there are any experienced poultry sexers out there that might give me an idea on what I have I'd be mighty happy. I have two with light peach beaks and two with bright yellow. Bright yellow beaks are larger than the Peach beaks (the beaks are the only way I can tell them apart right now and they have not been named). So, I thought maybe the Peachies were hens and the BY's drakes. (*note to self, next time buy multicolored birds)

Today's photo session squashed that thought. They're 5 weeks old now and I think I see some sex feathers on two of them, one BY and one Peach. I'm not sure if it's the right time for sex feathers or if two of my ducks are just having a bad hair day.

Here you can see how much shorter the Peachies are to the BY's, their bodies are also smaller.

See the flipped up feathers on the rump on Peach Beak?

And here on the Bright Yellow?

The Peachies tend to hang out together as do the Bright Yellows. So maybe I got a pair of each? (Don't mind the turkeys, they're sooo ugly and think they're ducks and/or geese.)

The geese are harder to determine. They're not fully feathered yet, both the same size and coloring so far. With my luck they're both males. But here's a picture of them anyway since for some reason they've become my favorite in the poultry division. They're braver than the ducks, they like to explore around the barnyard and not just stay in the perimeter of the paddock. Usually, at least one turkey tags along. They come to me when I call and honk at me. I love it.



Pallet Brooders

We've used pallets in a lot of farm projects. We've made a deck, a compost bin, a goat mountain and now brooders. We're lucky to have a two stall open air barn but the 10x10 size is a little too large for baby birds. I've made two brooders, one in each stall. The first I made yesterday for the ducklings, goslings and poults.

 The far right pallet is attached to the wall using L brackets which makes it easy to disassemble. I've wrapped one side with chicken wire nailed in place using U staples for fencing. I had a few spare hinges I used to attach the pallet on the left to the stationary pallet on the right.

The shorter wall I used some salvaged IKEA laminate flooring simply screwed into the pallet to prevent poultry escapes. Then we secured a rubber strap (again we had lying around) to keep them closed.

Close up of the wire on the pallet.

Cozy poultry.

This is the smaller brooder made with the same concept. L brackets secure this pallet to the wall and hardware cloth is tacked on only the bottom half of the pallet. 

 The second side is secured with a fence kit I bought for some project years ago and never did.

Inside the chicken brooder.

The lock on the chicken brooder.

Total cost for all these projects was very reasonable. We got the pallets for free or $1 a piece. The chicken wire was a gift from my mom (when she gave us the 10 chickens at Christmas) but would have cost approx $10. L brackets cost approximately .50 a piece (we used 6, so $3). Rubber strap was about $2.

Chicken brooder costs roughly $8 for 16 square feet of brooder space. (fancy lock)

Turkey/Duck/Goose brooder roughly $6 for 32 square feet of brooder space. (less fancy locks)



Spring hustle

Since December I've been sitting around twiddling my thumbs itching to get started on our first year on a farm. The set backs have only made me more anxious to get going.

Yesterday was a busy day. A very, very busy day.

It was overcast in the morning, the sky was gray and threatening but Tractor Supply had confirmed their order of ducklings and chicks had come in so we went out to the store anyway. I had been calling for two days but they hadn't gotten them yet. I'm glad I went when I did because, out of fifty chicks they ordered, only about a dozen were left when we got there at 11:30.

I picked out four what I believe are Peking ducklings. I grabbed the most energenic and spry of the day old bunch.

We came home, set the ducklings up in the rabbit house in the bathroom and moved out the week old chicks to brood with the three weekers already established in the barn. The rabbit's cages are housed in the same stall and I've been eyeing Flora for nest making signs. This would be her week to kindle. I was getting disappointed since it didn't seem like the breeding had taken.

I glanced in the nest box in her cage and saw there was some fur. When I came closer the whole pile of wool moved! Flora gave birth to six healthy, pink baby rabbits while I was out getting the ducks. This is our first litter of Angora Rabbits and I'm so excited. I left mama be after snapping this photo of the babies.

And here is a very hagged looking new mama watching over her babies.

While we were getting all the new babies settled the postman came with a box I completely forgot about. Nine year old heritage raspberry plants were delivered and needed to be planted ASAP. The storm last night made the ground mud which made planting...interesting.

Then it was off to the farmer's market the next town over. It only happens once a week and we were in need of some fresh food.

While we were down that way I stopped into a different feedstore looking for higher protein game feed for the ducks. Tractor Supply only had a 15% mix for general poultry purposes. We're picking up poults today that can use up to 29% so I wanted to make a mix of both varieties for them. They were out of higher protein feed but they did have goslings!

I've always wanted a mating pair of Toulouse geese. They're mild mannered and are great flock protectors. Since the dog attack I've been even more interested in getting them. Plus they lay huge wonderful eggs.

They're brooding in the bathroom with the ducks. Apparently, they will follow ducks around as their leaders. They are also good weeder geese to help in the garden. They couldn't sex them and I couldn't even find a vent hole to try (it's there somewhere) so I just picked two of the best behaving ones. Cross your fingers we have at least one female.

After they were settled I went out and planted 6 Amish Paste tomato plants, 24 zucchini, 6 crookneck squash and 12 pepper plants. The garden has a way to go but it's getting there.

I hope today isn't quite as full.