chickens | KW Homestead

Tag: chickens (page 2 of 8)

Free Ranging Chickens (Going Everywhere From the Pig Pen to the Woods!)

July 15, 2015 / Emma / Comments Off

We recently have set our chickens free!

And I mean REALLY free!

They are free to go anywhere on our land that they want to, except the garden (which is why we’ve electric fenced the garden out) and the carport (just because it gets on my nerves)!

Electric fencing around the garden.

The reason we made this choice is because we were tired of having to move their house and pen every week or so, and our flock is growing and we don’t want to expand the size of their space.

So, we decided to set them free and move their house way across our front yard to the edge of the woods.

You can see the chicken house in the distance behind the duck fence!

They still get locked up in their house at night, since ground predators are a threat, but so far the aerial predators have not taken any standard sized chickens. A bantam has gone missing, but we expected that we might loose more chickens when we gave them free range of the whole property. We think it’s a risk that chickens would like to take, considering how much happier they are! We’ve kept 3 of our hybrid roosters, in addition to Rex, so that they can help protect the flock in the case of an attack. We’ve started calling these roosters the Musketeers, since they often stick together.

We are really happy with our choice to allow them to be completely free range, except for one thing… The eggs! Only a few of them are still laying their eggs in their house, and we have had a really hard time finding their other rouge nests. Even when we find one and replace some of the eggs with golf balls (so they don’t know that we found it) they still abandon that location and look for new places to lay eggs.

An old nest spot was in the monkey grass under this oak tree.

At this point, we’re only finding about 5 eggs a day, and even though this isn’t enough to sell any, we still feel like it’s all worth it. Because they are free ranging we feed them so much less food, so they are almost free to keep around!

The funniest thing about having them free ranging everywhere, is seeing the places they choose to go. One hen always sleeps in a tree in the backyard, and many of the younger hens like to hang out with the pigs all day! The Musketeers high-tail it over to the backyard in the morning to get some of the leftover turkey food that the cleanup ducks missed! I just have to watch out for Rex when I’m outside, since he’s started attacking me again lately!

Two of the Musketeers are hanging out in the backyard with the turkeys!

Three cheers for free chickens!

.:.

A Fantastic Farm to Your School Day!

July 8, 2015 / Emma / 1 Comment

KW Homestead’s first Farm to Your School experience was a great one, with another school visit coming up on July 9th!

I just wrapped up the 2014-2015 school year as a Teacher’s Assistant at a school in High Point, and Jason and I decided to offer a free Farm to Your School adventure to the kindergarten, first, and second grade kids that I worked with everyday. A few days before the last day of school, we packed up our chickens, ducks, and a really friendly piglet named Half Nose and carted them over to Johnson Street Global Studies K-8 Magnet School.

Each of the 6 classes had 30 minutes to enjoy the animals… A perfect amount of time for the kids to get quality time with each set of animals. I ran the Pig Station, where students got to pet and scratch our piglet. They were lucky enough to get to her some of her piggy noises, and some of our favorite questions were:

“Is she wagging her tail because she is happy?”

“Why her her hair so scratchy but her skin so soft?”

Jason ran the Duck Station and the kids were able to feed the ducks and watch Jason employ some of his ninja skills while catching a duck for them to pet. Some of our favorite questions from the Duck Station were:

“Why do they sit in the water and then drink it?”

“Why do they always walk together?”

Each classroom teacher supervised the kids while they looked at the rooster and hen, and they loved hearing the rooster crow and (their favorite) watching both chickens poop!

We had a fantastic day, and the time we spent sharing our animals with the kids really flew by… I think we found one of our passions!

If you are interested in booking Farm to Your School at your school, church or family get-together, send us an email at ourochreway@gmail.com and check out our Farm to Your School pricing page!

.:.

Angry, Broody, Bantam Hens: Look Out!

May 15, 2015 / Emma / Comments Off

‘Tis the season for hens to start getting broody, and since we have noticed that our bantam hens are naturally more interested in sitting on eggs, we weren’t surprised to find one of our favorites, Cleo, sitting on eggs. She is the most dedicated of the “sitters” and never gives up! The other hens often wait until you reach for them ,and then explode out of the nest box with murder on their mind! Not Cleo, who sits patiently and fusses at you, pecking at your hand.

The video below shows one such event… and is a great resource to help you tell if you have a broody hen. It is also important to keep in mind that being broody doesn’t necessarily mean they will be committed for the whole 21 days. To be sure, the hen should refuse to give up, even when you reach under her to snatch eggs. If you can also feel that she has no feathers on her chest, and it feels like bare skin down there, then she’s probably in it for the long haul. Hens pull out their own chest feathers to ensure that there is skin-to-egg contact during the incubation period.

Check out the video below to see an example of 2 broody hens… One feeling broody but not yet committed, and one ready for the real deal!

.:.

How To Remedy a Chicken’s Prolapsed Vent

May 13, 2015 / Emma / Comments Off

Bryn in solitary

One of our bantam hens, Bryn, was having some health issues a few weeks ago…

Her vent had prolapsed! For those of you don’t know, a chicken’s vent is where the eggs come from, as well as all the other things expelled from a chicken’s body! So having a prolapsed vent means that all of those things hang outside of the body and the chicken has trouble pooping and laying an egg becomes terrible.

A prolapsed vent… NOT pretty!

A couple reasons why this can happen…

Older hens lose muscle tone in this area
A particularly tough egg can do damage on its way out
Poor nutrition or lack of proper supplements or diet

A couple things that are important to do if this happens…

As soon as possible, separate the hen from the others so other hens don’t pick at the red, raw area.
Try to limit her light since the length of the day makes hens want to begin laying or continue laying.
Make sure she has access to proper food for healing.

Even if you do the above…

She might get an infection and die.
The vent might not retract on its own, which means you’ll need to help her out!

After doing some research, I learned that cleaning her vent area, applying witch hazel, and gently pushing her vent back inside is helpful and might work at getting her back in good health. I tried this 4 times and her vent stayed inside for a few minutes, but then popped back out. She wasn’t showing any signs of infection, was acting like herself, and hadn’t layed any eggs since being in solitary, so I didn’t want to give up her even though my tactics weren’t working!

Bryn getting her butt bathed…

Working on her vent…

I spoke with my dad and he reminded me about the medicinal magic of the plantago plant, which is great at fighting infection but also great at tightening and causing retraction. We thought it would work!

So this time I:

Washed her vent area really well with warm water
Chewed up a couple large plantain (plantago) leaves and spit the juice and the leaf peices around and onto her vent
Used my smallest finger to gently push her vent back inside her body and hold it there for a little while

Drying her off…

We kept her in the solitary cage for a few more days, and saw that in those days her vent continued to look better and had not popped back out again! She was reintroduced to the flock and has been fine ever since!

So if your chicken has a prolapsed vent, we recommend plantago!

.:.

Waste Not: Respecting the Rooster By Using It All

May 6, 2015 / Emma / Comments Off

Some of the roosters, enjoying their time in the yard.

Recently we made a delicious rooster soup, and used all of the bones for the broth. We came out with a fantastically fatty stew that we will certainly enjoy again!!!

We wanted to be sure to use the entirety of each rooster, since wasting any part of them would feel like a disrespect. I watched each of them come into this world, hovering over the incubator like a ridiculous, nervous mom. I spent time with them and they came to know me as a creature to trust. Witnessing life’s full circle is a meaningful event, one that makes me all the more aware of our responsibility to honor the roosters after they have been dispatched. Here is how we used all of our roosters…

After they were killed, they were scalded in hot water to make plucking their feathers easier. All of these feathers were saved and I will be using them for earrings, a headdress, or even for stuffing fun, homemade pillows.

Feathers!

So many feathers!

Their heads were removed and we later put them in the compost pile so they can contribute their nutrients to our garden beds.

Their internal organs were removed, and the majority were fed to the pigs, who loved this snack!

We saved the livers for our dog, Bolt, and he got a snack also.

Then we fried the 3 hearts with salt and ate them ourselves. Delicious! This is one of my favorite little snacks… It makes me think of my childhood!

The feet were removed, cleaned, and steamed so that the skin would be easy to peel. These peels were given to the pigs and I saved the toenails for making jewelry.

The peeled feet were added to the soup… There is such great gelatin in chicken feet and it is so good for your body!

Once the broth was complete, the meat was removed from the bones and put back with the broth for our soup base.

I saved some of the more beautiful bones (the wish bones, phalanges, and other foot bones) for jewelry.

The remaining bones were cooked down over the course of a few days to make bone broth, a highly nutritous supplement to any future soup.

The bones that didn’t beak down fully were then mashed into a pulp to give to Bolt as a supplement… One better than money can buy!

So, thank you dear roosters! For all you have given us! We certainly appreciate it.

.:.

Fixing Up the Chicken House!

April 16, 2015 / Emma / Comments Off

It felt wonderful last week to have more time to devote to my homestead to-do list, and I felt super productive!

One of the things that I had been meaning to do for a long time, was fix up some things in the chicken house. The chicken netting floor was caving in and holes were forming that were big enough for bantams to escape and potential predators to get in (altough none had yet), the walls of the nest boxes were caving in, and the roost bars were sliding around and making 3 roost bars bunch up into 2.

The caving floor of the house.

Lots of holes!

I decided to start with the floor. After some brainstorming I realized that it would be too hard to replace the netting on the floor since when Jason and my dad made it, they had the entire coop upside down so they could get to the best spots to drill. Instead I opted for a removable frame that fit the dimensions of the floor perfectly but had extra support so that when the chickens walked on it, it didn’t cave in so badly.

I was lucky that the dimensions of the floor frame would allow it to fit in and out of the door to the house perfectly (with a little squeezing).

I made a frame outside of the house and attached chicken wire to it, using washers and screws to grab the holey netting better.

The new floor!

Then I fit in the floor!

A perfect fit!

Next I rescrewed the walls of the nest boxes into the base so that the. Hens wouldn’t knock them over and replaced those and added straw.

Last, I cut some tobacco sticks into short spaces to place between the roout bars so they wouldn’t slide towards each other. This will really help the teenagers learn to roost! Since there wasn’t room up there for them before, they were sleepin on top of the nest boxes. Now they should learn how to sleep like a real chicken!

.:.

Farm Food Friday: Rooster, Potato, and Tomato Soup!

April 3, 2015 / Emma / 2 Comments

The great thing about this soup, is that we raised almost all of the the ingredients!

Let me start by saying that the photographs do not do it justice… And you are going to need either a huge pot or two pots!

Ingredients:

Bones and the partial meat of 3 teenage roosters
Lots of sweet potatoes
Lots of Irish potatoes
About 25 garlic cloves
2 quarts of cubed tomatoes
2 Large onions
Celery
1 pint of corn
Basil, parsley, oregano, garlic powder, jalapeños

Directions:

The first thing we did was butcher our roosters, and since that would take forever to explain, we’ll save that story for another time. We roasted and ate some of the roosters and left part of the meat on the bones for our soup.

We cooked the roosters in a large pot with water and a little salt to make the broth. We included all of the bones, even the feet (which had already been peeled). The next day is when we had planned to start the soup, and when we removed the pot from the fridge to de-bone the meat, we found that the entire concoction was gelatinous! Talk about good, healthy, fat! Even though these roosters were not fully matured and they are not a breed that is bred just for their meat, they had so much delicious fat on them!

Yummy, fatty, chicken!

Best broth ever!

I de-boned the meat and placed the bones in the crockpot so we could cook these down further and make bone broth.

Then we sauteed diced onions, the garlic cloves, and celery in some of the fat. The onions and the garlics were from my dad’s garden!

The rest of the fat/meat/broth jelly was added to the pot and it started to melt and become true broth again. We added some of our diced and frozen basil, parsley, and jalapeño from the garden and let this melt and mix together.

Next in was the corn.

A lovely potato medley!

Then we added the potatoes (all from our garden) and once the soup was up to temperature again, we added the tomatoes. The tomato mix we used was a frozen bunch of cubed Cherokee Purples, San Marzanos, and Black Plums.

Then we added more basil, some oregano,salt, and garlic powder and continued to let it cook until the potatoes proved to be done!

The finished product!

And then we ate it! Last night for dinner and today for lunch and tonight for dinner… This soups is one of our favorites so far!

.:.

Non-GMO Feed Now In Stock!

March 17, 2015 / jason / Comments Off

We just received a ton of Non GMO livestock feed. Literally, 1 ton.

We got some high protein turkey starter for our Bourbon Red Heritage Turkeys, some 16% laying feed for the chickens, a bunch of 18% grower/broiler feed for the teenage chickens and ducks, some pig food, and a few bags of chick starter for our next batch of ducks that will be showing up soon.

40 Bags of high quality, freshly milled GMO Free feed

We are very excited to start feeding only GMO free feed to our livestock. For some of the reasons why GMO free is important us, check out this post.

It was very hard to find a source for Non GMO chicken and livestock feed in our area, but after months of searching for an affordable option, we are excited to finally be able to offer some of the highest quality feed available to other small producers and backyard growers in the Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Rockingham and Stokes County areas.

High quality feed means happy hens, and happy hens mean delicious eggs!

This feed is milled fresh (as in 3 days ago) from high quality, 100% GMO free grains and without any medications, hormones, or antibiotics.

Pricing

All feeds in 50 lb. bags

Layer – 22.50
Broiler/Grower – 24
Chick Starter – 25
Turkey Starter – 26
Pig – 21
Sheep/Goat – 24
Cracked Corn – 17

Soy free feeds are available for an additional fee.

In the future we hope to offer some of the other supplements we use on our homestead (for both plants and animals) like kelp, rock dust, diatomaceous earth, and other types of mineral and protein supplements.

If you would like more information, send us an email at ourochreway@gmail.com or shoot us a message on Facebook.

Morning Chores!

March 16, 2015 / jason / Comments Off

We put together a short video of our morning homestead chores.

Emma feeds, waters, and lets the chickens out (both the laying flock and the teenage cockerels), while Jason feeds, waters and checks on the ducklings and the pot belly pigs.

The geese are okay until the afternoon, when they get some food, fresh water, and maybe a paddock shift.

Our morning routine is going to change somewhat when our batch of heritage turkey poults arrive, and also when our ducks graduate form the brooder to their new shelter.

*Don’t forget to pre-order your GMO Free Heritage Turkey for Thanksgiving!

Chicks (Now Teenage Chickens) Enter the Real World!

February 25, 2015 / Emma / 2 Comments

Last weekend we finally felt comfortable enough with the weather to kick the teenager chickens out of the house and make them grow up!!!

We have an empty nest now! Except, not really because we have the new ducklings to take care of!

Anyway, we decided to put the female teenagers in with the adult standards and add the bantams in with them. The teenage boys are in the old bantam tractor and Gimpsy gets to live in his own cage in the carport (except during cold weather).

Getting them out of their basement home was simple since they are so used to me picking them up and petting them.

Teenage boys waiting in the cage to be moved to the bantam tractor.

The boys have adjusted just fine in their tractor (likely because they don’t have any other chickens picking on them).

The girls… Not so much.

Some teenage girls trying to find their way in their new home.

When we first put them in the yard with the other chickens, they acted catatonic and really confused about life. Since that day, most of them are more well-adjusted. Others still run from all other contact with chickens and hide in the corner of the fence or the house. We think that given time, all of the teenage girls will integrate just fine with the rest of the flock (i.e. their mothers and father).

Gimpsy is doing fine in his cage, and has become more vocal since feeling like he is the king of his castle (that is, except when Bolt sticks his big, ugly mug up next to his cage).

King of his castle!

More updates to come!

.:.

KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013