Backyard Chickens: The Importance of Dust Baths for Health

One key husbandry issue that is often overlooked with chicken tractors; the importance of dust bathing for avian health. Chickens are birds. And like all birds, they need periodic dust baths to keep their feathers and skin healthy. They do this instinctively and it is fun to watch as it obviously gives them a lot of joy digging around and working it deep into their plumage. Chicken tractors are excellent for running a mini grass forage operation. But with frequent movements around the yard and the fact that turf generally is not dry enough to provide dust on any particular day, they end up digging small holes in a futile attempt to get at the dirt.

What to do? In my case I picked up a cheap cat litter box and filled it about half full with a mixture of dry garden soil, kids play sand and animal food grade diamateous earth (DE). The soil and sand are mixed at roughly 1:1 with two to three cups of DE added in. DE acts as a natural mite and flea killer. We've been lucky in that so far our small flock has not had any parasite issues. But including DE in the dust bath as well as a small dusting in their pine chip bedding acts as a preventative. Its cheap insurance. Just don't over do it in the bedding as it can be a respiratory irritant at high concentration.

The other big consideration is keeping an eye on the weather so that the dust bath doesn't become a mud pit. We've been lucky with this so far, and when rain or snow is predicted I can slide the tray under the coop portion to keep it out of the worst of the weather.

They can really kick up a dust ! It is not unusual for two to try to do this at once.

A Time to Reflect; and Plant!

Well, its Christmas Eve 2014. The 2015 Johnny's Seeds catalog showed up in the mail today; the Christmas tunes are on the radio; some bourbon and that last bottle of home-made ginger ale are about to find each other; time to start thinking about food-patching. This is the earliest THE CATALOG has ever shown up so I'm taking that as a good omen and a reason to get moving.

I'm not all that into New Year resolutions but I do hope to get a little more regular with the posts around here. We all have the best laid plans while we sit at the keyboard in the depths of winter. But once the season gets underway and things get busy with the garden and other outdoor activities on peak weekends, I often don't have time to even fire-up the CPU. Hopefully that will change with some kind of mid-week post scheduling.

And now that we've gone full "nano-farming" by incorporating backyard chickens into the mix, I also intend to bring the discussion more in line with the principles of the Paleo lifestyle. 

Now let's get some seeds going. I always seem to be behind the curve when it comes to spring onion sets. I usually get some started in January and then find out they are just too small when that perfect spring planting day arrives. Or worse, like last year, a major damping-off incident occurs with some kind of Andromeda strain fungus from hell. I mostly plant red onion sets as they are the best fresh from the garden and generally don't store well (due to high sugar content). So if you are going to the bother with planing onions why not go for something good?

Here's the tab for today; three tubs of Cebolla Red Burgundy (cheap Ferry-Morse packs that were on clearance at WalMart last fall); one tub of sweet Spanish White (Burpee), and two tubs of Deep Purple Bunching (Johnny's).

Backyard Chickens: Winter Insect Supplements

I've been mixing in a few dehydrated meal worms to the scratch I give the girls on the weekends just to give them some variety now that we are into winter and there are no bugs to be found in the yard. To give them some real meat in the depths of winter/early spring, I started a meal worm colony a few weeks back. At basement temperatures, it may be a couple of months before they go through a complete life cycle whereby the resultant beetles will lay eggs to keep the colony sustaining. In the meantime, it is wait and watch with the current crop of worms that came home from the pet store.

I'm basically following the directions found at the Sialis blue-bird site for setting up the colony since it seems to be the most complete one out there. Here is a shot of the bin.

And here is a close up of a group of worms on the substrate. The substrate is oat bran, oat meal, and a little of the layer crumble that we feed to the chickens. The water bowl is to provide some humidity as are the potato slices. You have to be careful to provide just enough humidity to keep them happy without causing the substrate to go moldy. So far I've been replacing the potato slices about once a week.

Backyard Chickens: Change-over of Daily Ration (GMO-free)

Went by Rufus' this week to get a couple of bags of layer crumble to hold us over through the Holidays and February. It seems he has changed his operation over to a locally sourced GMO-free pellet. Since he said his chickens don't seem to mind I figured why not? Not that I am all that concerned with GMO feed stocks, but since it already is soy and corn free, why not go all the way. Coming from a local mill it also is a buck cheaper per bag.

Here's the analysis:

Chickens are highly adaptable when it comes to diet but instead of changing them over cold-turkey, I'll slowly cut the new pellets into their current crumble so as not to cause any problems.

Backyard Chickens: Winter Forage Supplements

Now that we are nearing the Winter Solstice, the lawn has started to go dormant and the chickens will be missing out on their main source of forage. And soon we will be moving the chicken tractor to a spot in the yard where they will stay put until spring. Since they will be eating the remaining grass down to bare dirt, and since they are still giving us at least two eggs a day, we'll be supplementing their ration with meal worms and sprouted grain. This will provide some semblance of forage even if it will only be once or twice a week. Commercial free-range operations use elaborate systems for large-scale grain sprouting in winter. We just wanted to come up with something simple that would give us about one seed flat worth of sprouts a week during the worst of the winter months and still be compatible with our grow light table. After looking at some of these commercial systems I settled on the following three piece tray array.

I started by punching small drainage holes in a solid flat using a soldering iron. This will sit in a second solid tray followed by a third mesh tray for added support.
  

For a first try, it turns out that about four cups of winter rye soaked overnight would evenly fill the tray to a depth of about half an inch. As you would do for alfalfa sprouts destined for the salad bowl, they were rinsed twice a day over the sink with the spray wand.

After about three days the seeds began to sprout and were either kept under a grow light or moved outside in the sun on mild days to green up.

After about a week, the resulting mat is ready for breakup and feeding. The increase in biomass was amazing. All through this process the rinsing continued and once they reached this stage they were moved to the garage to keep cool and limit mold growth. With two separate arrays, we should be able to have at least one fully sprouted flat ready for feeding each week.

Love them sprouts!