Composting chicken litter

Also, today in the ATTRA newsletter was a question about composting chicken litter.  Here is the link.

http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1102806924560&s=6553&e=001nXFeYewiwosTfD2Bj3wfZmstYOsuQ2n-eGP_d2B7_ABRZRPYALhH6grl6lF4tII561Xxh6rrCiGOUW0fVdR5HANhK4PqYFiXyyHByDRLHBV3jJaUqVDG-2zmyyGCXJaTqK3slJU7QLqoNMKLirVtJzA9-b6YoIfMB_pHysdI9E7EF62RyqQC099o3zDlVZPm_NZ8tuZJXAmP4RvTh0oa-pwLtHBKrler

Join ATTRA’s email newsletter to find lots of helpful info.

http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1102837604882&s=6553&e=001kikTUQaMtG7UZ-aXxvj47m_gSuXOcSQO1elnph5zGtI49WZIGNdgeXRdFfLij4t0rMYE5_r3gBAzu_D3lj7f8vbkD9Zkuk_T5WjQ-RHbkrk=

Safe Egg cleaning and handling

I have lots of different informative email subscriptions I signed up for.  This informative small scale egg handling booklet is from ATTRA; you can subscribe to a free email subscription too.

Here is the free egg handling booklet in PDF format:

http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/egghandling.pdf

ATTRA – National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service is one of the nation’s oldest and most respected sources for sustainable agriculture information. Resources include hundreds of expert publications and worksheets, as well as sustainable agriculture specialists who provide personalized technical assistance on sustainable agriculture topics. ATTRA is funded under a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Business-Cooperative Service and managed by the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT), a nonprofit organization focusing on sustainable agriculture, energy and communities.

Hawk eyes

For the first time since we got our chickens and guineas over a year ago, all the guineas are roosting at night inside the coops.  The weather has been very fair recently, after all the rain we had, and in the past, the guineas loved to stay outside at night, all night.  I always worried about night predators for them.

Sometimes they would roost directly on the ground in groups, or they would fly up and stay on the coop rooftops. A perfect place for an owl to snatch one.

Several weeks ago I found a guinea dead on the ground, on it’s back with wings widespread and an obvious puncture wound in the chest, but no blood or other damage.  I speculated that it was picked up, but too heavy for the winged predator to carry off.

Curiously, now they ALL go inside the coops to be shut in. They all get along, chickens and guineas together, and seem to be glad to be there.  I wonder what scared them all so badly.  I have seen some stray white guinea feathers fluttering across the ground, but it is molting season and hard to know whether it is from molting or from running scared. 

When I am home and see hawks circling overhead I hope they move along. Occasionally I will see a kestral inside the barn flitting around when I turn on the lights in the evening to check water and hay for the alpacas. 

Today the guineas were outside a coop squawking their heads off. I was about to walk out to see what the trouble was when a huge hawk took off from the electrical pole adjacent to their pasture.  My question was answered.

Chickens in the rain

Being new to chickens, I have read alot about how to care for them.  Everyone has their own experiences and what works best for them.  Bottom line is that animals are versatile for the most part and will function just fine usually with what type shelter they are provided.  However, there are some ways to improve what you provide and make it a little more livable for them, especially in wet, cold,  or even hot weather. 

My chickens like to hang out in the alpacas barn (30×50 feet) if the weather is not nice for pasture foraging.  In the heat, they also like to hang out under the elevated coops (base size is 4×8 set up on  a cement block at each corner) where the cool earth and breezes  cool them.  In the winter the barn, bright sun, and hay on the floor helps warm them.  Their coops keep them warm enough at night when I shut them in and they can burrow into the deep litter and they mound together.  The decomposing litter also generates some heat, so I read, from the decomposition, which would create some heat for them.  So, keeping a deep litter in the coop is an easy way to improve their warmth.  I use a kitty litter scoop to remove any clumpy wet litter and to swish around the top layer into the bottom layer and get it started drying out.  I put a hook on one of the coop studs out of the way so I can reach the scoop and it’s so easy to keep the nest boxes, roosts and litter floor cleaned up.

Dealing with frozen water in winter is difficult.  Fortunately, they don’t need as much water as they do in summer, so they drink out of the alpacas buckets which take longer to freeze,   and I make sure  they start off the morning with fresh unfrozen water in their little waterers.  There are some heated waterers and heated bases to sit them on, but I have not tried those.  Last winter was the first winter and they all did just fine.  Since there isn’t really much of anything to forage from the pastures, I make sure their feed containers are kept full as the digesting of food will generate some body heat.  They also like to burrow into the alpacas hay troughs.  The alpacas eat “around” them. 

We don’t have too many “freeze” days in this part of the US, but still need to be ready for them because they almost always take us by surprise.

I have recommended them before, but I will again, and that is two books I have referred to constantly: Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens, by Gail Damerow, and the other is The Encyclopedia of Country Living, by Carla Emery.  Find them at Amazon.com and you can create a book list and they will e-mail you whenever the prices change, higher or lower.  A great place to shop online.

The wetter the better–not!

One summer we took our daughter and son to Colorado on vacation when they were in middle school and high school.  We went river rafting and bought shirts to mark the event that said “the wetter the better”, which for river rafting is true.  However, in October in Texas  it is not. The rain has just been never ending it seems and we are all tired of the muck, especially we who must slog through it in the barnyard.  But, things are looking up and we hear that tomorrow will be the last of the rain. Hooray!

The dampness has settled into the barn and the  packed earth floor has become rather damp.  I have turned on the two large ceiling fans to move the still air around and try to dry it out some.  And of course the alpacas do not want to use their outdoor poop piles, so where are they going? Of course, they are.  Inside the barn, causing a little odor.  However, as far as clean up goes, I would rather clean up in there than have a mucky mess outside to clean up, so I cannot complain too much. 

I use Stall Dry on the inside poo areas after cleaning up and have I mentioned how much I loooooove Stall Dry. It deodorizes and sops up moisture (10x it’s weight, I read)  I will be sprinkling around the inside of the chicken coops this weekend,after cleaning out about 1/3 of the litter and replacing with new.  It is important to keep some old litter in the coop because, as I understand,  it has the established microbes already in place that are cleaning up and breaking down  the litter and will migrate into the new litter to keep it all breaking down correctly.  The old litter I clean out will go into the compost pile.  I have not had any moisture or odor problems in the coop with the deep litter.

The chickens do not seem to mind the wet and they do live in the barn during the day and hang out, dust and fluff, and clean up errant crickets.

I will keep my eyes open, but have not seen my hummingbirds.  I hung out freshly filled feeders just in case.  I did see one lone Monarch butterfly today on its journey south.

I plan to enjoy the new dry weather and get things decorated  for Halloween.