Uninvited House Guest! Or It’s ‘Almost’ Spring Time In Oklahoma!

Blue butt pigs

My daughter said that she was going by our local farmers coop feed store this morning. I was told by a local farmer that the coop feed store had some cattle range cubes that had got wet on sale for $5.00 for a 50 pounds bag. 21 percent protein range cubes normally sell for very near $15.00 for a 50 pound bag.
I told daughter1.0 to pickup a 1,000 pounds, 20 sacks, of range cubes to be fed to our 2 feeder pigs. That should last until the end of May when they will be sent off to be processed. They will 6+ months old and will be pushing 300 pounds each by the last of May or first week of June. Any left over feed will go into our new born longhorn steer and heifer calf’s feeder. And no he was not born a steer, grin … but he is a steer now!

When she returned, much to my surprise, she also had 2 bronze turkey chicks and 2 pearl guinea chicks. I was not ready for any new poultry! So after searching my shed and other places, I found an old small cage with a plastic bottom. After I washed and sterilized the cage, cleaned a spot on a bookcase for the cage, located and installed a light with a 100 watt bulb on top of said cage to keep the birds warm. At this age they need to be kept in a spot that is near 95 degrees. O-Guess what, I had no idea where I had put my chick water container or chick feeder last time I used them!

After 2 hours of searching, washing and sterilizing equipment the chicks are now safe and warn under a heat lamp on the top shelf of a bookcase. The turkeys will be ready to process and be wrapped and put in freezer for, … Grin … or BBQ pit smoker about the 4th of July.

The guineas will get a free ride! I don’t like the taste of guinea, so, they will be used as bug control in my garden.

Moral to this story is “Never allow your daughter in a farm store when the store has chicks for sale!”

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A Weed Free, Well Kept Garden – A Sure Sign Of A Sick Mind!

While setting in a nice warm, dry place on these cold winter days, it is very easy to let your winter gardening plans over load your summer gardening time and abilities.

When you are considering raising a small poultry flock or a few rabbits, Don’t Forget they are an everyday commitment. They require feeding and watering ‘Everyday’. They don’t care if you have plans to go to the lake for the weekend, they still require you to tend to them ‘Everyday’. If your considering getting a milk goat or two, then you have committed yourself to being present twice a day, every morning and every evening to milk them. Not one time a day but two times a day and at about the same time two times everyday!!

Properly managed gardens require a great deal of your time and effort. Soil preparation begins as soon as the soil can be worked in early spring. The amount of time and effort expended is dependent on garden size and whether you will be using hand tools, garden fork, shovel to till the soil or if you have power tools such as a rototiller or garden tractor.

Have a plan. First decide what you ‘really’ want to grow. Grow what you like to eat! Don’t plant a long row or a raised bed full of cabbage if you only eat one head of cabbage every three months! My summer garden plan is a simple one. I plant what I like to eat fresh from my garden, with as little cooking as possible.
Cucumbers, bush goose neck squash, okra, bush tomato’s, peppers both hot and mild sweet bell pepper. I plant a few radishes, white, red and yellow onions and beets. Garlic was planted back in late October.
No zucchini, lettuce or other cool weather vegetables. Most cool weather vegetables do not do well here in our dry warm spring time weather and our hot dry weather summer gardens.

Crop planting. Do Not, I say again Do Not crowd your plants. Your big, empty garden can become crowded, over grown and untenable in a short time if you over plant and fail to follow planting recommendations listed on your seed packages. Lets start small and work up from there. First if you buy seed, follow planting dates, spacing and depth instruction on the package. Remember the 2-3-4 rule. Width of 2 fingers is about 1 – 1 1/4 inches, 3 fingers cover about 2 inches and 4 fingers will give you about 3 inches. This is an easy way to properly space seeds when planting. Small seeds are difficult to plant one at a time but it is worth the effort to do so.

Larger plants like pepper and egg plants need a minimum of 18 to 24 inches between plants, bush tomato’s require 36 inches minimum and vining tomato’s as much as 5 or 6 feet between plants even when staked or caged to allow easy access for harvesting and to allow for good air circulation. Cucumbers allowed to vine on the ground can take up as much as 8 feet of garden space for each vine. I think a better way to manage cucumbers is to grow them on a 5 foot or taller trellis. I purchased two 52 inch tall stock panels and use three T-post to support them. At end of season you can easily disassemble them and they require little space for winter storage.
Melon’s can easily take up to 10 or more feet of space. The real question is how large is your garden and is it really worth giving up that much space for a few melon’s?

Nice people are not good gardeners! You must be ruthless and unforgiving. Diseased and non-producing plants should be ripped out! Replant with something that requires a shorter growing season. By July you should be thinking about what plants need to be pulled up and developing your fall garden plans. Removal of used up plants is a good thing. It helps control the number of damaging garden insects and helps control spreading disease to healthy plants. Depending on your planting zone, you may need to start planting you fall garden by early to mid July or early August in warmer gardening zones.

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Why is Common Sense so Uncommon?

Egg Producers And Egg Users Unions Sign New Contract

Click to Zoom In – Date of this poster is unknown about 1914 I think

The {Chickens Lay Mo Eggs} CLME union and the {Consumers Fry Scramble Eggs} CFSE unions have signed a ground breaking agreement. In short it this agreement assures the CLME union that as long as they continue to lay Mo eggs, the Home Owners {consumers} union will not convert laying hens into fresh homemade chicken noddle soup.

My remaining bantam hens 3 out of the original 6 birds , now over 3 years old, have been on strike. I haven’t had an egg almost 2 weeks. Today they all decided to start laying again. I had 3 eggs when I went to the hen house to feed and water my chicken flock. I also have 4 standard size {assorted breeds} pullets that will start laying in mid March.
When all 7 birds are laying I will be getting about 3 1/2 dozen (42 or 43) eggs a week. More than enough eggs to feed me and my daughters family all the eggs we can stand to eat and still have enough to share with in-laws and out-laws.

My local farm and ranch feed store will start getting in this years chicks about the first week of March, So it will soon be time to get another 6 pullets. From hatching to laying their first egg takes 24 to 26 weeks. {About 6 months.}
The answer is Yes, I do pay a bit of a premium price for sexed chicks. But it is worth paying a premium price to be assured all my chicks are pullets. I have no need for roosters.

Unlike some flock owners, I really don’t care that much what color the eggs are.
Hint With that said, if you want or need your flock to lay brown eggs, look very carefully at the chicks ears. Chicks with brown ears will lay brown eggs, and as such chicks with white-ish colored ears will lay white eggs.

If your considering replacing a few of your hens or better yet starting a laying flock in your backyard. Now is the time to decide how many pullets and what breed(s) you want to have in your backyard flock. Just don’t forget that 1 chicken will lay 1 egg about every 27 hours, 7 days a week. 1 good hen will lay 6 eggs every week for many months.

I have said this many times but will say it again. You Do Not Need A Rooster for your hens to produce eggs. Unless you just want to drive your neighbors crazy with a rooster that may start crowing as early as 3 or 3:30AM, Do Not get a rooster.

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Chicken Coop To Table – Processing Poultry

Hint An easy way to catch your bird(s) is the night before your going to process this bird, using a flashlight, go to your coop and select bird(s) of your choice. Pick the bird up and place in a small cage. I use an old wire rabbit cage. This also prevents your bird from filling up on feed just before you process the bird for your dinner table.

DIY Chicken Kill Cone – Cost Less Than $2.00 Now that your chicks have reached the age and size to be processed for your table. You need to locate and prepare an area where you can process your birds for your table or freezer. A killing cone is a worth while investment. Place your bird in the cone, head down and exposed so you can kill and bleed your bird.
Why use a cone? First off it restrains your bird making it easy to kill and bleed the bird. Easy to use and you don’t have blood and feathers all over your yard. It is less stressful on your birds as well. Works on about any bird smaller than a Turkey.

If you are only processing 1 or 2 birds hand picking the bird is most likely your best choice. However if you have several birds to process you may want to construct this easy to build powered bird plucker. Chicken Plucker – Home Made Less Than $10.00

You will need a large pan or pot large enough to submerge your bird in scalding water. Scalding your chicken before picking is ‘Required’. Heat a pot of water to 145 to 160 degrees. Holding your bird by it’s feet, submerge your bird in the hot water, pump up and down to insure hot water reaches the skin. After about 15 or 20 seconds check your bird by test pulling a wing feather or 2. They should pull out easily, if not scald about another 5 or 10 seconds and test again.
Hint If processing water fowl like ducks, add a little dish soap to your scald water. This will remove the oils that make water fowl feathers water proof and allow the scald water to more easily reach the birds skin.

Pick your bird and if needed use a pair of pliers to remove any short pin feathers that are hard to remove by hand. Using a sharp knife open the birds body cavity and remove all those parts from it’s inside. You may want to keep it’s liver and gizzard for making gibbet gravy. You can remove (cut out) it’s neck or not that’s your choice. Rinse your bird under cold running water inside and out. Pat dry, set aside to be cooked. Or cut up into pieces or bag whole in an air tight freezer bag and put your bird in your freezer for later use.

In disposing of your birds unwanted/unused parts including it’s blood and feathers, Do Not put them in your compost pile. It will attract all kinds of unwanted critters. Like fly’s, cats, dogs, fox, racoons, coyotes and bob cats.

Learning Curve Note After your have processed your first few birds, you will be able to have that old rooster or old hen frying pan ready in 10 or at most 15 minutes from coop to pan. Always remember your grandmother did it so can you.

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Backyard Poultry Flock From Scratch – Chicken Coops And More

This years poultry hatchlings will soon be arriving at your local feed and farm stores. If you only want a few hens for egg production it it better to pay a premium for sexed birds. Generally you can not find sexed ducks, geese or turkeys and must settle for straight run and hope you get a few females out of the deal. Wing feather Sexing Day Old Chicks

Unless you have a need for fertile eggs, a rooster is not need and should be avoided. Pullets(hens) and ducks are fairly quiet and gentle birds. Roosters, geese and turkeys are loud and can become very aggressive birds.

Back Yard Chickens has a lot of useful and not so useful information. The best thing about this site is that it has many pictures and free plans for building brooders, chicken coop’s and chicken runs.

Hint: What ever your building, make it covenant for ‘You’ to access. To clean, gather eggs and so on without the need to stoop low or crawl around on your hands and knees.
Make all gates and doors wide enough to get your wheel barrow in and out of the hen house and chickens runs.
Use salvage (recycle) windows and doors from home remodel projects.

Choosing the best coop wire. 1X1 or 1X2 welded wire is a much better choice. 1/2X1/2 utility wire is also a good choice. They cost a bit more but in the long run will be a cheaper and better choice. Poultry netting will rust and become useless in just a few years and is not as effective in keeping small chicks in nor is it a big obstacle to keep determined animals like cats, dogs, coyote, fox or racoon’s out of your hen house.

Hint: Use a light dimmer switch to control your heat lamp in your brooder. This makes setting and weekly readjustments in brooder temperature much easier. 2 heat sources on a light dimmer are much better than 1 heat lamp. If your light bulb burns out on a cold day/night you can loose all your chicks to the cold.

Medicated Chick Starter is much more expensive but well worth the added cost to get your chicks off to a healthy start in life. After the first 2 or 3 weeks you can start feeding chicken crumbles or lay mash.
Do Not feed medicated chicken feed to ducks, geese or turkeys. Start them out on chicken crumbles or lay mash.

Do Not mix chickens and baby turkeys. Chicks can carry diseases that do not harm chickens but will kill your turkeys. It is OK to mix your turkeys with ducks or geese.

Hint: If you have 4 foot tall poultry runs fencing keep your birds wing flight feathers clipped short to prevent them from flying over your poultry run fence.

You are their last line of defense from predictors. Close your hen house securely ‘every’ night after your flock has gone to roost. Use good quality snap hooks and latches. A determined dog, fox, coyote or raccoon will soon defeat a cheap latch or poorly latched door.

** Chick Brooder ** for up to about 6 chicks.
Here’s a few sample brooders and chicken coops with building plans. Check out the main website Back Yard Chickens for many more pictures and plans.

Raise Baby Chicks – The First 60 Days
Jbarichivich Homemade Plastic box brooder
Wolfscout’s Homemade Plastic box chicken brooder

Manufactured coop and run about $1,800.00

** Chicken Coops **
La cage mahal Estimated cost is {grinning} only about $1,050.00 construction cost. I think you can build your coop for much less than this eye pleasing hen house/coop.
Trictles chicken coop with plans

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Town and Country Gardening – 2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 230,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 4 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!

Click here to see the complete report.

An Oklahoma Christmas

My Weather Guy Said: “ Christmas forecast: As of this morning, here’s what we’re thinking. This will change many times over the next several days. (White Christmas?)
TIMING Anytime from the evening of Dec 24th through Dec 26th. Fairly high confidence, but impossible to be more specific at this point
POSSIBLE IMPACTS Snow and blowing/drifting snow, enough to cause significant travel problems. Some potential for sleet/freezing rain as precipitation begins.
AREAS IMPACTED We have fairly high confidence that wintry precipitation could affect much of Oklahoma and north Texas, depending on the exact track of the storm system. We cannot be any more specific at this point. NOAA Weather Forecast Office

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

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Cleaning And Disinfecting Poultry And Rabbit Housing And Watering Devices

http://www.thegardencoop.com/blog/2010/11/18/winter-chicken-coop-care-p4/

Keep your poultry flock healthy. Winters cold blast will soon be upon us. Your poultry and rabbits will be less active and spending much more time inside your hen house rabbit hutches. Now is the time you should prepare your facilities for the onslaught of winters cold wet weather, snow and ice storms.

Run your fowl out of your hen house. Remove all litter (wear a dust mask) bedding and nest box materials. Put that in your compost pile or use it as a deep mulch around newly planted fruit trees and existing trees and shrubs.
Use a hoe or flat nose shovel, scrape your hen house floor to remove old dried droppings, sweep floor and walls to remove dust and spider webs.

Wash walls (inside and outside), nest boxes and floors with soap water, (use a long handled brush or better yet a pressure washer), rinse well. Then spray walls nest boxes and floors with a disinfectant solution (a 1 gallon hand pump-up sprayer works well for this). Allow everything to dry before allowing your flock to return to your hen house.

Wash and disinfect your feeders and watering equipment. Allow to dry, then refill them with fresh water and feed.

** Help Hints:
Phenols are coal-tar derivatives. Phenols are effective antibacterial agents, and they are also effective against fungi and many viruses. They also retain more activity in the presence of organic material than iodine or chlorine-containing (bleach) disinfectants. Common uses in commercial animal production units include: hatchery and equipment sanitation, and footbaths. Examples: Lysol, Pine-Sol, Cresi-400, Environ, and Tek-Trol. I don’t know what my chickens think about it, but I like the smell when I’m using Pine-Sol to disinfect my hen house, feeders and Watering devices.

Chlorine (bleach) compounds are good disinfectants on clean surfaces, but are quickly inactivated by dirt. Chlorine is effective against bacteria and many viruses. These compounds are also much more active in warm water than in cold water. Chlorine solutions can be somewhat irritating to skin and corrosive to metal. (Wear rubber/latex gloves) They are relatively inexpensive. Examples: Clorox, Chloramine-T, and Halazone.

Hydrogen peroxide and other oxidizing agents, like peracetic acid and propionic acids or acid peroxygen systems are used in commercial poultry operations. They are active against bacteria, bacterial spores, viruses, and fungi at quite low concentrations.

Disinfecting poultry drinking water. Chlorination is commonly used as a disinfectant for drinking water at a concentration of 3 parts per million (ppm). Concentrations up to 10 ppm have been reported to be well-tolerated by chickens.

Preparing a stock solution. Add 1 ounce (1 fluid ounce = 2 tablespoons) of Clorox to 1 gallon of clean water. A larger batch of stock solution can be made by adding 1 cup of Clorox to 8 gallons of water. Mix in a plastic container that can be tightly sealed shut. For slime control, 1.5 to 2 ounces of Clorox liquid bleach per gallon of water are needed.

Heat or not to heat my hen house? Healthy Adult chickens are very cold hardy. Egg production will suffer, but, the birds will be fine in most cases. Some people recommend using a 250 watt heat lamp or even a 100 watt light to warm a hen house. This sounds like a good idea, but is in fact a really bad idea.

Chickens, ducks and turkeys all need at least 8 hours of darkness (sleep) time daily. Fowl do not get the needed 8 hours of sleep time if their roosting area is lit-up with heat lamp(s) and their over all health suffers badly.. **Hint: Using Infra Red bulbs is a better choice but if you can find them, non-light producing Infrared Ceramic Heat Bulb/ Emitters are a better choice.

Gas Powered Pressure Washer

FYI: I have seen electric powered 1600 PSI pressure washers at places like Harbor Freight for as little as $90.00 and gasoline powered 2000PSI pressures washers for around $250.00. A pressure washer is worth the investment. Not only will you save time and labor cleaning your hen house, you can use a pressure washer to clean patios, drive ways and the exterior of your home.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

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Poultry For Your Backyard

Poultry terms many gardeners just don’t care to know. For those of us that want or have a small poultry flock, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys or guinea fowl. Knowing and using the correct terms for poultry makes things much less confusing when talking to other small poultry flock owners.
Chickens Generally baby chickens are called chicks. Females are pullets and males are cockerels.
Adults females are hens and males are cock or rooster.
Turkeys Baby turkeys are called poults. Adult females are hens and males are called tom.
Ducks Baby ducks are called ducklings. Adult females are hens and males are called drake.
Geese Baby geese are called goslings. Adult females are called a goose or hen and males are called gander.
Guinea fowl Baby guineas are called keets. Adult females are called hens and males are called cocks.

Having a mixed flock of ducks and chickens is a good choice. Both can be fed the same feeds and both will consume a great number of insects. Ducks are good grazers and will feed on green weeds and grass. White pekin duck is your best choice for both egg production and as table birds. Roasted duck is a really nice change from a chicken or turkey meal.

Ducks are good layers and duck eggs can be used in any dish calling for eggs.
Ducks are gentle and quit. Grin .. they won’t wake your neighbors at the crack of dawn crowing.

Unlike chickens ducks will feed all through the night. Hint: Place an outdoor light in your duck pen, a bug zapper is even better about 6 feet off the ground to attract flying insects away from your home and garden plot. Your ducks and chickens will feast on the insects attracted to your outdoor light and or bug zapper.
Geese are good layers of large eggs. They are also fine tasty meat birds for your table. A nice change from a Christmas day turkey meal.

Geese are good grazers and will consume many weeds, seeds and insects. However they are loud honking birds that often become aggressive as adults. Not good around smaller birds, children or your neighbors. Geese are best confined in a coop and run reserved for your geese.
Feed them the same feed you feed your chickens and ducks. They are pretty birds, fun to watch and feed.

Turkeys are good layers of large eggs. The 2 most common turkeys are the broad breasted white turkey. Adult hens can be reach about 25 pounds and toms will mature at 45 pounds or more. This is the type most commonly grown for consumption during American holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.

The bronze or broad breasted bronze are a good choice for the backyard flock. They look much like the American wild turkey, don’t get as large as the white turkeys and are an excellent table meat bird. Adult hens will mature at about 25 pounds and toms will reach about 40 pounds.

Turkeys can be noisy birds and may become aggressive as adult birds. They are not good around strangers, children or near by neighbors.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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Poultry Brooder – What Is That – What Does it Do? – Do I Need One?

What is a brooder? A brooder has 2 main components. First is a heat producing device to keep your new chicks, ducklings, goslings or poults warm. A temperature of about 90 to 95 degrees two inches off the floor is idea. You should plan to use a brooder for the first 5 weeks. Reducing the temperature 5 degrees every week until you reach a brooder temperature of about 70 degrees. Brooders can be heated by natural gas, propane gas or electricity where available.

Second part of a brooder is an area large enough to allow about 1 square foot of floor space for each bird. A container that will contain your birds, a water source and feeder(s). A container with rounded corners works best and must keep your birds out of cool/cold drafts and be covered to keep your birds from jumping out of your brooder. Hint: Birds that are only a few days old can often jump over the sides of a 1 foot tall brooder if it is not covered with something like poultry net wire.

Feed and watering your birds. Never allow your birds to run out of food or fresh clean water. Check them morning and night. Dispose of any soiled feed, replace with clean feed. Clean and sterilize feeders as needed. Empty and refill water containers every morning and night with fresh clean water. Clean and sterilize water containers weekly or more often if needed.

http://thebackpasture.com/backpasture/?p=411

Clean and sterilize feeders and water containers using 1/4 cup chlorine bleach in 1 or 2 gallons of soap water. Rinse well and allow to dry before refilling and placing them in your brooder.

Medicated chick starter feeds are fed by many to their new birds. This feed is very expensive so only purchase enough to feed your birds for about a week or so, then change over to grow mash, chicken egg crumbles or lay mash. Grow mash, crumbles and lay mash has trace minerals and vitamins for your new birds health. I never buy chick starter, I start my birds on crumbles from day one.

Brooder litter. I do not recommend, let me say that again, I do not recommend putting any kind of litter in your brooder before week 2. New hatch-lings will try to eat anything they see to include saw dust, pine or cedar shavings. Best solution is to line the bottom of your brooder with heavy weight plane white paper towels. Do not use news paper or any kind of slick paper. Remove and replace the towels daily. Old towels can be put into your compost pile.
**Hint: News paper or slick magazine paper can cause your chicks to develop serious leg and feet problems. If this occurs they will have to be destroyed and disposed of.

Sprinkle a small amount of feed around your feeders, chicks will see and eat the feed on the white paper towels and soon find the feed in your feeders.

Introducing your new birds to your brooder. Carefully check their little butts for crusting, ‘poop’ that has dried on and around their little butts. If you find crusting, wash with warm water to remove. Give your birds a quick visual check daily for crusting. Crusting is common in birds that have been handled ruffly or have become stressed from handling, brooder being to cold or to hot as well.

Dip each birds beak in your watering container once or twice so the bird knows what and where to find drink water. Watch your birds carefully over the next few hours to insure they are eating and drinking water. Monitor the brooder temperature and lower or raise heat light as needed to achieve and maintain a temperature of 90 – 95 degrees 2 inches off your brooders floor.

Sexy Chicks. This is a good time to wing feather sex your birds. This only works on (chicken) chicks and then only when the chicks are 1 or 2 days old. Feather Sexing Day Old Chicks After sexing your birds, paint the toe nails of your pullets with finger nail polish or use a leg band to make it easy to identify your pullets from your cockerels (roosters).

More chicken poop next time.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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