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This is the first year we’ve had heritage buckeye chickens, more than one rooster, and a new phenomenon – hens with bare backs. We have nineteen hens, and one rooster per every ten hens is recommended, so two roosters aren’t too many. Still, some of the buckeye hens are literally getting the feathers worn off their backs. There are four of them with bare [...] Continue reading Bare Back Chickens!  Giant Yellow Eckendorf This year, we’re adding a new vegetable mainstay to the garden – not for us, but for the chickens. Mangel beets used to be grown extensively as a livestock feed on small farms; however, usage dwindled in the US as large farms became the norm. Today, it’s being rediscovered on small farmsteads as [...] Continue reading Growing Mangel Beets for Chickens  Spring finally seems to be here, so in the first semi-dry weekend, we cleaned and inspected the year-old chicken coop. We use the “deep-litter” method for managing coop sanitation, which basically means putting down a 4” layer of pine shavings (the “litter”) mixed with a little diatomaceous earth, adding more pine shavings as the ratio [...] Continue reading Semi-Annual Chicken Coop Cleaning & Evaluation  Well, a hen’s reproductive system consists of an ovary and an oviduct. The ovary contains undeveloped egg yolks (the number of yolks (or ovum) that are contained here are the total number of eggs the chicken will lay in her life) that are released into the oviduct as each yolk develops, usually about an hour [...] Continue reading What Causes Double Yolks?  Springtime is definitely the best time of year to get new chicks; and for us getting them in the next month or so is probably optimal. I was trying to compare options from several hatcheries but couldn’t find a condensed listing of them, so I came up with this one for easy reference. These are all larger, reliable hatcheries that also [...] Continue reading Time for Chicks – Free Hatchery Catalogs/Links!  In the US today, we’re being offered more and more choices in food quality; and it’s because many of us are demanding locally grown foods that are antibiotic, hormone, and pesticide free. In terms of eggs quality, it’s not clear sometimes what the choices mean – here’s a rundown on the different types of eggs: Continue reading Choices in Egg Quality  It’s time to process the 11 Buckeye roosters that didn’t make the cut; and although that’s not exactly pleasant, I’m expecting big things from the meals they’ll be featured in. That’s because heritage birds like the Buckeyes have something that today’s supermarket birds don’t – they have flavor. The commercial chickens grown for meat today have [...] Continue reading Heritage Birds for Real Chicken Flavor  The Buckeyes are 27 weeks old today; and a couple of the 14 hens have begun laying. The eggs seem so tiny compared to the Red Comet eggs (at an average of 2 1/4 ounces); however, they weigh in at 1 3/8 ounces, slightly larger than the weight of the Comets first eggs (they were 1 1/4 ounce). It’s been a great journey [...] Continue reading The Buckeyes Are Laying!  Rooster 38 at 18 Weeks The Buckeye roosters are driving us crazy with their crowing and fighting (they’re now 24 weeks old), so we need to select two roosters to keep. And, it’s important to pick the best two, because they’ll be the foundation for the flock. I get a lot of questions about why anyone [...] Continue reading Keeping Roosters  The Buckeye chicks are 21 weeks old now; and are starting to look like real chickens. We ordered 25 day-old chicks, received 30, lost two within the first three days; and the remaining 28 prospered. I wrote about how we intended to raise them when they first arrived (see Raising Day-Old Chicks); but we learned [...] Continue reading Raising Buckeye Chicks  After successfully raising the six Red Comet chicks to laying age and twenty eight Buckeye chicks through the first twelve weeks this year, we thought it was going to be smooth sailing. But no, things never go quite as planned….. As the Buckeye’s were moving into week 13, they abruptly started picking the feathers off of [...] Continue reading Feather Picking Chickens  Red Comet As we move further into fall and shorter days, chickens naturally reduce egg production. They lay eggs based on day length; long days and increasing day length mean spring to a chicken – time when they should be producing many eggs and raising chicks. The declining day length and harsher winter environment aren’t [...] Continue reading Shorter Days = Fewer Eggs?  The more I learn about chickens, the more I think they are truly remarkable creatures. Just before laying an egg, the hen adds a protective layer called “bloom” or cuticle to the outside of the egg. This coating seals the shell pores, prevents bacteria from getting inside the shell, and reduces moisture loss from the [...] Continue reading Egg “Bloom”  In addition to practicing Biosecurity to protect chickens from disease, vaccination is an effective way to prevent or reduce specific diseases in poultry. Since we’ve had issues with Infectious Bronchitis (IB) in the past and it’s extremely contagious for poultry, we decided to vaccinate our chickens against it. Although we plan to maintain a small-closed flock thereby [...] Continue reading Vaccinating Chickens Against Infectious Bronchitis/Newcastle Disease  The Buckeyes turned five weeks old today, and left the brooder for the big world of the barn stall.
These Buckeyes seem much more inquisitive than the Red Comets we just raised, they act like they own the world.
When we opened up the brooder, I just sat back with the camera [...] Continue reading Buckeyes Leave The Brooder |
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