Many people often wonder how chickens fare in the scorching heat of summer. It can be quite challenging to keep them cool, but with a few simple preparations and some refreshing treats, their well-being can be ensured. Chickens struggle to maintain their coolness when temperatures soar into the 90s. To alleviate their discomfort, it is essential to provide them with ample shade and a constant supply of fresh, cool water. Additionally, offering cold or frozen treats can greatly assist in keeping them comfortable. Another beneficial practice is to provide them with access to dust or moist sand for self-dusting, which not only aids in their cooling but also helps ward off any pesky mites. Another way to aide in their comfort is to set up misters. If you are fortunate enough to have running faucets close to your coop then this makes an excellent way to help cool down their pen and environment . Misters are a great way to help keep their dust moist but no wet or mucky. In our garden, any excess or overgrown produce that may not be suitable for processing is chilled and then offered to the chickens. Personally, I find immense joy in observing them peck away at frozen corn on the cob. This way, nothing goes to waste in our household, and our feathered friends enjoy a delightful treat as well. Hopefully this helps anyone wondering how to ensure the comfort of their chickens during the heat wave. Sheri.... Windy Flat Farm Seriously? Have you seen those egg prices? What in the chicken egg is going on here? I have to say there is a lot of theories out there as to why egg prices have sky rocketed.
I can tell you from raising chickens, that it's not cheap. Prices of feed have gone up, along with anything we might need to keep our chickens healthy. On a small scale, back yard eggs should be around $6 a dozen or more if we were going to make any money at selling eggs. So what's been going on? There has been many homesteaders complaining about feed quality causing low egg production or no egg production at all. I would have to say from our own experience that there has been a change to the feed. We switched to an organic feed along with other food we supplement our chickens with and now we are finally seeing our hens starting to lay again. I can't say that it's all about food. Light, erratic temperatures, and storms can all effect production. Winter is the time most chickens naturally start to cut back. For us, we are down to only 5 older laying hens. The rest are still young. We got the chicks in August so it's still early for them to be laying. Remember from chick to laying can take up to 8 to 10 months. We do have any early bird though. We've got one of the young hens starting to lay. Super exciting. But this isn't just about back yard chickens. Look at big production farms. They contend with bird flu, and any other issues that big farms have to deal with. If they had to cull their layers, well, they aren't any different than any other chicken. It still takes time for a chick to mature in order to lay an egg. Shipping plays a part in their struggles, and the latest was that of a big chicken farm catching fire and loosing all their hens to the fire, from what I saw on the news it was something like a 1,000 birds. Now my personal opinion, there's more behind this just like all the food issues right now. "Control the food, control the people." Not my quote. Look it up or google it. Just sad and heart breaking. The good news is that even if you live in town, you can have your own back yard chickens. Check with your city codes, they have limits, and you might not be allowed to have a rooster, but you don't need one to get eggs anyways. A couple of chickens won't cost much but can produce enough for you and your family. Or better yet, find local farmers selling directly and support them. You'll get good organic, and delicious eggs. You want these guys on your side. Treat them good, they'll treat you good. It might be time to learn some new skills! Sheri... Windy Flat Farm I'm super excited. Once again we have chicks on the farm. I wanted to get some in the spring but they sold out faster than I could get them ordered. The chicks are now about two weeks old. I spent some time prepping the coop for their arrival and got it all put together the day they arrived.
I was a bit behind because we have been busy painting the exterior of our house and garage. It's been a long hot summer, but the outside of our house is finally fished. With that being done I can now turn my attention back to the homestead. The chicks are growing quick and are loving their new home. Right now I have them in a stock tank in the coop which I cover at night and heat with a heat lamp. And yes, even in this heat they still need it at night due to the temperatures dipping into the 70's to lower 60's. Once they are 6 weeks old and have their new feathers coming in they should be fine. They are so much fun. They love feed time and are happy and very friendly. They are not timid or afraid of us. These chicks have no problems being handled. Summer will be ending soon so I will need to prep a place for them for colder weather in the chicken house. I have a setup in mind and will be working on that as it gets a bit cooler. I'll keep you posted on how integration goes when it's time. I've posted some photos below. I hope you enjoy! Sheri....Windy Flat Farm It's been an interesting summer with the chickens. First we went through a molt that seemed to last forever. Our little gals who produced famously suddenly dried up. Not much we could do about the molt season.
All you can really do is wait it out, work on their diet and make sure they have plenty of water. I like to add apple cider vinegar to their water to help with any potential bug and virus issues. We started to get over the molt when I noticed that a hen was getting very brood-ish. I wasn't sure if she was laying. Then there were two, and three, and then four. What? This is nuts. I've never had this many chickens get broody at once together. The worst part was none of them were laying. Now I should have taken the time to really focus on this, but a homestead - building site is super busy everyday. I couldn't seem to squeeze it in. I should have made time. Breaking up a brood is no laughing matter. A few weeks went by and I had had enough of them trying to attack me. They can get pretty mean. Aside from their nasty disposition you have to worry about their health. They don't eat much and they aren't drinking water like they should and now that we are into triple digit heat, that's no good. So I fenced off half the pen and made chicken jail. I thought I was so clever. By the way if you're going to do this make sure to really secure your partition fence. These gals are escape artists. Anyways, I sectioned off half the pen and placed the broody gals in there. It was time to kick them off and out of their nests. This is where is get's tricky. I didn't secure the bottom of the fence, I came out the next morning and what do you know? Two of the four hens where missing from the jail. I checked the hen house and there they were back to brooding. I had to laugh these gals were pretty sneaky. They left no trace of where they were getting out. Back to the drawing board. I expanded the height of the partition fence and secured the bottom of the fence with landscape brick. That did the trick! They have now been in jail for 3 days and today I got one egg out in the jail, and no broody hens. They were up scratching and pecking and drinking. It may take sometime, but it was just what was needed. If you're fighting a broody hen, break it up, kick them out, send them to brooding jail, and get back to normal. Sheri... Windy Flat Farm If you think you'd like to get chickens and want to learn more, check out these chicken supplies and great books from Lehman's. There's two ways to look at excess scrap or materials lying around your home. Is it costing you by paying for new materials instead of going through any scrap you have or are you cleaning up and scrapping it and making money off of it? With the rise of inflation, I would venture to say that you could do both. Save yourself money by going through that scrap or sell it. Now's the time to do that. Everything is in high demand and somethings you can't even get or there's a wait time for it. Eugene decided it was time to clean up some of our left over materials and instead of scrapping it he could find some useful ways to upgrade the chicken coop. He's done a great job. Both sides of the coop are now covered to help in the winter time and when it's raining. The chickens really love the extra space out of the elements and yet still have their full run. We had left over fencing logs and metal so he got busy and built a second lean-to. He then took all those feeders that we had stored away and never used and put them to use in a more economical way, helping us save on feed costs and to keep their feeders and water much cleaner. Egg production is down due to molting season, but it won't be long and they will be back to full production. So instead of letting things pile up, why not put those scrap piles to some real use? If we can do it so can you! Now's the time to get more self sufficient. So what will you do? Scrap it or cash it? Sheri... Windy Flat Farm In late April we added 10 more chicks to the flock along with 2 ducks. They have been so much fun. Once the chicks got big enough to be out in the pen, I sectioned it off and created a pen of their own. This made integrating them very easy once they were big enough to be moved in with the full grown chickens.
Every day as we would go out to feed and collect eggs, we'd watch the adult chickens clamor next to the chicks pen. They were so curious about these little ladies. As time went on and the began to grow to almost full size, all I had to do was pull the fence between them. Oh there was a few arguments among them, but it didn't take long for them to decided who was who and what the pecking order was to be. The ducks took over our yard for the summer and have been so much fun. They have quite the personality and make for great guard animals. They let us know when someone or thing is around that shouldn't be. Soon our egg production will pick up as the chicks become of age to start laying. I do have some prepping for winter to do on their pen before winter, but it won't take much or long to have it ready for them and the cold. Sheri... Windy Flat Farm Over the last month the girls have been having problems. What's going on here?
As Eugene has been collecting eggs daily, we have noticed thinning egg shells, and a very strange waffling. Ok, so we've checked water quality, and yes winter is still here, so the cold could be causing part of this, however, there still was issues with the eggs. After some quick searches from other homesteaders we have narrowed it down to lack of vitamins. The gals just are not getting enough greens. So we headed to our local farm store and found some great vitamin supplements and extra protein. After only a couple of days of this their eggs were back to beautiful hard brown shells and the quality we have become accustom to. So if you are having issues with your own egg quality check the flock for any health issues, which we did first but they were all happy and bouncy. Next make sure you are giving them warm water daily through the cold weather and make sure to add some extra vitamins. I have included pictures of some of the waffle or dimpling of the eggs along with a comparison between our normal eggs and the ones that are thinning and lightening in color. On my next trip to the farm store I'll write a review on some of these products we are trying and anything new that I find that will help until spring comes and we can get the girls fresh greens. Winter time is no joke for our little gals and we do our utmost to make sure they are happy and healthy. Sheri...Windy Flat Farm I just wanted to do a quick follow up from my last post about the products we have been using. We finally made it back to the farm store, (by the way one of my favorite places), where we picked up some extra meal worms and vitamins for the chickens.
I just love this time of year. It's chick season. I really wanted to buy some chicks and some baby ducks which they had some in stock, but I remained strong. We made it out of the store with the necessities for the chickens, dog treats for the weenies, and some berry plants. They had Logan berries, raspberries, and black berries. While we have raspberries, I don't have any black berries and I've been dying to get Logan berries, so I was super excited to see that they had some. Soon I will get them planted in pots to start then will transfer to their new place in the garden. I am super excited for spring and garden season. Here are the products that I bought for the chickens to help boost their production, soon we won't need to supplement as the snow melts off and I can get the out scratching in the field for a bit. Oh and of course a picture of some baby chicks! Enjoy! Sheri....Windy Flat Farm So in the cold of winter most chickens slow down egg production. My girls are Orpington Buffs. They actually don't mind the cold, except wind, and they don't slow down production. Daily we get around 13 to 20 eggs.
Eugene enjoys going out and taking care of them. We do sell them locally. I never charge going rate. I'm not in it to be a chicken farmer, although if it were up to Eugene we would be. Who knows maybe in the spring we'll add to the flock. I've been looking into what I need to do to get certified organic and USDA so I can sell to local restaurants. We'll see what becomes of that but for now I'm happy with just having the eggs and a few customers to help supplement the feed. I'll post some more pictures of our production later in the week. But for now I at least have gotten you updated on the coop! Sheri- Windy Flat Farm.... |
SheriTrue story my 4-H animal was a chicken! Archives
July 2023
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