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Last night I put together three ad-hoc videos as responses to videos that others have posted. This is a new thing for me.
Keeping Chicks Warm At Night
This is a response to a commenter that had questions about chick brooders.
Rambles On Chickens And Food
No Solutions
posted by Weaseldog @ 6:20 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I had trouble w/ vid #2, but 1 and 3 were awesome! I'll try 2 again later, I only got the first minute.
Anyway, it is amazing how many people are sleep walking toward the cliff. There are so many misconceptions out there, and the banks and corporations encourage that dependency. Looking around at my fellow citizens I'm afraid that they may become my biggest problem at some point. Egad, so many are so utterly helpless that if things break down we'll have to sit with our shotgun across our lap just to keep an eye on the old beanpole. Good luck weaseldog!
Very good Bud!
I watched the 3 videos and you know I agree. watching the first one made me wish to god I had the equipment I had as a kid but I know in a pinch I can find it. i had my own incubator, heaters, feeders, waterers, you name it. that was good with the heater. That's all you need.
We use to raise 30,000 broilers every nine weeks and when we shipped them out I slaughtered 30 for our consumption. At school I was the student foreman and we raised everything, poultry, animal, and veggie wise.
I am pretty lucky living where I am as I have a friend who works at the local poultry farm and brings me organic eggs frequently enough. Plus our friend a couple towns over has a small farm and they know their stuff too.
I enjoyed your ramblings. That was pretty good with the guitar. You are right though. We do not matter and have no control as we are raced to this road of destruction. Luckily some of us are long prepared. Thing is just hunker down and hope survival gets you through as we have no idea how far this is going but I expect all the way and plan on being one that is left.
Talking to my neighbors most do not have a clue oh well! I have a son who I will be flying to Florida in December to drive back here with where he plans on doing his time with the union and he gets it so it will be nice to have some help around too.
#2 awesome as well. A few comments.
1) I encourage people to keep some extra food around the house. This serves to beat inflation, protect against disruptions, and keeps food producers in business during times of high fuel prices. City folk can't grow much of their own food. I do not tell them to go buy 500# of stuff they don't normally eat.
2) I worry about you getting sick more so than the chickens. Do you wear a dust mask while handling bird droppings and such?
3) Peak oil may well lead to starvation, but, IMO, it will have more to do with the mis-allocation of resources than anything. What we really have is a monetary problem. Yachts, jets, the military, etc., will all be filled before midwestern tractors or Ethiopian bellies. Sad.
Good job on the vid weaseldog.
For a small scale operation like I have, chickens droppings aren't much of a problem. They'd have to have a virus that could infect humans, before they'd be a danger.
The only time I really deal with the dust, is when cleaning the nest box. It's enough then to just hold my breath.
And oddly enough, birds incompletely digest their food. In large scale operations, chicken poop is mixed with grain and then fed to cattle. This helps reduce waste a bit.
I've found that dogs love to eat wet chicken poop. There's no accounting for the things that dogs enjoy eating.
I'm told that the space that I keep my chickens in, is big enough to house 30 birds. I only have eight adult birds. So the poop is spread out and there's little odor except when it's been dry for months and then we get a bit of rain. But then when that happens, every yard that has dogs, stinks too.
I may end up with 14 birds when my eggs hatch and the chicks I have now grow up. But we'll have to see. My current dogs haven't been trained not to eat the chicks. Ginger already grabbed one and ran away with it. She didn't hurt it, but she had a tight grip on it.
Thor just sits back and watches. I think he knows that chicks aren't toys.
A few years ago, when Ella (lost dog) was a pup, she broke into the pen and played with the chicks until their squeakers gave out. I lost eight chicks before I discovered what she was doing. She was tossing them high into the air and catching them. When they quit squeaking, she'd get another. Sadly, she found the pullets easiest to catch. I ended up with a big batch of cockerels to butcher, and few hens.
So I need to keep an eye on Ginger and make sure she doesn't eat any of the chicks.
Then there's red tail hawks and chicken hawks that come and visit. At night, I've occasionally seen a Great Horned Owl near the pen.
So I don't count my chicks until they grow up...
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