Homesteading

[Kev]

All things chickens, right here.. 🐓

Discussion

[Amber]

Anyone have success raising chicken’s when your property has an HOA that says no?? I wanna build a hidden coup or something. ?

[Kev]

How big is your plot and distance to nearest neighbors??.. The biggest thing might be the clucking reaching the ears of neighbors..

[Eliza]

Chickens love activities and people. I’m pretty sure that if I took a hike every day into all of the swampy nooks and crannies of this one acre property they would gladly follow behind me.

At confluence I met someone who warned me to have redundancies with their water and food because it’s so easy for them to knock something over and starve. All this to say: someone not far from you already has chickens (or wants them) and it takes a village! If I go to M&S I hope that my neighbor and a guy I met on freedom cells will be willing to come over and hang with them!

Apparently there is a cow share website and this is how I plan to approach learning about and getting milk. (I have to find the note from confluence when Molly E. Mentioned the site…)

Also – if you go on YouTube there are tons of house pet chickens. There are chicken diapers and people make it look so easy. They are basically puppies that provide food ?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Eliza.

[Mike]

Redundancies are good but there are also great chicken feeders and water systems that are ‘chicken proof’. They cost a bit of money but are well worth it! Like our chicken feeder that requires them to step on a foot pad to open up access to their food. It prevents as much spillage and also rodents and other buggers from getting into their food…

[Brian & Hallie]

Does the HOA specifically exclude ducks? That might be a work around – or try out the Anastasia thing and let the ducks migrate in the winter and come back to you :). They are free ducks, who like to seasonally visit then – not livestock. If you go stealth chickens, don’t go for Rhode Island Reds – in our experience, our Rhode Island Red was our noisiest chicken! We have a buff orpington who is a lot quieter and our barred rock and black sex links are a lot quieter as well. Our chickens make less noise the more range or variety they have had. Even a small chicken tractor moved frequently kept them busy. I built a chicken moat around our orchard at our last property and here they have a fenced tree covered hillside – really only hear them when they are laying eggs or if something causes an alarm. If they get bored, they get noisy.

We lived with an HOA years ago and the terms of that one said they couldn’t step onto your property to inspect – so they had to stay in the front of our house-road or sidewalk. So, in our backyard, I ran a fence line just inside the edges of the sidewalls of our house which they could not see from the front of the house – that’s how I built a dog run with fencing that wasn’t allowed by HOA rules. I talked to our neighbor first who could see what I was doing, and they didn’t care, so we were all good. I got the love letters from the HOA for some other things which I had fun responding to, but they couldn’t do anything about the fence since they had no legal ability to see it. :).

[Amber]

Thank you so much for this info!! I will have to look into our hoa rules!! I did contact a farmer a mile away to see if he might rent me space for a chicken coup so hoping he says yes!! So great to connect with you about kiddos and chickens!! Your property sounds amazing!! Good job!!

One other mom tip that I thought of is the more tummy time you can give her the more she will have to use her neck to stabilize her head… So, I know when a kiddo is struggling it’s easy to want to pick them up all the time, but she needs that tummy time (best in the grass) to be able to Stabilize her spine and hold her head up. As a baby her head weighs 30% of her body. ? and the stronger you can keep your energy and nervous system she will pick up on that you are regulating her at all times. ?

Might be worth looking into Eileen mckussick’s sonic slider to chime and press on her skin to change vibration in her body too lmk if you need website link

Sounds like you are doing a good job with her!!❤️

[Brian & Hallie]

Thanks Amber – we really appreciate connecting with you as well! We have wound up moving more times than we would’ve anticipated over the past 7 years, but it’s given us a lot of different environments to operate in. We’ve started 4 food forests in the last 10 years or so – they have become our footprints along the way, and I love planting things and seeing what can grow! I really hope you can find a way to have chickens in your life – they are seriously fun to care for and get to know. I like to set up the runs so I can see them while I wash dishes – great entertainment! We have a couple chickens that we have moved from Washington state to Utah to Idaho and now back to Washington… :).

Tummy time in the grass is a great idea. She has been much more unsettled and vocal in the last couple weeks, so you are totally right, it feels the easiest to just pick her up too often. Taking her outside is about the only way I can settle her down fairly quickly (Hallie can nurse her…), so I will start putting her down in the grass when I take her out. It’s incredible to think that her head is 30% of her weight, but it actually makes sense when I think about how it feels to pick her up. What a workout the tummy time is when I think about it. We have a sonic slider – Hallie loves it! We have used it with our son, but haven’t on our daughter yet – good idea for rebalancing her.

[Kev]

Chicken yard

This is a good example of the kind of chicken yard I eventually want to build out – a large fenced-in yard that is itself a regenerating foodscape, where all the needs of the chickens are met, and you don’t need external inputs.. What these folks are doing here is a taste of how creative I think you could be with it..

For chicken food, I’d want to grow Sunflowers & Flax for the healthy fats (maybe easy-to-grow Chia as well).. Grains, I would want to do mainly Amaranth and Buckwheat (and maybe Millet and/or Sorghum).. All drought- and heat-tolerant.. Lots of potential with annual vegetables (as they show here), as well as nut trees and berry-producing bushes, etc..

Choppin’ n droppin’ n producing lots of rich compost.. Perhaps with a system like this, you don’t need to focus much on a conventional compost pile – send your scraps to the chickens for processing, and then scoop it all up from the ground, go from there.. ? (Video is 14 minutes long)..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsr0rxYQOYs

[Eliza]

Yes, kev – at “sovereignty farm” they had an orchard within the coop and it was all regenerating – they also throw the local butcher’s bone scraps and the chickens love to rip the meat off the bone and then they use some sort of heavy duty farmer mafia blowtorch grinder or something and add the bones back to the soil. Pretty nifty. My chickens love meat too! The yard has so many grubs and Jed and I try to dig up patches and feed them the grubs / and the chickens LOVE them so much / until their little food ouch is so full it looks like they will tip over. Chickens really know what they want to eat…so what is located in their space is less important in my mind…however: having a larger pen (our’s is safe but not exciting for them all day) that provides ample space, protection and exploration is paramount. Knowing my chickens – I feel bad for vegan chickens out there hahaha

[Kev]

My thought on having a large chicken yard built out as an elaborate foodscape is “why not?”.. Some folks might say it’s “too much” to take on, or there’s other priorities.. A foodscape is a foodscape, so just work the chickens into it, not as a separate thought from growing food otherwise (i.e. “in the garden”).. Does that make sense??

Yeah, I’m all about this, making a system that’s as integrated as possible.. Chickens will be the best composters too..

[Brian & Hallie]

We have nut trees planted in our chicken run and have grown elderberries and mulberries around and in their run as well. It works great – just have to protect the young trees/roots from the scratching and digging until they get a little bigger. I also built a chicken tunnel and moat around our last food forest/orchard sort of like the idea in the Eric Toensmeier’s Edible Forest Garden book. I cross fenced it to rotate the sections around the orchard that the chickens had access to, and then was able to sow clovers and other chicken crops when they were rotated into the other areas to create more feed for them. We noticed the chickens presence helped everything in the orchard grow better – think it was a combo of energetics, insect balancing, and chicken fertilizer.

[Eliza]

I totally agree, absolutely @kwayne – food forest with chickens is absolutely the best way to go on all fronts

–
@alfawarrior i guess it’s time to get them a proper feeder. I liked the intimacy of refilling their food and water…but I regularly also feed them water like from my hands…so things are getting out of hand. It’s time to get smart and normal and automated.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Eliza.

[Brian & Hallie]

We’ve used 2 of these feeders for the last couple years with success – they seem to waste far less food and are a handy way to store the extra food and be able to leave for a week +. They still get lots of interaction from us (especially our son) and they do lots of foraging in a large and luxurious chicken area right now. :). This company also has a DIY kit that you can attach to any barrel etc that you may have already to keep the cost down a bit.

https://rentacoop.com/collections/poultry-feeders/products/outdoor-rainproof-galvanized-chicken-feeder?variant=44886837919987

[Kev]

This is a follow-up video to the one I posted above about a chicken yard being a foodscape.. I thought it was worth posting.. I especially like the technique of using logs and stones & thorny canes to protect new plantings from chicken destruction.. and, logs & stones become breeding grounds for grubs n worms — more chicken food.. (Video is 16 minutes long)..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-e0fRP-R08

[Kev]

Another update from Edible Acres regarding their chicken yard as an integrated part of their composting system.. Good ideas here.. 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaOP2mUIc0E

[Amber]

This was sooo good!! Plans!! 👍🏻

[Kev]

Copying & pasting what I said to you in the other thread —–

Yeah, I’m totally hot on a large chicken yard being central to a homestead.. Such a better idea than a discrete and separate “compost pile”.. I see it as “processing depot” where much of the regeneration occurs, much more complex and integrated than doing things separately — i.e. a typical compost pile near the gardens.. For example, the walkways through the yard can be built up and enriched and eventually harvested as compost, that sorta idea, as the chickens are continuously enriching and processing things through..

In fact, I think when/if building a homestead from scratch, I’d start with the chicken yard first, with a foodscape, and build out from there.. Makes more sense to establish the regenerating processing depot first, and work out from there.. A foundational thing..

With a group homestead, I’d surely like to have someone in the mix that knows chickens to at least some degree.. If not, we can figure it out..

And hey, in that video, the best part was the hens dust-bathing in the dry dirt.. That was fun!!

[Mike]

Been watching these guys for about 6 years now! Nice to catch up with them thanks.

[Kev]

Yeah, good to hear!.. I love their innovative and integrative approach to all things, and understanding of natural systems.. Have been especially keen on their water catchment schemes — catching run-off into channels and placing ponds at the best spots to be filled naturally, etc.. I’m especially keen on water catchment, right out the gate, first thing that needs to be done on a new homestead, so have been studying swales, channeling, and catchment ponds.. Edible Acres has a video up that shows all these mini-channels running through a veggie garden that provide for infiltration into the soil.. Love all that.. And hey, I just started watching the AV farm tour, and the initial section about water catchment and management just finished up.. Wish I’d been there!.. I’m so intrigued, and probably woulda had all sorts of questions.. 🐓

[Mike]

Yep water is #1 first priority.

They also use the thermal properties of compost to heat their chicken coops during the winter which pretty brilliant! Stacking functions like a Russian Tetris savant!

[Kev]

And Russian nesting dolls on top!.. I haven’t seen their video on using the heat generated from compost.. But not a new idea to me.. Came across some video last year where this guy was gonna experiment with using a large compost pile to heat his home (or at least contribute to the effort).. His set-up entailed flexible pipes that were buried in a spiral pattern in a compost pile that was contained within a wire enclosure (so it was a contained cylinder-shaped pile, so laying the pipes wasn’t some haphazard silliness).. And then the heat would transfer through water flowing through the pipes.. And I’ve seen such systems where the flow of water occurs naturally and passively due to heat/temperature differentials (absorption and release), or by pumping.. The video turned out to be conceptual though, and reference to a future experiment.. But, still, good idea — like geothermal greenhouses.. It’s also the exact same set-up as using a wood-burning stove to heat the water in a water heater — the ones I’ve seen use the passive flow of water within the pipes, driven by the heat absorption and release.. Never seen a system like that in-person though, but yet another one of my 1257 ideas I’m keen on.. If you can avoid external pumping, and set up a passive system, that’s perfect..

[Kev]

Sweetness right here.. Dry hatching vs. a humidified environment is a new thing to me..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLMizt44_9Q

[Jena]

trump signed the vax all chickens thing….”to prevent bird flu mass cullings” ?????????

[Eliza]

Chicken prolapse uterus

I’ve been dealing with that for a few days – if anyone wants to learn from me in the future – just making a note here for the record.

[Kev]

Did you remedy the situation??

[Eliza]

Workin’ in it – quite an adventure filled with colorful country characters – fit for a television series…and hey, turns out there is a good use for masks after all…

This lady has got enough chloroform to take down a local mob boss…so i let her inject the chicken with this stuff….meanwhile I’m just doing a lot of diaper changing, light internal “work” involving scabbed over chicken tube tissues…bathing…more diapers changing…ugh. I would have eaten soup but ya’ know, my hormone partner is all sensitive and civilized and libtarded – practically tried to be vegan every few years…

Meanwhile the cat is beside herself because she thinks that she has been replaced. Nurse Ratchett over here who is one of those country folk liberals (she’s almost 80, a couple of months ago she sliced two of her fingers off doing woodworking…and then ended-up talking to the nurses the whole time waiting to be brought to a different hospital with a hand surgeon…very tough, ex punk, recently avoided jail, says you can “barter for cash” 😉

She thinks trump is an problem, kept working it into the convo…

I’m like lady:

You’re not afraid of anything why are you getting weaponized and brainwashed by this political stuff? Yup, she wants flouride, vaxxines…whatever other agenda stuff haha 😂 it’s like truly…quite surreal because she loves folk chicken medicine but…somehow has been brainwashed…

Then again she smokes cigarettes so – ya’ know….everyone picks their poison out here. Pretty hard to avoid some kind of drugs from coffee to street rd rugs for everyone it seems…

Her husband is a pharmaceutical chemist turned circuit board chemist (not surprising…we are “wet wear” after all) and she used to be a gold jeweler…so there is definitely an alchemy vibe left in the air after she left….

Yup a real poultry-mass-hole extravaganza…after she’d taken about half of my pine needles off of a struggling

Sacred tree for potions she drove off in her “chicken nurse” vanity plate mini van…hopped-up on pharmaceuticals and 15 cups of coffee a day.

Man o man…I could write a book on today and she said she actually already wrote a book about treating chickens and hasn’t published it yet….so I dunno…

Seems

Brownie did It all on purpose (one of those photos is from

The internet but all brown chickens look the same to me) haha

[Kev]

Hahaha.. well, you already got the start of a short story here in this post.. so, develop it, woulda??.. and the story will need some good illustration.. 😁

So that photo of the plastic cup-diaper, that’s from the internet, not your hen??

You’re gonna be a farm girl afterall.. 👩‍🌾

[Eliza]

Yup, that was the model photo. It turns out that masks really do make great diapers: very handy. I shouldn’t have thrown them all away I guess…

[Jena]

Eliza, how is it going?…..your smoking chicken lady is a conundrum….just like my sister!

[Eliza]

Chicken doing ok after nearly loosing my mind with her in the house and tending to her / having to stay home every day for weeks…putting face diapers on her bum and sticking her innards back in over over and over again. I can’t believe my sweet man of the house saw that she ought to be saved and not eaten. He really has a soft spot for animals. It is wild he bashes rocks all day. His workers say that they lose a lot of time because he always rehomes squirrels that are living in a wall or mice or any animals that get perturbed by the construction, and he even rehomes moss.

Honestly, this bird flu thing is overwhelming from a viroliegy/activism perspective. There is actually another virus beginning with an M which is like chicken dandruff disease…

I am going to need to really hone in on this loony bird stuff because they’re definitely preparing a long game bird propaganda power grab.

[Kev]

I re-home everything myself, moss included!.. (but not cockroaches)..

But it’s also safe to imagine that a concerted bird-poisoning program is in place.. as far as I’m concerned, it’s been many many decades in the making, running parallel to and in-concert with the Rockefeller usurpation of medicine — i.e. it’s when all the toxic poisons were introduced en masse and in earnest, to poison this planet and everything on it.. This place is very sick from poisoning, and it’s been an *integrated* and holistic plan — not one thing, not a duality, not a cause-and-effect.. all things, all angles, all dimensions.. the evidence is under our noses in place sight.. Logic and a wee-bit of basic deductive reasoning tell us that..

[Author]

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