6 Month update on Baking Soda vs Rats

 https://youtu.be/ZLLZe3Qbv1k

How I solved my rat problem

 https://youtu.be/qMh3pi0B6bU

PVC Chicken Waterer

Check out my video where I build a chicken waterer using a PVC pipe. Very easy and very effective. This addition has streamlined my daily feedings dramatically. Thank you for watching and make sure you SUBSCRIBE to the Ole Yankee Farm channel on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/P78XU5wwIbY

My Chicken Predator Experiences and Steps to Keep your Birds Safe...

Having owned chickens for close to 20 years, I have lost many of my birds to various Predators. Living in Eastern Connecticut, we have a variety of animals that love chicken.

To date, I have lost more birds to fox than any other predator. But I have also lost chickens to dogs (my dogs), hawks, raccoons, opossums, skunks and rats.

Normally a fox will simply take a bird and run off. You might see some feathers if the bird put up a fight. If the bird was still roosting they are very easy targets as you may well know. Early in my chicken-owning experience, I had a fox take one of my roosters that was roosting on a lower fence rail on our horse pen. It was early in the morning and I heard a raucous outside. When I ran out with my gun, I could see the fox running in the back of my property with a chicken in her mouth. I assumed I was now safe for the rest of the day, since she had gotten her meal already. Wrong. This was pup season and it was apparent that this fox grabbed this rooster to feed her pups since she returned a couple hours later to get one for herself.  I found that fox will hunt early in the morning and even towards Noon. They will also come out at dusk.

We ended up getting a Great Pyrenees guardian dog for the farm. Dixie was brought up with goats and she was allowed to roam free on our farm. She would also patrol our neighbor’s farms. Thankfully she was very friendly with people and all my neighbors loved her disposition and the fact that she kept their animals safe too.

Dixie would patrol all night and then go to sleep on our porch during the day. We had a fox that figured out Dixie’s sleeping schedule and exploited it. Dixie would be sound asleep around 10am, so that is when this fox would grab a chicken. We lost about 4 birds before the fox tangled with the wrong hen. Blue Bonnie was a blue Orpington that we had for a few years. Her previous owner did not like how broody and bossy she was so we ended up taking her in. My wife came home one afternoon to see a bunch of blue feathers in front of the barn and Bonnie was nowhere to be found. The fox had gotten another one! Based on the pile of feathers, Bonnie must of put up quite a fight. I was surprised that Dixie had not been alerted. To our surprise, Bonnie showed up later that night with a few less feathers. She appeared to have survived the fox attack. After several days of no losses, we figured out that because Bonnie put up such a fight with the fox, it must have woke Dixie up and Dixie apparently was able to chase the fox off, if not injure it.

Not sure if it is typical of the Great Pyrenees, but it seemed that Dixie would bite the predator in such a way that it would strike either a mortal blow or do enough damage where the predator would scurry off into the woods and eventually die. One night Dixie had an obvious tangle with a skunk. The smell woke me out of a sound sleep. A couple months later, I found a dead skunk under my barn that appeared to have been dead for a while.

Skunks will take a chicken, but normally they are after the eggs. Skunks seem to be more opportunistic than anything else. Where a fox will systematically test your fencing to find a weakness or dig under a fence. A skunk will look for the path of least resistance.

I’ve heard of people losing birds within their pens and cannot find any obvious breach. One thing that people forget is to put a good cover over the top of your pen. Keep in mind that Raccoons are very good climbers and are very adept with their human-like hands. Some chicken owners will put the plastic netting over the top of a pen to ward off hawks without thinking that if a raccoon or opossum can climb your pen, they can most likely chew through the plastic and easily get into your pen.

The way I predator-proof my pens…

I will put 1” poultry wire over the top of my pens. Poultry wire comes with a thin wire that is wrapped around the roll. Use this thin wire to wire the seams together so there is no gaps that a raccoon or opossum can get into. I also like to put a stronger wire on the bottom of the pen about 4 feet high. You can use a hardware cloth or 1” poultry wire with a stiff garden fence over it. Something that a fox or raccoon cannot squeeze through.

Make sure you use a generous amount of fasteners when attaching the poultry wire to the wood frame. I like to use at least a 1” staple every 4 inches. Especially where the wire attaches to the bottom board that sits on the ground and at least a good five feet up each corner.

Around the perimeter, I like to place semi-heavy rocks, flat rocks work good. This deters anything from digging under the pen. Some people will bury a portion of the fence. This can work but after a while it will rust and break down.

Being breeders, we have multiple coops and pens. Each day, I will inspect my pens for any signs that a predator was trying to get in. I have found sections of the poultry wire that had little points on them as if something bit it and pulled on it. When I find this, I will double check the fasteners and maybe add a couple more.

Adding doors to your coops is also a good way to deter predators. I have seen some interesting automatic doors. My only concern with the automatic ones is once in a while, a late bird could get locked out and get stuck outside the entire night which makes them vulnerable. I also believe that you should be hands on with your birds to ensure their safety. So, if you have manual doors, you can do a head check each night before you shut the doors.

The placement of your coops can also be a deterrent to predators. I do not recommend putting them near a woods line. If you do not have a choice but to have your coop and pens near the woods, I would put up at least a 5 foot wire fence in the woods or a few feet away from your coops that will make it difficult for something to get into your yard. A motion light is not a bad idea either.

If you free range, you do take the chance of losing birds, but I actually prefer to free range my birds. They seem happier and I like seeing them peck around the yard. It is a good idea to have places that they can get underneath in case there is a hawk around. If you lose one to a fox or raccoon, I would lock them up for about a week. A fox or raccoon will return if they know there is a guaranteed meal. If they come up empty handed, after a few days they normally will move on.

You could also attempt to trap them, but I only recommend this if you have experience with relocating wild animals or have someone with experience doing it.

I hope my experiences and suggestions help keep your chickens safe.

-Sean

Horse Barn, Alpaca Barn...Chicken Barn!

Our 100+ year old barn has housed quite an array of livestock.  In an earlier blog I mention that it was set up for Oxen when we first purchased the farm. After raising up the loft and restructuring inside, I transitioned the barn to keep our horses. After several years of housing and birthing horses in the barn, Alpacas took up residence there along with a few goats.

Now the old barn is slated for an update to house our current focus, the chickens. Because our business took off so quickly and the acquisition of another chicken business, we had to quickly provide safe and clean housing for all these awesome new birds. The big horse stalls had room to make two coops in each one. Using wood from an old deck from a neighbor, I built a separate coop that houses four different breeds. We called this the “Chicken Suites”. My son and I went out into our woods and resourced some small locust trees. We used these small trees to frame out the pens for the suites.  Still needing more housing, Amy and I designed some “Chicken Cabins”. A 4’x4’ coop with 4’x8’ attached pens. These will house about 4 birds of different breeds each. In one day, I built eight of these cabins, it was a long day!

Now we are planning another big reno of the old barn. We will, of course, keep it’s old barn look on the outside, but I will be removing the stall walls and building coops on two sides with a center isle. All with attached pens. We are trying to centralize our birds to make it easier to feed and water, especially in the cold months. We may have to build a second barn that will attach to the current one. It will not be as tall but the same size footprint.

This is in addition to my plan to build a post and beam workshop fashioned after a barn at Old Sturbridge Village and our newest idea of building a greenhouse from repurposed windows. Next year we are also planning on transitioning an old alpaca paddock into a big garden.

We will be starting the Hatching and Brooder room build within the barn that I built in the next few weeks. If you’ve lost track, this was a workshop to a farm store to a yarn mill back to a farm store then back to a workshop and now will be a Hatcher/Brooder room. The attached feed room will then become my workshop. As you see, my workshop tends to bounce around, hence why I am planning a whole new barn for my new shop.

My work is never done here and for those who cannot sit still and like having an ongoing project all the time (like my son), a farm is for you.

-WF

Diversify your Farm (4)...

As with many of our ventures on the farm, we kind of stumble into things. We stumbled into the Alpaca business which led to the yarn business, etc. When our son lost his colt he expressed interest in Nigerian goats after seeing them at the Southwick Zoo. Amy did some research and purchased our first Nigerian goat. A baby female that we had to bottle feed. Her name was Delilah. Delilah led to a few more Nigerians including a few bucks. We still have about a dozen goats and still sell the baby's when we have them, but our newest farm animal is not really that new to our farm.

When we first moved to the farm I had always wanted to have chickens pecking around the yard. Nothing said farm like a few chickens. I borrowed a Styrofoam incubator from a friend and he gave be a bunch of fertile eggs. I knew very little about raising chickens from eggs, but I did it. I built a brooder box and a medium sized cage. Once the chicks were born, I kept them in the brooder box until they had their feathers and then moved them to the bigger cage. Once I felt they were big enough, I let them free range on the farm. So, we have had chickens on the farm for quite a while.

This past year, Amy decided that she wanted to focus on the chickens and start raising some to sell. We borrowed a bigger incubator and started filling it. It kind of became an obsession. We no longer would eat the eggs, we would immediately put them in the incubator. Amy was always excited to have baby chicks hatching almost every day. We would advertise on Craigslist and we would sell out of our chicks. This encouraged us to raise more and more. Amy started looking for more interesting breeds and became more serious about hatching specific breeds. The chick business took off for Amy. She was able to supplement her income nicely. We would have people calling and stopping at the farm almost daily looking for chicks.

We even tried our hand at Meat Birds. We raised 40 meat chicks and processed them ourselves once they were big enough. It took a little getting used to, but we ended up selling quite a few and the rest filled our freezer. Knowing that the chicken we were eating were cared for and live normal lives is piece of mind. Plus the meat was delicious!

Amy started sourcing her birds from other farms in order for her to keep up with the demand. We connected with a farm in Brooklyn CT. Recognizing that there was a market for quality chickens of specific breeds, we formed a "Micro Hatchery". After some hemming and hawing, we all sat down and conjured up The Hatching House. We decided that our hatchery would be better than the large hatcheries in the sense that we would focus more on quality and not quantity. We would only produce so many of our chicks per month and then close the month out. We also did not like the practice by most hatcheries to grind up the male chicks. We discussed different ways to utilize our male chicks in order to not waste a life.

We also offer our rooster chicks at 15 for $25. These are chicks you can raise for meat for about $1.60 each. Once our business grows and we start getting higher numbers of roosters, we plan on donating the processed chicken to local food banks and food kitchens. We will have several outlets for our male chicks in order not to waste a life.

Our stock birds are well taken care of. They are provided generous outside pens and fed Non-GMO feed that is locally sourced. We will make sure that our micro hatchery will develop to meet the needs of our customers. Check out our website www.TheHatchingHouse.com.

My next blog I will talk about how we transitioned our horse/alpaca/goat farm into a chicken breeding farm!

-WF

Why a Chicken Tractor...

I have been keeping chickens at my small farm for about 16 years. When I first began, they were mostly free range because I liked seeing them peck around the yard. The drawback was that collecting eggs was a daily Easter egg hunt. Some birds would go broody in some obscure bush and I would assume they were eaten. Other issues when you free range, you take the chance that something will take your chickens. Everything eats chicken. I mean EVERYTHING. I remember coming home in the morning after working a long Midnight shift to find the Helter Skelter of chicken massacres in my front yard. There were 13 of my chickens strewn all over the yard. Some were headless and some were perfectly intact, just no longer breathing. Only one of my birds survived the attack and she was never the same again. I kept them in a coop that I had built to look like and old corn crib. Sometimes someone would remember to shut the door at night, mostly not. I lost birds that I had had for nearly ten years.

Fast forward a few years later and I started purchasing birds that were a tad more expensive than the $2 feed store birds. Not only did I want a safe place for my chickens to live, but I also wanted more consistency in collecting eggs without the hunt. Keeping your birds in a stationary coop is a lot of work trying to keep the coop and the run clean and trying to keep the birds from having to walk around in their own poop.

I had seen Chicken Tractors before and really liked the idea that I could move it around the yard and provide my birds with fresh grass. Not only does it cut down on their feed, but it provided my birds with a clean new patch of grass and no messy build-up of chicken poop.

Upon further research, I learned that once you move the Chicken Tractor, the chewed up patch left behind will eventually grow back greener and thicker than before, Bonus! Another cool use is in the early Spring, you can put the Chicken Tractor in your weedy garden beds before planting season and the chickens will not only eat all the weeds, but they will mix up and fertilize your garden beds too!

After months of research, I found a really nice design that provided shelter and a grazing area for my chickens and it could easily be moved around the yard by the smallest person.

I now build custom Chicken Tractors and coops for the chicken enthusiast. Go to my Wicked Koops FaceBook page to see the different designs I have that can meet your needs and don’t forget to “Like” my page for updates. You can also contact me at WickedKoops@gmail.com.

Stay tuned for new related products like: roll away nesting boxes, rat proof feeders, dusting boxes and perching ladders.

- WF