November 2017 – Storybook Farm

I just love a great deal, and today I made one!

It’s mid-November, and our leaves (especially around the farmhouse) have really just come down. So, naturally, we have to rake them up, right? And it’s an all-day task, right? Well, not exactly!

About three years ago, I bought an amazingly inexpensive tool that has been such a help each fall: it’s an electric, corded leaf blower with a twist: it blows, but it also sucks leaves into a bag, mulching them on the way. This blower was under $100; one of the best tools I’ve ever invested in!

Brief Digression: Deep Litter

At Storybook Farm, we practice the deep litter method for bedding. In case you’re never heard of this, here’s a brief summary of how it works. Basically, you make compost inside your coop by combining elements that will break each other down naturally. The elements you need are three: carbon (usually shavings or other bedding elements, like pine needles or dried fall leaves), chicken poop (nitrogen), and tiny microorganisms that live in soil, leaves, and all living organic materials (these break down the combined carbon and nitrogen).

First, you put down bedding and make sure that the microorganisms are present (I had to add dirt to my wooden coop floor the first year; now I add fall leaves and they do double duty.) Then, allow chickens to poo. The carbon absorbs wet fecal materials and interacts with solid poo such that the poo dries out and (if left alone) the carbon elements will harden and cake. This is why you must turn your bedding weekly.

Each week, you add a light layer of carbon (say, shavings or dry leaves): about an inch, tops. Then, you fork it over and thus renew your bedding—or you get the chooks to do so for you by throwing treats down first, and then new shavings on top. When you put down seed treats first, your chickens will scratch and dig looking for the treats and turn the bedding pretty well for you (as long as it hasn’t been that long since it was last turned allowing it to cake badly.

Every month or so, I make sure I go in and give it a deep and thorough turning. Light and fluffy, and over the months, increasingly deeper, is this bedding. It smells great and is easy peasy for the busy chicken farmer to maintain, which is especially welcome when cold sets in. (Bonus: bored chooks in winter really get into scratching for those treats!)

With employing the deep litter method, I deep clean my chicken coops twice a year: spring and fall. In both seasons, the all of the bedding comes out of the coop and goes onto the garden, enriching our soil. (Gotta love the circle of life!) So, each fall I need to renew my deep beds in the coops.

Let’s get back to today’s fun times.

For the first the last two years, we’ve sucked up/mulched fall leaves, and then transferred them into feed sacks for use as carbon bedding through the winter. This worked great. However, today I wanted to deepen the bedding in our new Family Coops.

There are seven of these small coops. This is our first year with them, and we just winterized them about two weeks ago. In the summer, these coops have an entirely open bottom (less work for me and great ventilation) but in the winter, open flooring is too cold! So, two weeks ago we spend a couple of hours opening up all the tarps and stapling down some landscape cloth, then putting down 2” of shavings on that. After 2 weeks, though, I could begin to see the landscaping cloth (see above picture), and knew I had to deepen the beds to get that great mulching process going. (Besides, there were no microorganisms in there yet.)

So, today was mid-40s and sunny, and the leaves were fresh fallen, but dry (very key that they be dry or they can mold quickly) so out came the handy sucker/mulcher machine, and away I went.

I put a bag of beautifully processed leaves in each coop. Unlike when we did the winterizing and had to get inside the coops to staple down the landscaping cloth, I didn’t have to remove the tarps.

I just opened the nesting boxes and shook the bag of mulch inside. (This was an advance over previous years where we’ve had to transfer the mulch to bags and then to the coop.)

Then, I used our “grabber” tool to push them further into the coops and spread them a bit. I left a generous supply in each nesting box as well, just to make things more cozy for my hens at night.

When I got done, I felt like I had made such a deal! I had gotten the fallen leaves off the lawn, I had mulched them, and then (with very little effort) I doubled the coop bedding in each of seven coops and didn’t have to do the tiresome step of putting mulched leaves into bags for storage. Woot! I call that a win-win-win, and I’m smiling as I watch the happy chickens rooting around in the new fall leaves!

When thinking about purchasing chicks for your flock, you have a range of options. This post is mostly intended to serve first-time chick buyers with information you can use as you make your buying decision.

Narrow Down Your Options

As you surf the Internet, you’re going to find a range of options — and prices — for day-old chicks. Here are some questions and topics that can help you winnow these options. If you are brand new to chickens, the best advice I can give you is to join an online group, like www.backyardchickens.com. On this forum you can ask many questions of experienced chicken keepers who are passionate about their birds, and even read reviews about different breeds.

Your first decision, of course, is about the breed of chicken you want to buy. There are literally hundreds of breeds, because down through the ages, chickens (like dogs) have been selectively bred for different purposes. Some breeders were looking for the most eggs possible per hen. Others wanted the meatiest chickens possible. Some bred for white skins, and others for yellow, feeling that table birds looked better with one or the other. Some chickens were bred for certain colors of eggs. And, more recently, chickens have been bred smaller and smaller to produce miniature versions of larger fowl breeds. These are the bantams. So, consider why you are buying your chickens. What jobs are they to perform? Will they provide pure pleasure as you watch their endearing antics, or as they sit on your lap? Will they provide eggs, or meat (or both) for your table? Will you breed them? Do you want a mixed flock, or only one breed to start?
Also consider your limits. Do local ordinances allow you to keep roosters? How many chickens are you allowed to keep? (You can keep more bantams than large fowls in the same amount of space.) How big a coop will you have? Chicken math, as we call it, offers the guideline that you should provide at least 2 square feet of floor space in your coop, with and additional 4 square feet of run space. Before you buy any chicks, have their housing totally ready to receive them, and do recognize that chicken keeping is addictive: think about providing more space than you think you’ll initially use.
Are you interested in breeding chickens? A major positive movement among backyard poultry keepers has been the preservation — and, in some cases, the rescue — of heritage breeds that were once the mainstay of the American poultry industry but have been in danger of extinction, and thus being lost forever. Do consider joining others in preserving these beautiful birds!

About the Costs of Chicks

Chick prices (for any chosen breed) will vary widely, and the first-time buyer might wonder why this is so. Here are some factors that go into pricing baby chicks:

First, there is a great divide between chicks from large hatcheries and those from smaller, private breeders. Here are reasons why.

Large Hatcheries

As with most sectors of agriculture and farming today, big hatcheries are big business. Their methods tend to lead to lower quality birds and (in some) inhumane conditions. Because they handle large numbers of chicks, and serve larger retail chains that sell the spring chicks you may have seen in stores, their breeding and sales practices are modified for the greatest possible profit at the lowest possible costs. I want to be careful here: I am not condemning all large hatcheries wholesale, but if you’re interested in details (some are disturbing) you can read these two articles:

Chicks from larger hatcheries are thus not necessarily the healthiest or best looking representative of a given breed of chickens. They may be compared to the puppy mills of the dog world, with which reputation and cautions you may already be familiar.

Private Breeders

Smaller, private breeders (such as ourselves) take the time and absorb the labor that selective breeding of parent stocks require. Often these breeders seek to improve the breeds they keep (some with an eye towards winning prizes at chicken shows—which is a world unto itself that you may never have dreamed existed)! As the Mother Earth article states above, most smaller breeders are looking to improve not only breed types, but their health, overall productivity (in whatever sphere that is, whether for meat or eggs or foraging or broodiness, or a combination of these), etc.

In order to make selections for breeding, private breeders must hatch and raise hundreds of chicks. Why? Serious breeders typically keep for the next generation’s breeding only 1/10 of hens hatched and 1/100 of roosters hatched. Year by year, these breeders raise many, many chicks to maturity so that they can select only the finest, and pair them with mates that promote the qualities in the breed that they are looking to improve or sustain. In raising so many birds, breeder incur costs: feed, housing, and labor. Typically, too, the conditions under which birds are raised are more natural to the birds, and humane.

In Summary

So, the pure economics of your choice are these: you will typically get more vigorous, healthier, more beautiful, and more productive stock from private breeders than you will from larger hatcheries, but it will cost you more initially.

One more consideration: as is true when we “buy American”, buying from private breeders supports the work (and practices) of private breeders, ensuring the ongoing efforts to raise rare breeds and/or healthier, more productive stock.

Finding Private Breeders

Once you have narrowed down your choice of breeds, and decided to go the route of private breeders, there are several ways to find private breeders.

Best, probably, is to find the national organization for that breed (all heritage breeds have these). Such organizations will typically have a breeder’s directory or a Facebook group (or both) where you can connect with top breeders and purchase stock.
Another approach is to simply Google your breed of choice + “for sale” and see which websites come up.

Note that the best breeders know their bloodlines! Typically, in their descriptions of the chicks they offer, they will name those lines. This is a sure indication that you are getting top birds within the given breed.

A Word About Shipping Costs

In purchasing chicks from private breeders, don’t be thrown by shipping costs. The only game in town for all of us is the USPS, and their rates are high.

Most breeders simply charge what it actually costs them: often a flat rate of $50/shipment to ensure a speedy delivery and healthy chicks on arrival. You may be able to find a breeder near enough to you to pick up your stock personally, so again, use the above resources to search out all your options, but remember: in buying chicks, you do get what you pay for.

Remember…

You are making an investment in livestock: you’ll be housing, feeding, eating the eggs from, and be concerned about the health of the chicks you purchase for years to come once they’re in your care.

For all that they give us, we think it’s well worth it to purchase the best stock we can find. Most private breeders are committed to offering you that stock. Here at Storybook Farm, we are one such private breeder working to provide such quality chickens for you.

Month: November 2017

Leaves to Bedding