Month: August 2008

Do Chickens Like Music?

Here’s an article that claims that chickens grow better if provided with music.

Is it true? Do chickens do better if they have the ability to put on an impromptu hoedown anytime the mood strikes them? Beats me, but no doubt there’s been research on the subject. Any poultry question that (a) comes up over and over and (b) can be researched cheaply has been looked into: our Extension Service is like that. And it’s not like putting a radio in a chicken house is very complicated.

I do know that chickens make noises to communicate with each other, and a contented flock sounds different from an unhappy flock. They also react to noises in their environment. So it seems reasonable that appropriate background music will mellow them out.

Of course, chicken farming has always been plagued by stuff that “seems reasonable” but doesn’t work. For example, people still believe that you can tell the sex of a baby chick by the phallic symbolism of the egg: long skinny eggs hatch males. And others still believe in the irritant theory of medicine, and think that cayenne pepper in the diet will force a hen to shoot out eggs like a machine gun. It’s always the Middle Ages in some people’s heads. But then again, some of these wacky ideas work. Maybe I can dredge up some research the next time I find myself in the basement of OSU’s Valley Library.

I’ve noticed that anecdotal reports of music for chickens rate rock and roll higher than you’d expect if the music is supposed to be a lullaby. Of course, since we don’t know what the music actually does, it’s hard to guess what the best playlist is going to be.


Do Chickens Like Music?

Keep Those Waterers in the Shade

We had a few hot days in a row, and Karen noticed that the broilers looked pretty stressed. It reminded us that modern hybrid broilers don’t like sunshine on hot days and often won’t leave the shade, even to drink. They can actually die of heat stress because of this.

Karen gently hosed down the birds to cool them off, and they recovered almost instantly.

The fix is to make sure every broiler pen has at least one waterer in the shade. In most pen designs, this means having a waterer at the back of the pen. We always use two waterers per pen in case one fails, and now we’ve got one in the front and one in the back.

This reluctance to leave the shade is most pronounced with modern hybrid meat chickens. Other types are less reluctant to go out in the noonday sun. My hens have waterers smack in the middle of the pasture with no shade at all, and they don’t hesitate to go there for a drink at high noon. Still, hens like shade. People sometimes complain that, when they see a free-range flock, the hens aren’t scattered decorously across the pasture, but are hanging around the henhouse. If the critics came back near sunrise or sunset, it would be a different story.

Reducing Feed Waste

Feed is way too expensive to waste these days, but try telling that to the chickens! How can we keep our chickens from wasting feed?

The biggest culprit is feeders that are too shallow. One of the old rules of thumb was to never fill a trough or feed pan more than one-third full. This is harder than it looks, because most of the readily available poultry equipment consists of glorified chick feeders — way too small for grown (or even half-grown) chickens.

Here are some tips:

  • If you build feed troughs out of boards, use 1×6 or even 1×8 boards for the sides. That oughta do it.
  • Buy the big tube feeders with the deep feed pans. The little tube feeders are basically chick feeders.
  • Tube feeders often have adjustments that let you vary the distance between the tube and the pan. Set these to the narrowest gap they will allow. Open up only if the feed doesn’t flow.
  • You can start using bigger equipment earlier if the trough or pan is mostly full, but let the level fall as the chicks get bigger
  • Feeders that are low to the ground encourage waste. The pan or trough should be roughly level with the chickens’ backs.
  • Never use a feeder that’s so low that broilers can eat from it while sitting down. It’s disgusting.
  • If you scatter scratch feed outdoors or in the litter, use whole grains. The hens won’t miss these, but finer particles will be lost.
  • Really low-grade feeds, moldy feeds, and other stuff that has inedible or unpalatable ingredients will force the hens to rummage around looking for the edible portion. Don’t bother with such feeds unless they’re nearly free. Even then, have a separate feeder of good feed, so you don’t accidentally poison or starve your chickens.

You might also want to look at my Feeding FAQ.

One of the books, I’ve reprinted, Feeding Poultry by G. F. Heuser, has everything you’d ever want to know about feeding.

Looking for Tractor #2

My tractor used to have problems that made it sit unused for months. Mostly I fixed this through a few simple repairs, such as replacing the broken fuel shutoff to prevent constant evaporation and its attendant crud in the carburetor, replacing the corroded distributor points with a Pertronix electronic ignition (which is almost as easy as putting in a new set of points), and replacing a dying starter motor.

But any tractor that’s more than 50 years old is going to require some unplanned maintenance.
Over the past few months, I’ve had to replace the starter motor bendix and deal with my fuel-cap-related problems, each of which required a wait for parts and some miscellaneous delays which kept the tractor out of service for a week.

This is why most people buy new equipment — and why I’m looking for a second elderly tractor. It’s not like two tractors will make my 37 acres look crowded, though admittedly I don’t have an empty bay in my machine shed.

From the point of view of statistics, it makes perfect sense. If one tractor has 95% uptime, if I have two, there’s a 99.8% chance that at least one of them is running. (This is based on the assumption that, if I have a spare tractor, I’ll repair a broken one as fast as ever, which I admit is questionable.)

Mostly I use my tractors for mowing and for moving chicken houses short distances. My current tractor is a Ford 640, which is almost overkill for such tasks. I’m looking for another Ford tractor from the Thirties through the Sixties, with a vague preference for a 9n (made from 1939-1941), just because it’s the most antique Ford tractor that’s really suitable for my purposes. These things are everywhere, at least in theory. I don’t see one on Craigslist within an hour of me.

Tractors last forever, even if used hard, because they are simple and overbuilt. A tractor from the Sixties isn’t much different from one from the Thirties. Once tractors get too old to use as the lifeblood of a large commercial farm, their prices collapse to low levels, and you can pretty much pick your poison. A Ford utility tractor from the Thirties through the Sixties should be worth between $1,000 and $4,000 around here, based more on whether it’s been spiffed up than what its actual features are, and how good its tires are. A new set of tires will cost around $1,000. This also means that an elderly tractor will retain its resale value, such as it is, except for tire wear.

I could get a tractor with more features (diesel, power steering, more horsepower) without increasing the price much. This might be prudent, but I’m going to stick with what I know this time.

Not that there’s a huge consensus of what the value of such a tractor is. Some people will pay more, some less. I’m looking for a bargain tractor that’s mechanically sound. My budget is $2,000 (including the cost to haul it to my farm, since I don’t have a suitable trailer), hopefully including a 5′ mower. I’d go higher if it has a quality roll bar on it or a decent tractor seat, but hardly any of them do.

So if you know of a running Ford tractor within about 50 miles of Blodgett, Oregon, let me know. I’d be especially interested if it has decent rubber and a bush hog.