Month: September 2008

I’ve just realized that my chicken feed is too good. I do “cafeteria feeding,” where the hens have a high-protein pellet on one feeder and whole corn in another feeder. The idea is that the hens will mix and match in an appropriate way. This is a proven technique that has been used successfully for more than 100 years.

But it’s not working! The hens are eating more pellets than corn. These are fancy, expensive, 25% protein pellets that are custom-milled for us. Normally you expect the hens to mix and match themselves down to about 16% protein, eating roughly two pounds of corn for every pound of pellets. But nooooo, they like the pellets best.

Then I realized — my pellets are too good! The whole idea is that you have high-calorie/low-protein corn and high-protein/low-calorie pellets. But these pellets are a high-calorie/high-protein formulation. They’ve got everything. What’s not to like? So the hens are chowing down on pellets. Since the pellets cost three times as much as the corn, this is a tragedy.

My fault. Chickens will mix and match in a predictable way only if you give them clear choices. A high-protein pellet really needs to be low-calorie, so the chickens eat it to satisfy protein cravings, but ignore it when they have the energy munchies.

This is the simplest thing in the world to fix. Traditional layer pellets are junked up with low-energy-density fillers like wheat bran. Our super-high-quality pellets aren’t. Buying off-the-shelf pellets oughta put things back on track.

If that works (and it always did before we went to custom feed), I’ll have to sit down and decide what kind of fillers I like best. On the whole, I suspect that alfalfa meal is more in keeping with the free-range mindset than random wheat-milling byproducts like bran. But I haven’t decided yet…

I have just released a new book. Well, an old book, really, first published in 1864 — Ten Acres Enough by Edmund Morris.

This is a classic back-to-the-land book. Morris sold his newspaper in Philadelphia and bought a small farm in New Jersey, where he grew berries and peaches, made a good living, and was grateful to leave the rat race behind. It’s a good read and has plenty of thought-provoking material in it, and should be fun for anyone interested in reading about self-sufficient farm living as it was practiced by refugees from city life 150 years ago.

It differs from a lot of back-to-the-land books because Morris didn’t move halfway across the country or lose contact with his city friends. He was only an hour from Philadelphia by train, allowing him to mix and match his rural life with city friendships and cultural pursuits, and it meant he could ship fully ripe produce directly into the highest-paying city markets, rather than having to compromise on quality due to the requirements of long-haul shipping. Even today, playing the “edge-of-town” card can be a great strategy for quality-minded farmers.

I went to the trouble of copy-editing it from stem to stern, since it was getting hard for the modern reader to follow, what with shifts in vocabulary and writing style over the past 150 years. I also added inflation-adjusted values so the prices make sense and cut some unnecessary repetition. The result is a lot more fun to read than it was.

This is the first new book to be released by Norton Creek Press in several years, but there will be more soon! As I’m sure you realize by now, I think that most of the world’s best books are forgotten and out of print, and one of my goals in life it to get some of them back into circulation.

You can buy Ten Acres Enough directly from me or on
Amazon.com.

I don’t feel fully dressed unless I have a pocket knife on me. I started carrying a Swiss Army Knife around with me when I was eleven. (Even to school. My teachers knew I had it and were always borrowing it. Those were the days!)

But Karen one-upped me, as she so often does. The other day, I noticed that one of the waterers wasn’t working and needed to have the crud flushed out, a task that requires a pair of pliers. So I resolved to come back and do this, and promptly forgot all about it.

Karen came along and saw the same thing, but she was carrying her Leatherman multi-tool, as she always is. A Leatherman is like a folding pair of pliers with a Swiss Army Knife built into each handle. She fixed the waterer on the spot.

This is not the kind of arms race that I’m willing to lose, so I went right down to the store and bought the fanciest Leatherman they had, the Leatherman Blast (who comes up with these names?).

The reason I’d resisted the temptation in the past is that the Leathermen are a little oddly shaped, and the few times I’d used one, the blades had a distressing tendency to want to fold back when I didn’t expect it and nip my fingers. But the higher-end Leathermen all have locking blades these days. Problem solved!

My new Leatherman has already covered itself with distinction. It’s also covered itself with mud, which makes me just as happy that I’m carrying it in its nylon belt sheath rather than in my pocket. The bigger ones are not very pocketable. The smaller ones aren’t too bad.

Anyway, if you’re like me, you are constantly finding yourself faced with jobs that are far away from your tools, even assuming that you know where your tools have gotten to, which I generally don’t. It’s important to know how to accessorize. The Leatherman is my first major cutlery fashion upgrade since I started carrying my first Swiss Army knife. I recommend it.

Fall brooding is one of the best things you can do to improve your poultrykeeping experience. It works at least as well as spring brooding, maybe better. The weather is generally favorable for shipping chicks by mail, being not to hot, not too cold, and no more changeable than in the springtime. The weather is drier, so dampness-related problems like coccidiosis aren’t so bad. And most of us are far too busy in the spring — planting a garden, doing livestock projects, and generally ramping up for the season. Fall is less busy for most of us.

September and October are good brooding months. Chicks obtained then will be fully feathered and cold-resistant by the time any really nasty winter weather sets in (or in the case of broilers, they will be butchered before then).

Chicks brooded in the fall start laying in the spring, but may undergo a partial molt the following fall. Having both spring- and fall-hatched chickens will do a lot to even out your egg production. And of course, by brooding in two seasons, you can double the size of your flock without investing in any new brooder houses or equipment.

Enough people do fall brooding that most hatcheries have chicks in September, but it’s more dicey in October. Hatcheries that cater to small- to medium-size commercial farms (like Privett Hatchery) have chicks year-round. Often you are restricted to commercial strains rather than standard breeds. (I suppose this is because the commercial strains actually keep laying year-round.) So it’s a good idea to brood replacement pullets in the fall and do your fancy-breed brooding in the spring.

Tips on Fall Brooding:

• Go over your brooder house carefully. If you’ve been doing warm-weather brooding, you tend to go blind to the changes needed for cold-weather brooding. You need to be ready to button things up if the weather turns cold.
• Insulated brooders really help with fall brooding.
• Get a copy of my book, Success With Baby Chicks, which goes over all the issues in detail.