Robert Plamondon's Poultry Newsletter, October 18, 2004

PayPal's Fixed Now

I've received a number of emails from people who've tried to buy my books and failed. It turns out that PayPal had managed to "upgrade" their system in a way that caused a lot of problems. No one's money vanished or anything, but transactions didn't occur the way they were supposed to.

It's all fixed now.

Some people don't like PayPal, but I've found them very useful, both as a buyer and as a seller. Their rates to small businesses like mine are very low, making my Web-based sales possible. Nowadays, you don't even need a PayPal account to buy stuff with a credit card from people like me who accept PayPal but can't afford the usual bank-offered credit-card services. (I also accept checks and money orders, of course.)

Hydrated Lime

I suppose that a note about PayPal, however timely, isn't enough to round out a newsletter, so I'll tell you about hydrated lime. Hydrated lime is sold in feed stores, lumber stores, etc. and is a finely powdered cooked limestone that is slightly caustic. Not anywhere near as caustic as quicklime, but a little. It has uses around poultry:

As a litter amendment. The original deep-litter bedding system for poultry involved stirring hydrated lime into the litter at the rate of ten pounds per hundred square feet of henhouse. You just scatter it over the top and then stir it in with a hoe or turn the litter over with a spading fork. It reduces the amount of caking, makes the litter seem a lot drier, and is hostile to coccidiosis.

As a deoderant and fly repellant. If you have a smelly heap of chicken manure (for example, under your roosts or in an outdoor heap after you've shoveled out the chicken house), sprinkling it with hydrated lime will kill the smell and also drive off the flies. Of course, if we were perfect farmers, we'd never have smelly heaps of anything, but in real life it's nice to have a sack of hydrated lime handy. It also seems to keep the raccoons away from our compost piles.

As hen repellant. As far as I know, this is my own invention. Hens don't like hydrated lime. If they're nesting, dust-bathing, or foraging where you don't want them to, you can dust the area heavily with hydrated lime, and they usually avoid it thereafter. I've watched them, and while they clearly don't like the stuff, they don't find it distressing or anything. (In fact, the effect is mild enough that it doesn't always work.) I've used this to keep them from nesting in odd corners and foraging in smelly manure heaps. It would probably also be at least partly effective in keeping them out of your garden beds, though I won't make any promises.

If you like this newsletter, please send copies to all your friends!

Copyright 2004 by Robert Plamondon. Permission is granted for copying if the material from here to the end of the message is left unaltered.

This newsletter is sent out occasionally by Robert Plamondon to anyone who asks for it, plus the customers of Norton Creek Press, publisher of:

• Success With Baby Chicks by Robert Plamondon
• The Dollar Hen by Milo M. Hastings
• Genetics of the Fowl by Frederick B. Hutt
• Feeding Poultry by Gustave F. Heuser

Norton Creek Press
36475 Norton Creek Road
Blodgett, Oregon 97326

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