Food For Thought

I've been trying to find a cheaper way to feed my chickens over the years and have started looking into growing my own.  I've dug around on the internet and just couldn't seem to find the best way for our situation-until now! I have heard about fodder in the past, but didn't know if it would be a source of complete nutrition for my girls or not. 

I don't feel comfortable going completely free-range at the moment.  I do let them out from time to time, but with our schedule, there are days when I leave in the morning and don't get home till after dark.  Living as far out as we do, there are plenty of predators around that would love to have half a dozen chickens for a tasty dinner. 

Case in point with our ducks.  We started with 9 and are now down to 2.  Something has picked them off one by one.  I'm afraid we'll have no ducks soon.  They don't like to stay up around the house anymore since the stray dog that showed up tried to retrieve one.  (He has since found a better home.) 

Feed prices are the main reason I am trying this new system.  I'm still going to buy commercial feed, but I don't wan to depend on it for their main source of food.  I'm in the R&D phase of this right now, so we'll see how it goes.  It helps a lot that I have a solid source of my starter.  I am using wheat for my fodder.  I know lots of people use barley, but we grow wheat in our area and it is very easy to get.  I have a 5 gallon bucket in my kitchen at the moment that I am going to use-that is if I can keep my daughter out of it long enough!  She loves to dig in it like a sandbox. 

I'm only trying one tray at the moment.  I took an old coffee can and filled it about half way with water. I put just a tiny splash of bleach into the water.  This will help kill any bacteria or fungus that might be on the wheat.  I placed 4 cups of wheat into the water and stirred with a wooden spoon to distribute the chlorinated water around.  I let that sit for just a couple minutes then drained it.  I then filled it back up with water and stirred again.  This sat on the kitchen counter for about 9 hours.  Once it had soaked, I spread a layer of paper towels in the bottom of a seed starting tray.  This is to keep the roots from attaching to the tray.  (Not sure if this is really necessary, but we did it.  Remember, this is my R&D phase!)

I've been keeping the wheat damp and it is starting to get little green sprouts!  The first morning, there were little white spots starting to show up at the tips of each kernel.  The second day there were a few more.  By the third morning, there were lots of little green-looking tips.  This should take about 6-9 days to complete a full tray, depending on how big we want the sprouts to be. 

This is what the sprouts look after 5 days. 

 

 

I think I'll let them go another 2-3 more days and feed my girls on Saturday or Sunday. 

 

There will no doubt be changes to our process, but it shouldn't need a major overhaul.  We are going to cut back to only 2 cups of wheat for the next tray.  Four just seemed to be too much once we spread it all out. 

 

Once we have a system up and running, I'll post some more on this new venture!

Chicken ER

This weekend we let our chickens out to roam around the farm.  It was chilly and very windy, so they didn't venture too far out.  Most of them came out the front door of the coop, pecked around a little and then would head back in.  Saturday I let out the younger group and they seemed to enjoy it.  Sunday came and I let out the older pen.  Most of them would run out the door happy to be outside enjoying the sunshine, then once they felt the wind, the turned around and ran back inside. 

As I was outside talking to my old girls on Sunday, I noticed there were drops of blood on the floor.  I became concerned when I walked further into the coop and found even more blood on the floor.  It wasn't so much to become concerned that a predator had entered the coop, but it was enough to make me start looking over each one and try to determine the cause.  I found one chicken in the storage area with a little blood on her back like she got picked on, but it wasn't more that a couple little spots.  It wasn't gushing to the point of making drops on the floor.  I let her hang out there so she could stay away from the others and avoid more pecking.  I went back to the others that were still inside and noticed one hen's feet were very bloody.  I picked her up and noticed one of her toenails was broken and bleeding a lot.  I picked her up and immediately removed her from the coop.  I took her to the garage to get her and myself out of the wind.  I had my son bring me several tissues to help stop the bleeding.  It took a good half hour to get it to stop, or so I thought.  It started bleeding again, so I took her inside to wash her feet off and keep trying.  About an hour after I first noticed the injury, we finally got the bleeding to stop. 

After she was cleaned up and bleeding stopped, we took a couple drops of fingetnail polish and put it onto the nail to help seal up the injury.  I put her into a nesting box with clean litter and she happily sat there for the rest of the evening.  I think she enjoyed the extra pampering and the privacy of the nesting box.  I'm hoping the rest of the hens leave her alone for a day or two. 

She must have caught her toe in something in the coop.  I guess it's time to do some much needed spring cleaning in the coop again.