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Preparations for Breeding this Spring
Posted by Tim Daniels in Tim's Blog on January 20th, 2010
This is the time of year that I find the hardest. The chickens, ducks, and guinea fowl have all been (up until last weekend) in their ‘winter’ quarters, kept together in big groups but since the snow of early January melted, the runs are getting far muddier than I would like. It doesn’t help having clay soil, most of the water sits on the surface but fortunately there is a slope to the field and most of the surface water runs off.
My Abacot Ranger Ducks have started laying and this year I have a German strain that I imported to breed from. I’m getting the odd egg from my Copper Black Marans and Cream Legbars and I know it won’t be long before my incubators are full again.
Last weekend I decided it was time to separate the breeds back out again, ready for the breeding season. I like to leave the cockerels in with the hens at least 3 weeks to settle in before I test for fertility. My guess is that most of my birds will be laying by the end of February which is in 5 weeks time, enough time for them all to settle into their new homes and runs. I will start them on breeding rations at the end of this month, they are more expensive but do result in healthier / stronger chicks.
This year, I have decided to sell a few surplus eggs on Ebay. I don’t normally do this since I hatch most of my own eggs and by word of mouth have sold on any surplus birds but I’m thinking of hatching a little less this year to allow me to spend more time concentrating on hatching some goslings.
Keeping the Chickens together over Winter.
Posted by Tim Daniels in Tim's Blog on November 1st, 2009
During the winter, I put all of my different breeds of hens together in one big house and run that hasn’t been used over the autumn months. This is the nearest run to my house so it makes life easier when it comes to keeping water containers from freezing and provides the girls with some grass that hasn’t been grazed for a while. I do the same for the ducks and drakes, again, giving them fresh pasture and bringing them closer to home to make my job easier. The boys are kept together in another run, away from the hens which allows them to recharge their batteries and more importantly gives the hens a rest from their constant attention.
I’m often asked how I manage to keep a run of cockerels together because cockerels will fight. It’s straight forward enough if you keep docile breeds and providing you don’t hurry things too much and follow a few simple rules.
- First of all, cockerels are territorial, they will protect their ‘territory’ (usually their run) from others. Secondly, they are competitive so if there are hens around, they will compete with one another. I remove the hens so that they are out of sight, then I decide which house and run the boys will end up in. This has to be a run that hasn’t had any of the boys in recently – in other words, it is neutral territory. I open the door to this run as well as the door to the boys runs. They can slowly leave their territory and go into the neutral territory and meet. There are usually a few squabbles but often, they will stay in their own territory and providing there is sufficient space, ignore one another in the neutral territory as they explore it, they are fine.
- They still get fed and watered and continue to sleep in their own house, but there is food in the new ‘neutral territory’ run too. After 3 or 4 weeks, I find they are tolerating one another and will come for food together in the new run and I stop feeding them in their own houses.
- After another couple of weeks, I transfer them at night into the new house together and shut their runs so they are now all together in the new territory. The next morning, I always make sure I am there at first light but more often than not, there aren’t many serious squabbles. This house is neutral territory so none of them feel they need to protect it as their own territory.
The smaller ‘summer’ runs now get to rest for a while and with luck, the frosty weather will kill off any worm eggs or larvae that are living in the ground. Hopefully before we get any frost, the grass will recover a little, ready for late winter / early spring when I re-populate the runs. That is if I can keep the rabbit numbers down but that’s another story!
The Correct Method of Dispatching a Chicken?
Posted by Tim Daniels in Tim's Blog on August 29th, 2009
I have used the neck dislocation method successfully for years when a bird has been suffering and needed to be dispatched, but when I was researching to write the article on this method for poultrykeeper.com, I thought I would see whether this method was the most humane that could be practised at home and whether I should be putting information on the site about it. There are some slaughter devices on the market that look like a pair of pliers (some versions can also be fixed to the wall too) and I wondered if I was out of date with my method of dispatching chickens but after some extensive research on the subject, I found out that these devices (that are sold by many reputable online suppliers too) aren’t really very good at killing a chicken.
These ‘Chicken Dispatchers’ actually kill a chicken by crushing the neck and spinal cord rather than dislocating it which can cause a great deal of unnecessary suffering before death. I found out that the Humane Slaughter Association (in the UK) didn’t recommend these devices.
So What about the Neck Dislocation Method?
I was then surprised to find out that the Humane Slaughter Association (HSA) had ‘reservations’ about the neck dislocation method however it is legal to use this method in the UK.
They say ” it is difficult to consistently achieve an immediate loss of consciousness” which I would totally agree with. If you don’t get it right, there certainly is suffering. So because of this, I certainly would urge people to try to get an experienced poultry keeper to show them how to practise neck dislocation properly. A friend of mine had me practising on pheasants that had been shot – when you get it right, you can feel the neck stretch and then feel the gap between the vertibrae afterwards so you know you’ve done it correctly. The HSA recommends that the neck dislocation method should only be used in emergencies or for very small numbers of birds where no better method is available.
So what is the correct method of dispatching a chicken?
The HSA advises that when it is possible, other more humane methods should be practiced such as using electrical or mechanical concussion stunning. This should be followed immediately by a killing method like bleeding or neck dislocation whilst the bird is still unconscious.
The hand-held electrical stunners and mechanical percussive devices are available but they do cost approximately £500 to £700 which is out of reach for your average poultry keeper.
The neck dislocation method still seems to be the best approach for us to dispatch a chicken at home. The key factor is the time it takes for a bird to lose consciousness so that it is not suffering which means you might want to think about practising on a few dead pheasants too!
So I wrote my article and have uploaded to the poultrykeeper website: How to Kill a Chicken
How to get rid of a Serious Red Mite Infestation.
Posted by Tim Daniels in Tim's Blog on August 25th, 2009
I went on holiday for a couple of weeks to come back and find one of my chicken houses was full of red mite! Not just on the ends of the perches but in every crack and crevice and in every corner. Red Mite are notoriously difficult to remove once they get a grip on a chicken house. When the weather is warm, red mite multiply very quickly and before you know it, you’ve got a serious infestation to deal with.
Dealing with a serious Red Mite outbreak.
So how do you deal with such a serious red mite infestation? Normally, for small numbers I would wash the house down with poultry shield and use a number of other red mite products here and there to kill off these unwanted visitors but with so many mites in the chicken house, more serious action was required. Here’s what to do:
Allow yourself a good couple of hours…
- Clean out the house, remove all loose bedding material. Strip the house down as much as you can. Remove as many parts as possible including pop holes, automatic pop hole openers and anything else that will unscrew easily.
- If you have a felt roof, remove this – yes, unfortunately you will need to re-felt the roof. If you don’t you will find millions of red mites will still live happily under the felt.
Cleaning the chicken house to remove red mites
- Using a high pressure hose / pressure washer, wash the house and parts down. Get the spray in every crack and crevice. This will take about 45 minutes if done properly. If you miss a crack, hundreds of mites could be hiding in there so it’s really important to ensure you get into everywhere possible. The spray will bounce back and soak you at times so wear old clothes and be prepared to get wet.
- Wait for the house to dry 10 to 15 minutes. Now look at it carefully – you should see red mites crawling around. These are the guys you missed that are coming out because they have been disturbed and are wet.
- Go over the house again from top to bottom, again concentrating on the cracks.
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Spread generous amounts of Diatom on the bedding material.
Repeat the above process as many times as necessary until there are very few mites coming out. The more you remove, the better. Even small populations can multiply quickly.
- Put your house back together. If you had a felt roof, leave re-felting until you are mite free for a couple of weeks. A temporary waterproof material should be used – plastic is ideal.
- Add fresh bedding material as you would after cleaning normal.
- Sprinkle a generous amount of diatom onto the bedding. The manufacturers recommend 500g per M2 which is quite a lot.
- Put a handful of diatom into your hand and rub it
Diatom should be rubbed into perches
into each perch, taking particular care around the ends and the underside. Whenyou have finished it should be white and smooth, like a gymnasts bar. Red mites have to crawl over this to get to the chickens at night.
Monitor the house for a few days, particularly on perch ends and re-apply diatom to the perches every couple of days or as soon as it starts to wear off.
If you have got into all of the cracks successfully, you should notice a drastic reduction in the number of red mite in the house – if you still find reasonable numbers, make up a spray mixture of poultry shield and spray onto these areas using a hand held plant mister.
Continue using diatom for a few weeks until there are no more signs of red mite.
You will find an article on Red Mite with lots more information on the main poultrykeeper site.
If you have any other tips on controlling red mite or would like to leave a comment then please feel free to do so below.
The Lonely Duckling Goes Missing.
Posted by Tim Daniels in Tim's Blog on June 5th, 2009
I got home from work tonight and went to check on ‘the lonely duckling’ to find to my horror he was gone! The signs of a duckling thief were clear…. Corn had been added to his duck crumbs, a doll had been left on his straw and a little dolls blanket and milk bottle were all at the scene of the crime. I concluded very quickly that a child had somehow managed to get into the garage, climb up to his box to steal the lonely duckling.
After a frantic search around the garage, I went down to the house in the hope that my daughter Katy might just have an idea of what might have happened but I discovered that she had asked to go to bed early because she was tired and my other daughter had wanted to sleep in her bedroom to keep her company….. Earlier on in the day, my wife had made a comment on the phone about how sweet it was that she had placed a tray under her bed with duck crumbs and water on it for her dollies…
Hmmm the pieces of the jigsaw went together in my head and I went up to Katy’s bedroom to find the lonely duckling under the duvet, cuddled up to my daughter. “But I want to look after the lonely duckling tonight” she sobbed…
I couldn’t bare to see the duckling on its own but I couldn’t kill it and now I couldn’t bare to hear the desperate cheep it made and Katy’s sobbing as I took the duckling from her…. So the lonely duckling had a new home for the night. Not in her bed as he would probably end up squashed but in a little box next to the bed.
I am going soft in my (old?) age.
The Lonely Duckling
Posted by Tim Daniels in Tim's Blog on June 4th, 2009
Well, the plan was good, to incubate 20 duck eggs, hatch some more ducklings and continue improving my stock. I thought I could maybe even enter the British Waterfowl National Show in November this year if I had any real ‘good lookers’ but as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry…
The first problem I had was after candling the eggs. I found 18 out of 20 were infertile. Why? I don’t know. The last batch of 12 were all fertile, the drake seemed healthy and was certainly happy. As I had candled these eggs quite late into the incubation period, the two remaining eggs were well developed and looked promising so I decided to try to at least hatch 2 but then days before the hatch, I could see very little further development in one of the two eggs and I was left with only one viable egg.
Is it fair to hatch just one duckling? I have always tried to ensure my animals are happy and part of that involves providing company for them with more of their own species, but here I was faced with a decision – could I kill one very viable, healthy duckling that was about to face the incredible challenge of breaking out of his shell? Or should I let him hatch and see him cheep as he sits their looking for a mother or the company of other ducklings? I manage to kill young cockerels, chicks even that I know are cockerels to save the hardship of growing them, getting to know them and then having to do the dirty deed but could I kill this little duckling? No I couldn’t.
So last weekend, the shell pipped and 12 hours later, out popped a very exhausted little duckling who has now adopted the name of ‘The Lonely Duckling’. He (or she) is a very sweet little thing that the children adore (Why this duckling when we regularly hatch them, I don’t know).
The story of this lonely duckling will continue. For now, he has a little teddy bear to cuddle up to and gets lots of fuss from us, his new found family. Our plan for this little one is to pop him in with our other, older ducklings as soon as he is big enough but this will be 4 or 5 weeks away at least. Until then, he is slowly becoming more and more tame, more tame than any of our other ducklings have ever been.
If you want to see the lonely duckling, he is on the poultrykeeper lonely duckling webcam of course! That is if you aren’t reading this long after the event…
Servers, dreamhost and technical things…
Posted by Tim Daniels in Tim's Blog on May 28th, 2009
Well, for the last 3 weeks, I have been procrastinating over moving the poultrykeeper websites to new servers. Our hosts, as good as they were had certain settings that stopped a number of things from working as well as I would have liked.
Our new host is called dreamhost and I must say, they have an excellent interface that is easy to use as well as 24/7 technical support (I get a response in an hour usually) as well as loads of online documentation that clearly explains how to set things up. I flicked the preverbial switch last night after many hours of testing and today, the new server is running the sites!
It is very simple to install a website – for example, this blog site uses software called Wordpress. There is a one click installer in the dreamhost web panel so all you need to do is click once and it will install it to the server. Once installed, you can enter the setup by going to the URL that is given to you during the set up and modify the site to the look you want. There are many templates you can install to change the look of your site too. I was around 4 hours installing, and setting up this site – and that included writing the about me section and looking through several templates before I made my mind up on the one that looked the best.
One of the benefits of using dreamhost is that I can give you an introductory code. If you use this when signing up, it will give you a $50 discount off their standard hosting plans so if you are considering getting a website and like me, you would like an easy interface to use and a good technical support back up then they are definately worth considering. For people we introduce, we also get about $40 introduction fee towards our own hosting bills for the poultrykeeper websites and as they say …. every little helps!
The link is here… dreamhost poultrykeeper promotion weblink – The $50 off, promo code is ‘POULTRY‘ when you sign up.
I think I’m about done with servers for now. I think it’s time to devote some energy into writing articles for poultrykeeper.
The Chicks have hatched at School
Posted by admin in Tim's Blog on May 19th, 2009
I had a phone call this evening from a very excited school teacher at the local school. The incubator that I loaned to them has done its job and has hatched 10 out of 15 eggs so far! I just hope the heat lamp I put up for the chicks doesn’t fall and burn the school down. I’m sure there was a risk assessment done somewhere along the way!
The best part about it is hearing how the class were glued to the incubator today and saw one egg hatch from beginning to end. Every day a child has at school can’t ever be repeated again and to me, it’s these happy memories that will make their learning journey very special and enjoyable. I hope it even influences some of them when they are older and they might one day keep chickens of their own. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s Rats in the Garage (What am I gonna do)?
Posted by Tim Daniels in Tim's Blog on May 12th, 2009
Yesterday, our dog was going mad around the bin in the corner of the garage and out of the corner of my eye I spotted a mouse running across the floor. From time to time, the mice will come into our garage, lured in by my sacks of chicken feed that are stored on a pallet. I usually keep mouse traps set around these sacks of food to stop the invasion but don’t ever seem to be troubled during the summer months so I decided to power up my home grown electric rat trap (since it kills mice too) rather than hunt around for the mouse traps.
Pekin Bantams Forum
Posted by admin in Tim's Blog on May 6th, 2009
The end of Pekin Bantams Forum… so it seems
Recently, I heard that the Pekin Bantams Forum has finished. The owner of the site has done a fantastic job at running this poultry forum for (I think) 9 or 10 years. The site was a gold mine of information and it is sad that Pekin Bantams Forum is no more.
As a result of this, I have brought the ‘launch’ of the new poultrykeeper.com forum forward – since there are no doubt many people looking for a new forum to go to and now seems like a good time to kick things off.
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