Regular guest poster David walks us through the magic that happens when you combine rabbits and chickens, and how he implemented this synergistic pairing on his own urban homestead. One of the easiest to understand tenets of permaculture is the goal to use “stacking functions” wherever possible. Simply put, functions are “stacked” when you can…
Chicken Health
How To Feed Baby Chicks
So you’ve got some new little chicks-congrats! Now you have to keep them alive. First job, warmth. Check. Second job, water. Check. Third job, food. How To Feed Your Chicks Ok, chick food. Here’s where it get’s interesting. Layer, starter, grower? Organic, or not? Medicated, or not? What the heck? Do you just buy the first bag with a…
Forced Molt: Starving Hens For Profit
Lets’s talk about molting. Anyone who has ever kept chickens knows about the molt, that egg-production pause where hens shed old feathers and turn into tiny, ugly dinosaurs for a few weeks. During the molt, a natural response to reduced daylight, egg laying stops. Chicken’s can’t throw energy into making new feathers and eggs at the same…
Get A Shovel. This is Urban Homesteading.
Today I put about thirty pounds of pork belly into cure for bacon and pancetta, made a loaf of bread, mixed a bottle of homemade citrus cleaner, and buried one dead chicken. Get a shovel. This is urban homesteading. If you keep chickens, dead chickens are part of the deal. You get what you get…
Solitary Confinement for Chickens
When I let the hens out for some free range time yesterday, I noticed one of the Austra Whites was bloodied about the comb. We have two of this breed, and the other one was bullied a few months ago in the same way. I was so concerned about the mess of blood on our…