10/19

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Still sick with a cold today but not as bad as yesterday.

Cold, rainy, and windy all day. The forecast says only 42 tonight but it barely hit 42 all day. Rain and cold forecast for tomorrow also, but then sunny weather ahead which means at least the cabin will be warm with all the windows - though not at night. Still no heat source till the chimney arrives. The girls have plugged in a space heater. We wear several layers of clothes. And drink hot tea.

The ducks don't mind the cold or rain and free-range happily all day. The guineas after last night in the trees in the rain headed to bed early in the coop. At least they have that much sense [a guinea, compared to a chicken, is an imbecile - the semi-domesticated ones at least. The wild slate-colored guineas that live around here seem rather intelligent and raised a batch of keets successfully even while the bobcat was killing right and left].

The ducks make a mess of their food and dump it everywhere. We started them on a homemade diet of mush consistency which they did well with [they like their food wet]. As they got older we switched to high-quality layer pellets which the chickens were getting. We're now trying to get away from kibble-style factory food and do a homemade diet for all the birds. We've put a lot of research into creating the right homemade diet for poultry. It will have to be adjusted seasonally. We just picked up the ingredients today at Tractor Supply and Walmart. A 40# bag of alfalfa pellets, a 50# bag of whole oats, a 50# bag of bird seed, 5# of lentils, 5# of peas, 8# of thistle seed . . . we already have flax seeds, cracked corn - here are the proportions we worked out:

Alfalfa Pellets
40#
Bird Seed Mix
50#
Oats
15#
Nyjer Thistle Seed
2#
Lentils
7#
Split Peas
6#
Flax Seed
2#

It uses basically ingredients we can presently get at a moderate to low cost. The protein content is 14%. Laying hens must have a minimum of 14% and ideally 16%. This is usually achieved via free-ranging with the high protein content of forage and insects. But it's nearly November now and the bugs are almost gone and forage is reduced. Protein is usually boosted in the homemade diets using some type of field peas. If we didn't wish to keep the birds laying through the winter we could simply put them on a low protein (12%) maintenance diet. But as it is we need eggs and have a light on a timer on the coop so they get 16 hours of light a day. We got 4 eggs today from 5 birds [one of whom a banty almost never lays] so it's working. Ever since we got off layer pellets and went from a 50/50 diet of rabbit food and scratch [simply because we ran out of layer pellets] egg production increased.

We'll have to see how well this diet works for them . . . eventually we'll get sacks of organic grain from a supplier an hour south of Knoxville for mixing their food. The ducks will go on the same diet as the chickens [two are mixed runners, 5 are mixed rouens - probably not ideal laying breeds but we picked them up for free sort of rescue ducks from a fellow homesteader moving soon to Texas]. I'll try soaking the food for the ducks so they can eat it better and not make such a mess of it. It's a little bit of a juggle raising three completely different types of poultry all living together in the same coop.

The cat is going on a raw meat diet and the bunny is being switched from poor-quality grain-based rabbit pellets to alfalfa pellets. She'll also get some grains, hay, and I give her a big batch of weeds every morning which she always eats. Sometimes food scraps like carrot tops and peels. Bunny's just a pet for the girls though we do use her fertilizer. She's not breeding and not to be used for meat [we're vegetarians].

We cleaned the kitchen then dropped off the mower today at a small-engine repair shop. A cold wet day is a good day for errands. We'll probably go to Oak Ridge tomorrow for a Homelite chainsaw and splitting maul. We have a lot of wood to cut and stack. Ordered a 7" chimney brush from Ace Hardware - will be here next week.

Too cold and wet to do anything with the garden today - though the seedlings need thinned, desperately, especially mustards. The brassicas are growing wonderfully. The combination of deep mulching with grass clippings and fertigation have made the garden do very well. I take the daily water from the small duck pool in the masonry tub, and mix it in a bucket with graywater from the dishes - about 1/4 duckwater to 3/4 graywater - and distribute it in rotation through all the garden beds.

Rachel's roasting lentils and peas in the toaster oven for the chicken food. With the next batch we'll soak and sprout the legumes before toasting them dry so it's more nutritious and digestible. Right now we're crunched for time running out of the old 1/1/1 mix of rabbit food, cracked corn, and scratch. The birds also have a granite grit in a container in the coop and their own eggshells dried and ground for them to eat as a calcium supplement.

Had stewed root vegetables and bread for dinner.

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