The New Flock

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We've had endless rain the last few days with more rain to come. Temperatures have gone from a balmy 60/50's to 30's day and night. Graywater is backed up, the garden work has stopped, we're scrounging for dry wood, and the goats have been stuck in their stalls. But we have started the first seedlings for our spring garden - bunching onions, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and lettuce - in our little indoor nursery.

We're down to 12 chickens and the ducks are gone. Going into the winter we've decided to cull all animals that are non-productive to reduce feed costs. We put up a free ad for the 3 ducks, the 2 big roosters, and our 2 older hens. The stipulation was that somebody had to take them all - a guy came out the very night we put the ad up and took them away.  He's got a lot of land and a large pond, and he called us later to tell us the ducks never left the pond - they even sleep on the bank. He likes our barn and may hire me to build one for himself [simply walling-in his existing hay barn with board and batten].

The older hens, roosters and ducks were not only non-productive, they ate a disproportionate amount of the feed we put out twice a day - the shier starter hens were for the most part scared off, even with 3 separate feeding areas. The 2 mixed-breed duck hens laid great when in season, but we hadn't seen an egg from them for several months [regardless of how often the drake would go in to the duck nest box and call to them to get in and lay]. One of the Araucana pullets we got at the Co-op turned out to be a beautiful rooster - so we no longer needed the huge Cuckoo-Maran roosters. And our older hens that had come up with us from the beginning, Rosy and Claudia, were nearly out of eggs and on an extended moult. Since as vegetarians we don't eat the birds, the only solution was to give them away. They would at most sell for $5 a piece . . . but then we'd have to drag out the process selling them over time. We needed a clean break.

For us, from a purely economic standpoint, a hen's only major value is in her eggs. Sold for meat or production, she may bring in 5 bucks [10 at most if she's an exotic breed]. Since our eggs are worth 50 cents a piece, if she lays 200 eggs a year, that's $100 a year, paid out gradually, egg by egg. It's not her concern whether we personally consume or sell her eggs - just to produce them. Hens are most productive the first 2 years, as production typically decreases 20% a year. So we'll probably swap out birds every 2 years to a good home. Ideally one of our Araucana hens will go broody and we'll be able to raise our own chicks here for the next batch. Even if we ate an aging hen the value of her meat would still be only about $5. So losing a good layer to predation can be a loss of potential hundreds, not simply replacable with any old $5 bird.

Once the flock was thinned, we quickly went from 1 egg a day to 3 to 4 as the starter hens got more food. And we were able to reduce the total daily amount of feed from 6 lbs down to 4. This is 1/3 lb per bird per day - the recommended winter ration. Once winter's over and there's more at pasture we can go down to 1/4 lb per bird per day - a total of 3 lbs a day. Using fodder and sprouted lentils our feed cost for the birds is 20 cents/lb. Just 2 eggs a day generously covers their feed bill, as our pastured fodder-fed eggs sell for $6 a dozen.

Our fodder's made of mostly wheat, with some rye, oats, sunflower seeds and winter peas, all grown up into a forage grass. The chickens do best with it when the roots have developed a fine biscuit, and the grains are just pushing up new green tips. Anything beyond that and they tend to be a little wasteful [the ducks however would clean this up]. So while we increase the food volume 4 to 5 times from dry grain to full fodder for the goats, because the chickens eat it at an intermediate stage the volume is only doubled. This is where we get 20 cents per pound. We also add a tablespoon of powdered kelp per day to the chickens' feed. I used to break up their fodder biscuits before I put them out into their food bins, but found they do just as well tearing off fodder from the full biscuits to not bother with this anymore.

Here and there they get some table scraps, and if I'm working in the garden I'll inevitably find some fat Japanese beetle grubs to throw them.

We've always wanted to get the chickens on an all-natural diet, for the health of the birds and the quality of the eggs. We ran through many diets before we discovered fodder. However there's no question that protein content has a huge impact on egg production. This is something that gives us trouble through the winter [we have a light on a timer in the coop so they get 14 hours of light per day to keep them laying], as most of the bugs are gone and the pasture's down. We use the Pearson Square to calculate what ratio of feeds to get a specific level of protein - which for laying hens is considered to be 16% optimally. We put our fodder at 14.5% . . . though that's only the best approximation we can come up with after much research. If we use a minimal amount of a very high protein supplement it wouldn't take much to bring it up to 16%. But the problem with using say fish meal or blood meal is now you've lost control of the health of the diet and of the eggs. Meal worms are great but need indoor real estate and require time and care - and we only really need them a few months out of the year.  We've used sprouted lentils so far as the birds' protein additive through the winter. We'd need to use a whole pound and a third according to the Square to hit 16%, but some research has shown chickens should only be given 15% maximum legumes out of their total diet - about half of what we need to hit 16% protein. So we've opted for doing that 15% of total feed per day as sprouted lentils [which the birds eat well], and the other 85% fodder. If we get a few less eggs it isn't the end of the world - as long as we get some. Though we have to buy lentils at the grocery store at $1/lb [much higher than normal feed costs], it expands so much through sprouting that it's not much more than the cost of the fodder itself. And it's a small part of the overall diet.

Our new starter flock is half Araucana and half Sexlink. We purchased them all as day-olds at the local co-op. We ran fodder and sprouted lentils with kelp through a manual meat grinder, then set it out in the sun to dry till it got crumbly. As a protein treat they occasionally got some scrambled eggs [which they loved]. They were handled as much as possible. The Araucanas are still a little skittish, but the Sexlinks are extremely friendly and excellent layers. They mob me when I go into the coop to feed them, trying to leap up into the bucket. The Sexlinks lay brown speckled eggs, and the 2 Araucanas so far laying have one a large blue oval egg, and the other a smaller pale pink.

We still have not lost a single bird to predation since we put up the 7 strand electric fence around their pasture. It has an 18" skirt of orange plastic mesh along the bottom to dissuade the chickens from ducking out under the bottom line. Ducks respect electric wire very well . . . but chickens not so much. However they're easily fooled with the plastic mesh.

We're going to purchase a batch of day-old Welsh Harlequin ducks in the spring. They're a production strain with the capacity to lay from 200-300 eggs a year. They also go broody and can raise their own. We love ducks - they're entertaining, great foragers, easy to herd, not as hard on high-intensive areas [like tearing mulch apart around perennials the way chickens do], lay huge wonderfully-flavored eggs, and make a great high-nitrogen fertilizer in their duck pool/stock tank which is drained, cleaned and filled once a week. And though ducks require 1/3 lb of feed per day all year . . . they do very well on fodder at all stages, and their pastured eggs sell for $10 a dozen.
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