Impromptu reason gutter feeder

I made this real quick last night.   It's my answer to spreading feed over muddy and wet ground.   Just an old piece of rain gutter from Mom's house,  some scrap wood under it and some landscape timbers for support.  

New arrivals

Well,  after having turkey eggs in the incubator almost 20 days,  it looks liked the first one that will emerge is Henny Penny's little egg that joined late.   I've got the brooder in and ready to set up.   Tomorrow morning we should have a new chicken on the farm!

P.S. don't leave the incubator open for very long when they're coming out.   They need that moisture to keep the membrane loose and easy to get out of.  We're keeping the incubator at 60 plus % rh.

Free range is where you find it...

Well,  I no sooner opened the garage doors this morning than in walked one of our Rhode Island Reds.   He proceeded overt to a shelf in the garage and headed in to make her impromptu roost.  
I guess home is where you found it.

Moisture in the Incubator

The turkey eggs are about to hit day 21 in the incubator.  That means it's time to stop rotating them.

We've been keeping them at about 100° F and 50% humidity.
These are the guidelines we've gotten from a few different sources.  One of our friends, who have been very successful, said they don't worry about the humidity at all.  They don't have a hygrometer in their incubator even. 
Their success speaks for it self, but I decided to mind the humidity none the less.  My last (unsuccessful) run of eggs I had a hard time maintaining the humidity. 
This time I patched a lot of the holes with black electrical tape.  By using it at the bottom in particular, I was able to keep the moisture level up.  I also avoided the mess from missing the water channels. 
As with most Styrofoam incubators, mine has water channels.  Getting the water into them is not easy when you have an automatic egg turner.  Last time I seemed to get more into the base with its drainage holes and in turn lost that water all over the wooden filing cabinet in the mancave.  I also covered some of the upper holes.

In short, my veteran incubator friends are secure with "set it, forget it".  Me, I'm the nervous type.  I like seeing my temp/humidity levels every time I go to my desk. 
Below is the hygrometer we got from amazon to complete our incubator.
It's cheap, but pretty accurate.  I like the min/max function also.  It tells me how its been while I wasn't watching.

More tomorrow!  I'll let you know how the candling goes.

New Additions

Well, since our last post a lot has happened!
We now have 6 adult Rhode Island Reds and 4 Bantams!  We're still building the final coop, so for now they've taken to Karen's butterfly bush.  It is definitely more interesting now!

More to follow!

The Turkeys take a roost

Today we introduced turkeys to our flock.  They were a little rattled by the trip from Luke and Angela's, but after they were here they were right at home.   They don't really dig the horse or Bear...  I'm sure they'll warm up soon after a whole night of Bear's protection and barking.  

Our turkeys claim there own perch.

Evening at KY Kids Farm: http://youtu.be/8IgSBr5aIlQ

Chickens and Mulch

Check out this video of our chickens going beyond a dust bath to packing their feathers with mulch and dirt.   Their enjoying the coolness of the shade.  Also their getting their fill of the bugs,  worms and grubs in the mulch.  
It makes them happy,  that's for sure!

In the near future we'll be purposely putting some mulch beds in proximity of their nesting areas in order to preserve our planting beds.   I'll probably also feed worms from our future worm beds into it too.

http://youtu.be/nnU_5-eZOQs

Good Reading!

I've been focusing on the chickens lately, and a friend of ours who farms on a larger scale than us recommended this book.

"The Small Scale Poultry Flock"
by Harvey Ussery

This is the EVERYTHING about "it" book for chickens.  from hatching, through feeding and on to cooking...




Thanks for letting us borrow it John!  Our copy is on the way from Amazon now.

Cleaning the coop

In our effort to keep healthy and happy chickens, I have the coop a good cleaning.

I pressure washed everything in the coop.   Oddly enough,  the chickens managed to poop on everything.  I also took this time to put up or new improved brooder. It's been outside since we introduced the reds to the flock.

Our "Country Tuff" wagon made a great washing platform since it's mesh and can move to better drainage areas.  

To top it off,  we moved the cage over 20 foot to allow us to scoop up the contaminated soil. I stopped after I filled the first barrel.  Should make some good compost in a short while.  

As a side item,  Red did his part to help me with the excess grass I brought up to line the cage...

Turkey Eggs- take 2

OK, our first batch of Turkey eggs didn't do so hot...

Not to make excuses, but it was our first attempt at them, we had just gotten the incubator, and we really didn't have a clue what we were doing!

Thanks to our friends Luke and Angela though who set us up with another batch of turkey eggs and gave us some good hints and advice...  Now we are ready to try again!

So this is day one.  I fixed up the air circulator in our unit.  The person who sold it to us had suspended it by shoelaces before.  We went with zip strips and we also plugged up some of the holes in the bottom of the unit that were making it impossible to hold water and retain humidity.

Here's a quick prayer that God blesses us with turkeys...