Predator kills this years have been epic. Most decapitations which are usually done by Racoons, Possums, or Weasels.
YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvjtoCSKuI4
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Our short (6 min) video on Chicken breeds focusing on hybrids vs. pure breeds.
It took us years to understand the pros and cons of different breeds. In our latest webcast we discuss and show some of the differences between breeds and how best to select what’s right for you.
You can also watch a larger version on Blip.tv or
download it as a podcast in iTunes
In this eposide we cover:
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Range Coop
Two years ago we built a second coop to try and meet demand for our eggs. It’s a range coop with a covered run that can be moved to all four sides and the whole coop itself can be moved (with a really big tractor). The idea is to have grass fed eggs but still protect them from predators.
Once completed we didn’t have time to raise a new brood so we bought adult hens from a local farm. They were about 18 months old and fully into lay.
These hens were well taken care of and fed the same feed from the same local Agway. They were, however, never ranged and raised “cage free.”
This was the perfect opportunity to really test if there was a difference in egg quality since the rest of our flock is on the pasture each and every day, so we did side by side comparisons.
On day one, the contrast was startling. Our grass fed eggs were much richer in color, stood higher and tasted better. By day seven there was less of a difference but it was still noticeable. By day fourteen they was little or no discernible difference.
This is what I expected, and hoped, to see. Dietary or environmental changes take 10 to 14 days to manifest. So case closed. Grass fed is better. Plain and simple. EMDW (Elementary my dear Watson).
As time passed we discovered a problem with our range coop design. It was really heavy and hard to move. During a period of rain it got stuck. We broke two steel cables and a heavy chain trying to move it. All in all it took us nearly two months to shift it.
What luck, my coop is stuck.
After the first two weeks there was no grassleft to be had. They did get to spend each and every day outside in the run. I saw another perfect opportunity for a test. How would this effect egg quality?
Well, it didn’t. At least not to any degree we could detect.
What is our conclusion? It’s clearly not just grass that makes a difference. It’s exposure to a natural environment. Being outside, digging in dirt, feeling the sun. Or as we say “Happy chickens make better eggs.”
Since then we do fully range the birds from this coop and only keep them in the run if we have a fox rampage going on (happens every now and then). Though we limit this as much as possible. Once they get a taste for the outside chickens loathe any sort of confinement to the point, I believe, it will make the stressed and ill.
Dealing with predators is on of the most difficult parts of running a poultry farm. In this episode we discuss how to identify which predators are getting your birds and tips how to reduce your predator risk.
Some of the tips we discussed:
Links from the show:
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Click above to play or watch a
larger version on: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/5615242
Please leave a comment to let us know what you thought of our webcast or suggest subjects for upcoming episodes!
A quick recap of what we’ve learned:
EDIT: One our twitter followers suggested feeding hens pinto beans or tofu before introducing pullets as the attacks might have been partly motivated by protein deficiency. Although our feed is supposed to have the right amount of protein these birds have been off grass for months due to record snows. It’s more than worth a try!
Links from the show:
http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/
http://www.fernbrookfarmcsa.com/
http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/
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Playing around with the new camera today. Pretty nifty little thing
Old Cranberry Bog
It’s possibly one of the loneliest places in the world. Sandy soil, an endless expanse of pitch pine and only the very occasional bird call. There’s a quiet that so serene it’s slightly menacing.
It’s made even more lonely by a setting sun… by the mere proposition of being stranded in NJ’s Pine Barrens after dark. The old stories of the Jersey Devil and murderous albino tribes filter through my memory from childhood. Chills run up my spine.
It was a late Saturday afternoon in March. A renewed spring found it’s way to farmhand’s (age 7) step with the promise of a cheeseburger dinner. It try to focus on that rather than the rapidly setting sun.
All-in-all it was a successful day. I had a bag full of freshly harvested wintergreen leaves but, more importantly, we finally found the abandoned cranberry bogs I had been seeking for some time.
I have a thing for old places. I like walking through a place and imagining what used to happen on that particular patch of dirt. I don’t mean battlefields or places where world shaping events took place. I mean places where people just lived. Even more I like walking on such a patch of ground when I’m pretty sure that very few have walked upon it for a very long time. To me it still seems to echo with activity past.
Satellite Photo of Colliers Mills area
One such place we’ve been exploring lately is the Collier’s Mills Wildlife Management Area (WMA). I really like WMA’s because they are public land but not parks. There are a few dirt access roads here and there but they are pretty much just wilderness. No rangers, trail markers, well worn footpaths or other people around. Looking across the forest you realize how different life was. Going a mile in those woods, through the endless sea of bramble, could take hours.
At Collier’s Mill there was a thriving industrial base at one time. Several saw mills and grist mills, worker’s housing, and warehouses, though artifacts have been very elusive.
There are several bodies of water — one is a huge lake. South of that are a series of smaller ponds. We once set our canoe in one of these only to discover it was only a foot deep. Thinking this odd I poured over the satellite images and noticed that there was an unatural shape and structure to this pond and I began to suspect they were, at one time, cranberry bogs.
I love archeological mysteries and now I had one right in my lap. We made a few trips exploring and found this body of water to be much larger than we thought, but still very shallow. However we could not establish the bog theory
Bog Floodgate
On this Saturday past we found a path we had not seen before. After climbing through some woods we finally found it: the evidence we’ve been looking for. A man made dike with the remains of a wooden floodgate.
After more exploring we found two more. We also observed that beavers love these bogs and appear to have been maintaining them — one of the dykes had been breached and the beavers had patched it up quite nicely. There were also numerous freshly chewed trees so it’s clearly a work in progress.
On top of the beaver dam
Looking at the satellite photos we have more bogs to explore PLUS another mystery on our hands.
Look at the photos and you’ll see a very geometric cross-hatching within the bogs. From the ground nothing can be seen. Some even appear to extend on to land but what could possibly cause that? Stay tuned
Busy Beavers
Satellite Photo (click to enlarge)
Captured: A Lower East Side Film & Video History
Yes, I made it into a history book. I produced the “East Village Film and Video Festival” back in 1996 that was, in part, in reaction to the stifling rules that were prevalent in all other festivals at the time. The event received great press coverage.
The festival avoided all of the usual methods to get entries and used grass roots techniques to reach out to less main stream artists. We also devised a “black box” jury system for entries that prevented personal bias. The result was hugely varied and eccletic body of work for this three day fest.
This event was self-financed and made possible by my collborators Julius Klein and Ed Holt.
The festival took place at XOXO, an alternative artist’s space in the East Village. Sadly XOXO was demolished soon afterward by the city — a move that some believe to be taken after several demonstrations over the city’s attempt to close it down.
This book included a full page re-creation of the poster and a full page of text.
I spent a very brief period of time owning a typical house in a typical suburb. Some called it Long Island.
My favorite part of the neighborhood were the trees. It was lined, on both sides, with huge oak trees. One year we had a truly spectacular bounty of acorns. People were filling up whole garbage cans full of acorns just to get them off their lawns.
American Indians used acorns as a dietary staple and I had always wanted to try cooking with them. So on a particularly crisp and pleasing fall afternoon I plopped myself down in the driveway with a huge bag and began sorting acorns, looking for the ones without holes.
There’s a bug that likes to lay eggs in acorns and any with a hole means there is a grub inside. For those unfamiliar with grubs think maggot. Kinda the same thing.
My neighbors found this amusing. For weeks afterward if an acorn fell they would yell, “Hey Bill! You missed one!”
It was a working class neighborhood. We all had 60’ x 40’ lots. Take away 10 feet for the driveway and you’ve got a front yard about 30’ x 20’. You could roll and egg across it in about 15 seconds. Not that I ever did such. If you have a really big front yard the idea of rolling an egg across it would be absurd. This one was just about the right size where you could, if you wanted to, go out and roll an egg and get it done quickly.
Being of such a convenient egg rolling size it only took about eight minutes to mow. One filling of the tupperware-sized gas tank on my Home Depot weekend warrior mower would last me for weeks. I would go out weekly and perform this time honored suburban rite… but before I could even begin to feel the bon-homie bubbling up from the roots of this ancestral tradition the job was done and I was left feeling… unfulfilled. I had always imagined a having good long mechanized whack at the perennial rye while contemplating the day I could hand the job over the Wally or The Beav. Not this wham-bam fantasy interruptus.
We were about the only family on the block that mowed our own lawn. The rest used landscapers. With big mowers a few guys they could mow, trim, edge, mulch and manicure in all of about ten minutes. Eleven if they rolled an egg, which they rarely did.
Perhaps that’s how my neighbors handled the loss of the fantasy. Or perhaps they were trying to live a different fantasy.
It was only five years ago but that house, that neighborhood, seem a distant memory. The only time I think about it is during the change of seasons. While living in a suburb seasonal change never held much significance. In the winter you turned off the outside faucets, brought in the lawn furniture and that was that.
Out here, even on our little farm, it means change. Big change. The few hundred feet of warm-weather hoses that supply the automatic waterer in the coop have to be pulled up and stowed. Electric lines run and de-icers installed. It changes for the chickens too. Much of the small wildlife that sustains the predators tuck themselves in for a long winters nap which leaves said predators cold and hungry. Took me a few years but I’ve figured out that hawks don’t like to hunt after noon and it’s just not safe to let the chickens out before then.
As I coil up the summer hose I can’t help but reflect on the days when this seasonal change meant nothing. This change fills me with a sense of connectedness with nature— much more so than the relief of spring. It makes me feel more alive.
I know it means that harder times are coming and I do dread hauling 5 gallon water founts on a nine degree day with water sloshing and instantly freezing on my pants. I dread the inevitable ice that collects on the gentle slope that leads to the coop — a slope I don’t even notice in the summer — and wonder how may times I’ll be taking a header on said ice this year.
I recognize that this huge change of nature will be making a significant change in my life.
I also mourn all those years it didn’t.
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