Backyard Chickens:
http://pub228.ezboard.com/bbackyardchickens

Livestock guard dogs:
http://www.lgd.org/

Sustainable Poultry: Production Overview
http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/poultryoverview.html

"How to drive a chicken tractor" among other things:
http://www2.gsu.edu/~biojdsx/fowl/fowl.htm


Any 'in-town' chicken farmers out there?
http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/thecitychicken/

Pops ..

Homesteading today has an active Poultry Section ..

http://homesteadingtoday.com/vb/forumdi ... 5f787&f=26

Actually, this is a good site overall ..
Do a seach on PeakOil

Triff ..

Thanks Buffy, that's exactly what we need to hear.

Hi Triffin, I used to frequent that board and they do have some knowledgeable people and can answer specific questions with good authority.

But “Homesteading Today” (as you coyly point out) isn’t what homesteading tomorrow will probably be like. It’s a good resource though, if you overlook the “which sweater should I have custom made for my bunny” topics.

For those not of faint heart, try Frugalsquirrels Homesteading forum: link. The homesteading and survival forums aren’t bad (AZGRAMMY and Goatlady know EVERYTHING) but the general discussion isn’t for most folks who frequent here – they are about everything except PO, energy conservation and “global solutions”

Oh, and DON”T mention Hillary!

My grandparents had chickens at their farm and they are alright when you have the space and the time to care for them. However I had a very unpleasant experience with a neighbor who thought he could transform his 18 m2 central city backyard into a farm. Moreover he seemed to be convinced that the things would require little work.

That didn't really work out that well and within a year the neighbors were on the verge of killing him. On a hot day you couldn't sit in your yard because of the smell and the flies. The whole block had serious problems with mice. You had to store all your food in mouse and fly proof containers. So in the end we had to send the health and safety department to kill his chickens. It was probably the best thing for them too.

So if you want to start with raising animals please make sure that you have enough time to care for them. I guess you would need something like an hour per day. And perhaps it would also be a good to talk your idea through with the neighbors.

We had one dog that ate a couple of chickens and used the old Ozark remedy. Took the chicken and whacked him with it quite a few times, then used some string to tie it to his collar and left it there for a couple of weeks.

Obviously not a good solution for the city or a small lot, but from then on he never messed with a chicken, used to act dowright scared of them for some reason...

Roosters who are babied, petted, or hand fed are much more likely to be mean and dangerous than those who aren't. This seems to be true for a lot of male animals; a bottle-fed ram is supposed to be one of the meanest, most dangerous animals you can have on a farm. (OTOH, we've had several bottle-fed buck goats, and they were always babies---very sweet natured.)

You're absolutely right about bottle-fed rams. You usually end up with them as "bummers", lambs that a mom rejects for whatever reason, and the choice is let them die or bottle feed them. Having been through a few of them I'm no longer sure about which choice I prefer...

The hard part for lots of folks to understand is with some livestock you WANT them scared of you, rams are the perfect example. If they lose their fear of you they can get dangerous, I've been nailed many times by rams when I forgot to stay on my toes.

We had a ram a few years ago that was a great ram, loaned him to a friend for stud service and it turns out she treated him like a baby while he was there. When we got him back we had to butcher him, he'd lost his fear of us and was just too scary to keep around.

Funny, had a friend's kids (30 years old) come visit the other day, she couldn't understand why the sheep didn't run up to get petted like dogs, couldn't figure out why the chicks weren't all bright yellow, etc. Finally dawned on me that for her visiting us was like visiting Mexico, it was all strange and confusing.

Did you just tie the chicken straight to his collar? Or did you put it in a sack?

~~~

For the urban chicken keepers :

The Elgu!

Ok, it's a little unconventional (nothing wrong with that), but apparantly it works very well. I've heard lots of positive stuff about it, and they say it's completely fox proof. I'll be needing something bigger though, but it looks good for the suburban family.

bobaloo,
Yep, it always amuses me when someone asks if I have to have a rooster in with the hens to get eggs ... The fact that people are so far removed from their food these days is reason enough for me to believe folks will be in serious trouble if grocery stores go lacking.
Kathy

Mexico....or Disney World! That's the feeling I get from visitors. Sometimes it's amusing, but more and more it's depressing.

My sister in law, who lives in north Atlanta, and is a teacher in a private school, had to teach a unit about sheep. At Easter, she was complaining that she didn't know what to say, since there's nothing sheep are used for. My sister's mouth dropped open and she said,"Think about what a sheep looks like---all fluffy?..." No clue on SIL's part. My sister says,"WOOL??!!" SIL thought (really!) that wool grew on trees. She also had no clue about lambchops, thinking that they came from lambs---an entirely different animal from sheep. And when sis went on to tell her that some sheep are milked to make cheese, SIL was absolutely flabbergasted.

*Speechless*


This woman is a teacher

Maybe being nice was the wrong thing to do? I got that backwards, lol. I haven't had the courage to get any more roosters since because they attacked my youngest daughter when she was about 2 yo. And they were barred rocks, so kind of large. The roo also spurred my husband when he went in to "take care of the problem" I talked to a neighbor and she said she normally had to go through about a dozen roosters before she got a nice one.

Carla

Yes---we just ignore the roosters when they're young---give them lots of space. Even so, we still occasionally get a mean one. When it looks like a rooster is going to be a problem, we usually start out by clipping his spurs (a bloody job)---sometimes that'll take the wind out of his sails, and he'll leave everybody alone after that. But sometimes there's nothing you can do but kill him, and get another.

I'm going to look into gluing wooden balls on the end of my aggressive rooster's spurs. He spiked me pretty badly once. My other two roosters are gentle so far, one enough to hold, the other is skittish and won't let me catch him, but he isn't aggressive. The aggressive rooster is a light breed (Polish) and light breeds are supposed to have more nervous temperaments. Luckily he's very small, mostly feathers. But damn is he fast!

So far all the mean roosters we've acquired have been banished or put in the stew pot. None of them, however, were mean to us - just to the other roosters. So, we had to thin them out some. Now we have 3 adult roosters - one Arucauna, one silky, and one barnyard variety. They seem to get along well. The Arucauna won't let you pick him up, but he is pretty calm, and will let you touch him. Good thing - he's about knee high on me, with very large spurs.

Speaking of spurs, if you cut them too short, they can be very bloody, but if you just take off the tips, it does hinder their "hurting" ability, and doesn't bleed nearly as much.



Well, that's the $64K question right now. Since I've only had them a couple weeks, and they were originally pets to the lady who gave them to us - I don't think these particular ducks will end up as food anytime soon, but, I'm pretty sure their offspring will. Actually I've never eaten duck - but others in my family have, and say they didn't like it. So I'm kind of torn. I hate to butcher the ducks, and then nobody like to eat them. But, they're sort of an additional insurance policy against rising grocery prices. Since we're trying to be more food self-reliant, I figure another type of poultry on the place is a good thing, and will add some food security for us when the time comes that we'll need it.

If someone could give me good recipes, I might just try them out before we need to .
Kathy